An
interchangeable Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, each wholly interfused
in the other, must make the humors of that eye, which would see
causes reaching to their last effect and reproducing the world
forever. The least inequality of mixture, the excess of one element
over the other, in that degree diminishes the transparency of things,
makes the world opaque to the observer, and destroys so far the value
of his experience. No particular gifts can countervail this defect.
In reading Meister, I am charmed with the insight; to use a phrase of
Ben Jonson's, "it is rammed with life." I find there actual men and
women even too faithfully painted. I am, moreover, instructed in the
possibility of a highly accomplished society, and taught to look for
great talent and culture under a grey coat. But this is all. The
limits of artificial society are never quite out of sight. The
vicious conventions, which hem us in like prison walls, and which the
poet should explode at his touch, stand for all they are worth in the
newspaper. I am never lifted above myself. I am not transported out
of the dominion of the senses, or cheered with an infinite
tenderness, or armed with a grand trust.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80