The second part [Footnote: It was never written.] will have for its
object an application of these principles to the present state of the
cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the attempt to idealize the
modern forms of manners and opinions, and compel them into a
subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty. For the
literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever
preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national
will, has arisen, as it were, from a new birth. In spite of the low-
thoughted envy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will
be a memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among
such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have
appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious
liberty. The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the
awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or
institution is poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the
power of communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions
respecting men and nature.
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