No man was ever yet a great
poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry
is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts,
human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare's Poems the creative
power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each
in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the
other. At length, in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each
with its shield before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid
streams that, at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks,
mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in
tumult, but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores,
blend and dilate, and flow on in one current and with one voice. The
_Venus and Adonis_ did not perhaps allow the display of the deeper
passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand,
their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shakespeare's management
of the tale neither pathos nor any other dramatic quality.
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