I
think I should have conjectured from these poems that even then the
great instinct which impelled the poet to the drama was secretly working
in him, prompting him by a series and never-broken chain of imagery,
always vivid, and because unbroken, often minute; by the highest effort
of the picturesque in words, of which words are capable, higher perhaps
than was ever realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted; to
provide a substitute for that visual language, that constant
intervention and running comment by tone, look, and gesture, which,
in his dramatic works, he was entitled to expect from the players. His
Venus and Adonis seem at once the characters themselves, and the whole
representation of those characters by the most consummate actors. You
seem to be told nothing, but to see and hear everything. Hence it is
that from the perpetual activity of attention required on the part of
the reader; from the rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful
nature of the thoughts and images; and, above all, from the alienation,
and, if I may hazard such an expression, the utter aloofness of the
poet's own feelings from those of which he is at once the painter and
the analyst; that, though the very subject cannot but detract from the
pleasure of a delicate mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on a
moral account.
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