Sometimes it would take me in
the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and
look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this was still
worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent myself in words,
it would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate.
The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the _Odyssey_,
it is true; but the relater had the true genius of a poet. It has been
made a question whether Richardson's romances are poetry; and the
answer perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because they are not
romance. The interest is worked up to an inconceivable height; but it
is by an infinite number of little things, by incessant labour and
calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows that have no rebound
in them. The sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a
tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity
and motion. The story does not "give an echo to the seat where love
is throned". The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music.
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