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Untitled Article
poem , iii which a great poet should reveal the whole of himself to mankind would be a study , a delight , and a power , for which there is yefe no parallel > and around which the noblest creations of the noblest writers would range themselves as subsidiary luminaries . These thoughts have been suggested by the work before us , which , though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch , has truth
and life in it , which gave us the thrill , and laid hold of U 3 with the power , the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius . Whoever the anonymous author may be , he is a poet . A pretender to science cannot always be safely judged of by a brief publication , for the knowledge of some facts does not imply the knowledge of other facts ; but the claimant of poetic honours
may generally be appreciated by a few pages , often by a few lines , for if they be poetry , he is a poet . We cannot judge of the house by the brick , but we can judge of the statue of Hercules by its foot . We felt certain of Tennyson , before we saw the book , by a few verses which had straggled into a newspaper ; we are not less certain of the author of Pauline .
Pauline is the recipient of the confessions : the hero is as anonymous as the author , and this is no matter ; for poet is the title both of the one and the other . The confessions have nothing in them which needs names : the external world is only reflected in them in its faintest shades ; its influences are only described after they have penetrated into the intellect . We have never read any thing more purely confessional . The whole composition is of
the spirit , spiritual . The scenery is in the chambers of thought ; the agencies are powers and passions ; the events are transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another . And yet the composition is not dreamy ; there is on it a deep stamp of reality . Still less is it characterised by coldness . It has visions that we love to look upon , and tones that touch the inmost heart till it responds .
The poet's confessions are introduced with an analysis of his spiritual constitution , in which he is described as having an intense consciousness of individuality , combined with a sense of power , a self-supremacy , and a * principle of restlessness which would be all , have , see , know , taste , feel all ; ' of this essential self , imagination is described as the characteristic quality ; an
imagination , steady and unfailing in its power . A ' yearning after God / or supreme and universal good , unconsciously cherished through the earlier stages of the history , keeps this mind from utterly dissipating itself ; and , which seems to us the only point in which the coherence fails , there is added an unaptness for love , a mere perception of the beautiful , the perception being felt more precious than its object .
In the progress and developement of the being thus constituted , ^ Ve first see a solitary boy , whose mind neither parent , teacher , nor friend seems to be in communion with , or influencing ; untutored by any one , unatlr&cted toward * any one , ahut up by himself in a
Untitled Article
tM Pauline .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 254, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/38/
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