I determined, nevertheless, not to give up my point.
"Yes," resumed I, positively, "a poet; for of all writers he has the
best chance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he
writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him. He is
the faithful portrayer of nature, whose features are always the
same, and always interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and
unwieldy; their pages are crowded with commonplaces, and their
thoughts expanded into tediousness. But with the true poet every thing
is terse, touching, or brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in
the choicest language. He illustrates them by every thing that he sees
most striking in nature and art. He enriches them by pictures of human
life, such as it is passing before him. His writings, therefore,
contain the spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, of the age
in which he lives. They are caskets which inclose within a small
compass the wealth of the language- its family jewels, which are
thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The setting may
occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be renewed,
as in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsic value of
the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long reach of
literary history. What vast valleys of dulness, filled with monkish
legends and academical controversies! what bogs of theological
speculations! what dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there only
do we behold the heaven-illuminated bards, elevated like beacons on
their widely-separate heights, to transmit the pure light of
poetical intelligence from age to age.
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