travagance; or they are chiefly of a superficial kind, lying upon
the surfaces of manners; or arising out of a selection and arrangement
of incidents, by which the mind is kept upon the stretch of curiosity,
and the fancy amused without the trouble of thought. But In everything
which is to send the soul into herself, to be admonished of her
weakness, or to be made conscious of her power;--wherever life and
nature are described as operated upon by the creative or abstracting
virtue of the imagination; wherever the instinctive wisdom of
antiquity and her heroic passions uniting, in the heart of the poet,
with the meditative wisdom of later ages, have produced that accord of
sublimated humanity which is at once a history of the remote past and
a prophetic enunciation of the remotest future, _there_, the poet must
reconcile himself for a season to few and scattered hearers.--Grand
thoughts (and Shakespeare must often have sighed over this truth), as
they are most naturally and most fitly conceived in solitude, so
can they not be brought forth in the midst of plaudits without
some violation of their sanctity. Go to a silent exhibition of the
productions of the sister Art, and be convinced that the qualities
which dazzle at first sight, and kindle the admiration of the
multitude, are essentially different from those by which permanent
influence is secured. Let us not shrink from following up these
principles as far as they will carry us, and conclude with
observing--that there never has been a period, and perhaps never will
be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited
more zealous admiration, and been far more generally read, than good;
but this advantage attends the good, that the _individual_, as well
as the species, survives from age to age; whereas, of the depraved,
though the species be immortal, the individual quickly _perishes_; the
object of present admiration vanishes, being supplanted by some other
as easily produced; which, though no better, brings with it at least
the irritation of novelty,--with adaptation, more or less skilful, to
the changing humours of the majority of those who are most at leisure
to regard poetical works when they first solicit their attention.

Is it the result of the whole, that, in the opinion of the Writer, the
judgement of the People is not to be respected? The thought is most
injurious; and, could the charge be brought against him, he would
repel it with indignati