But, unlike Hazlitt, he bids us also
consider what the aim of the individual poet was, and how far he has
taken the most fitting means to reach it. In other words, he allows,
as Hazlitt did not allow, for the many-sidedness of poetry, and the
infinite variety of poetic genius. And, just because he does so, he
is able to give a deeper meaning to "nature" and the universal
principles of imagination than Hazlitt, with all his critical and
reflective brilliance, was in a position to do. Hazlitt is too apt to
confine "nature" to the nature of Englishmen in general and, in his
weaker moments, of Hazlitt in particular. Carlyle makes an honest
attempt to bound it only by the universal instincts of man, and the
"everlasting reason" of the world. Thus, in Carlyle's conception, "it
is the essence of the poet to be new"; it is his mission "to wrench
us from our old fixtures"; [Footnote: Carlyle on Goethe: _Miscellanies_,
i. 291.] for it is only by so doing that he can show us some aspect
of nature or of man's heart that was hidden from us before. The
originality of the poet, the impossibility of binding him by the example
of his forerunners, is the necessary consequence of the infinity of
truth.
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