The persons in whom this power resides may
often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little
apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the
ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled
to serve, the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul.
It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers
of the present day without being startled with the electric life which
burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the
depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit,
and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its
manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the
age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the
mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present;
the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which
sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which
is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
the world.
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