It allows too much room to poetry in
the abstract; too little to the ever-varying temperament of the
individual poet. And even that is perhaps too favourable a statement
of the case. His idea of poetry may in part be drawn--and its strength
is to have been partly drawn--direct from life and nature. But it is
also taken, as from the nature of the case it must be with all of us,
from the works of particular poets. And, in spite of his appeal to
Dante and the Bible, it is clear that, in framing it, he was guided
too exclusively by his loving study of the earlier English writers,
from Chaucer to Milton. The model, so framed, is laid with heavy hand
upon all other writers, who naturally fare ill in the comparison. Is
it possible to account otherwise for his disparagement of Moliere, or
his grudging praise of Wordsworth and of Coleridge?
It was here that Carlyle came in to redress the balance. From interests,
in their origin perhaps less purely literary than have moved any man
who has exercised a profound influence on literature, Carlyle was led
to quicken the sense of poetic beauty, and by consequence to widen the
scope of criticism, more than any writer of his day.
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