"The man that hath not
music in his soul" can indeed never be a genuine poet. Imagery (even
taken from nature, much more when transplanted from books, as travels,
voyages, and works of natural history), affecting incidents, just
thoughts, interesting personal or domestic feelings, and with these
the art of their combination or intertexture in the form of a poem,
may all by incessant effort be acquired as a trade, by a man of talents
and much reading, who, as I once before observed, has mistaken an
intense desire of poetic reputation for a natural poetic genius; the
love of the arbitrary end for a possession of the peculiar means. But
the sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a
gift of imagination; and this, together with the power of reducing
multitude into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by
some one predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved,
but can never be learnt. It is in these that _Poeta nascitur non fit_.
2. A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote
from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself.
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