I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day whether
it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are
produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay recommended by
critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful
observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connection of
the spaces between their suggestions by the intermixture of conventional
expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical
faculty itself: for Milton conceived the _Paradise Lost_ as a whole
before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for
the muse having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song". And let
this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various
readings of the first line of the _Orlando Furioso_. Compositions so
produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and
intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in the
plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or picture grows under the
power of the artist as a child in the mother's womb; and the very mind
which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to
itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.
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