Let
us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer,
that Horace was a coward, that Tasso a madman, that Lord Bacon was
a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet
laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject
to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the
great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found
to have been dust in the balance; if their sins 'were as scarlet,
they are now white as snow'; they have been washed in the blood of
the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos
the imputation of real or fictitious crime have been confused in
the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how
little is, as it appears--or appears, as it is; look to your own
motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.
Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that
it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind,
and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with
the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that
these are the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when
mental effects are experienced unsusceptible of being referred to
them. The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious
to suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of order and harmony
correlative with its own nature and its effects upon other minds.
But in the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent
without being durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned to
the sudden reflux of the influences under which others habitually
live.
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