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Untitled Article
of power , generall y bear reference , it is true , to external objects , and exist by associations and imaginative combination . But an individual of that order of mind has these things within himself , or else the external objects would excite no such ideas ; and it i& plain they do not in the mass of mankind . Again ; the greatness of private grief also depends upon similar mental faculties
inducing lofty generalities . Our foreign critic notices , or rather names a long list of poets ; Dryden , Butler , Gay , all heaped up with the mass of second and third-rate people ; and we find Wordsworth and Coleridge amongthe list of " restorers of ballads , " and classed with Morgan , Rogers , Lord Holland , and others ! Burns is classed with Bloomneld , as " poet of the working classes ; " Keats and Shelley are not even named .
He says , in vol . ii . p . 324 , " Burns , Mason (?) , Cowper , died during my emigration to London , before and in 1800 . They concluded the century ; / began the new one ! " Indeed ! But of this egotism the work contains abundant instances . The criticism on Byron is very just , as far as faults and deficiencies are concerned , though unjust in its want of appreciation of his points of real excellence , albeit he fancies Byron the greatest poet since Milton that our literature can boast :
" Lord Byron has left a deplorable school . I dare say he would be as displeased with the Childe Harolds to whom he has given birth as I am with the Ren £ s that have sprung up around me . The general sentiments which compose the groundwork of human nature , paternal and maternal affection , filial piety , friendship , love , are inexhaustible ; they will always impart new inspirations to the talent capable of developing them ; but the particular manners of feeling " , the individualities of mind
and character , cannot extend and multiply themselves in grand and numerous pictures . The little undiscovered corners of the human heart are a narrow field ; in this field there is nothing left to glean after the hand that reaped the first harvest . A disease of the soul is not a permanent and natural state ; we cannot reproduce it , make a literature of it , avail ourselves of it as of a passion incessantly modified at the pleasure of the various artists who mould it and change its form /'—Vol . ii .
p . 341 . With the foregoing remarks we coincide generally , contending , however , that he who thoroughl y works out , ana for the first time , any one strong mental individuality , and in noble language , has added to our stock of knowledge and interest in numan
nature . His remarks on Walter Scott , as a prose writer , contain much truth , though the admission , at present , will be far from general : —
" Walter Scott does not mould like Richardson upon the internal type of man ; he likes rather to display the exterior of nis personages . — p . 308 .
Untitled Article
Sketches of English Literature . 595
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 595, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/7/
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