There Are Many Poets Of More Taste,
And Better Manners, Who Knew How To Leave Out Their Dulness; But
Such Negative Genius Cannot Detain Us Long; We Shall Return To
Chaucer Still With Love.
Some natures, which are really rude and
ill-developed, have yet a higher standard of perfection than
others which are refined and well balanced.
Even the clown has
taste, whose dictates, though he disregards them, are higher and
purer than those which the artist obeys. If we have to wander
through many dull and prosaic passages in Chaucer, we have at
least the satisfaction of knowing that it is not an artificial
dulness, but too easily matched by many passages in life. We
confess that we feel a disposition commonly to concentrate
sweets, and accumulate pleasures; but the poet may be presumed
always to speak as a traveller, who leads us through a varied
scenery, from one eminence to another, and it is, perhaps, more
pleasing, after all, to meet with a fine thought in its natural
setting. Surely fate has enshrined it in these circumstances for
some end. Nature strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and
never collects them into heaps. This was the soil it grew in,
and this the hour it bloomed in; if sun, wind, and rain came here
to cherish and expand the flower, shall not we come here to pluck
it?
A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous
expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere
which surrounds it.
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