A great poem is
a fountain for ever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight;
and after one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence
which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet
another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of
an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.
The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio
was characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture, and architecture.
Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the superstructure of English
literature is based upon the materials of Italian invention.
But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of
poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed out
the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word, upon
their own and all succeeding times.
But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners
and mechanists on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of
the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that of
reason is more useful.
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