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    fortunately is possible to all , with the state of fruition which is granted only to the few . But without entering into this deeper investigation ; that capacity of strong feeling , which is supposed

    necessarily to disturb the judgment , is also the material out of which all motives are made ; the motives , consequently , which lead human beings to the pursuit of truth . The greater the individual ' s capability of happiness and of misery , the stronger interest has that individual in arriving at truth ; and when once that interest

    is felt , an impassioned nature is sure to pursue this , as to pursue any other object , with greater ardour ; for energy of character is always the offspring of strong feeling- If therefore the most impassioned natures do not ripen into the most powerful intellects , it is always from defect of culture , or something wrong in the

    circumstances by which the being has originally or successively been surrounded . Undoubtedly strong feelings require a strong intellect to carry them , as more sail requires more ballast : and when from neglect , or bad education , that strength is wanting , no wonder if the grandest and swiftest vessels make the most utter wreck .

    Where , as in Milton , or , to descend to our own times , in Coleridge ,, a poetic nature has been united with logical and scientific culture , the peculiarity of association arising from the finer nature so perpetually alternates with the associations attainable by commoner natures trained to high perfection , that its own particular law is not so conspicuously characteristic of the result produced , as

    in a poet like Shelley , to whom systematic intellectual culture , in a measure proportioned to the intensity of his own nature , has been wanting . Whether the superiority will naturally be on the side of the logician-poet or of the mere poet—whether the writings of the one ought , as a whole , to be truer , and their influence more beneficent , than those of the other- —is too obvious in principle to need statement : it would be absurd to doubt whether two

    endowments are better than one ; whether truth is more certainly arrived at by two processes , verifying and correcting each other , than by one alone . Unfortunately , in practice the matter is not quite so simple ; there the question often is , which is least prejudicial to the intellect , uncultivation or malcultivation . For , as

    long as so much of educStion is made up of artificialities and conventionalisms , and the so-called training of the intellect consists chiefly of the mere inculcation of traditional opinions , many of which , from the mere fact that the human intellect has not yet reached perfection , must necessarily be false ; it is not always

    clear that the poet of acquired ideas has the advantage over him whose feeling has been his sole teacher . For , the depth and durability of wrong as well as of right impressions , is proportional to the fineness of the material ; and they who have the greatest capacity of natural feeling are generally those whose artificial feelings are the strongest . Hence , doubtless , among other reasons , it is , that in an age of revolutions in opinion , the content-

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    The Two Kinds of Poetry . 723

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 723, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/63/