Let us for a moment stoop to the
arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own
persons the incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, and
executioner, let us decide, without trial, testimony, or form, that
certain motives of those who are "there sitting where we dare not
soar", are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard,
that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was
a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine,
that Spenser was a poet-laureate. It is inconsistent with this division
of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample
justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been
weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins "were
as scarlet, they are now white as snow"; they have been washed in the
blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous
chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime have been confused
in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how
little is, as it appears--or appears, as it is; look to your own
motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.
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