In all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he
bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or who have come after
him; but there is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies
like a dead weight upon the mind--a benumbing stupor, a breathless
awe, from the intensity of the impression--a terrible obscurity, like
that which oppresses us in dreams--an identity of interest, which
moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all things with
the passions and imaginations of the human soul--that make amends for
all other deficiencies. The immediate objects he presents to the mind
are not much in themselves; they want grandeur, beauty, and order; but
they become everything by the force of the character he impresses upon
them. His mind lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates,
instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the
nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples
the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest
of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to
the flowery and glittering; the writer who relies most on his own
power, and the sense of it in others, and who leaves most room to the
imagination of his readers.
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