See M. Brunetiere, _L'Evolution des Genres_,
i. 236. This book is a sketch of the history of criticism in France,
and cannot be too warmly recommended to all who are interested in such
subjects,] but it is--not indeed exclusively, but inclusively of those
two other questions--properly and ultimately a question on the essence
and peculiar life of the poetry itself. The first of these questions,
as we see it answered, for instance, in the criticisms of Johnson and
Kames, relates, strictly speaking, to the _garment_ of poetry: the
second, indeed, to its _body_ and material existence, a much higher
point; but only the last to its _soul_ and spiritual existence, by
which alone can the body... be _informed_ with significance and rational
life. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison
composed sentences and struck out similitudes; but by what far finer
and more mysterious mechanism Shakespeare organized his dramas, and
gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet? Wherein lies
that life; how have they attained that shape and individuality? Whence
comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and
pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a diviner thing, into all
hearts? Are these dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true; nay,
truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmixed reality is
bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity
of theirs; and can our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible,
and existing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, from
the general elements of all thought, and grows up therefrom into form
and expansion by its own growth? Not only who was the poet, and how
did he compose; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem
and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured passion? These are
the questions for the critic.
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