Assuming that the first step in our method has left us quite satisfied
that a writer (and here I leave Mr. Watson and Mr. Davidson and revert
to the general case) possesses enough share in the divine gift to be
called "poet," we may, if we are bent upon truly "appreciating" him,
proceed to taste his lines over and over, to dwell in detail upon his
expression, upon its charms and splendours and felicities, its vigour
and terseness and simplicity. It may be that we shall find our first
admiration continually increased, especially when we learn to realise
the full music of the verse, the subtle tones of its "flutes and soft
recorders," or the swell of the "organ-voice." We may come to taste "all
the charms of all the Muses often flowering in one lonely word." It
might be, on the other hand, that we should detect a certain
over-fulness--what Coleridge has called a too-muchness--of diction; or a
certain want of correspondence between the melodious language and any
clearly apprehended mental picture. We might find the vigour too often
lapsing into sheer bad taste, or the simplicity taking the fatal step
into simpledom, as when Tennyson ends the story of Enoch Arden with the
banal remark that
the little port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
We might, unhappily, discover these things, or, on the contrary, we
might find them so rare that our admiration at the expressive genius of
the poet would increase, until we were sure that the thing of beauty was
really and truly a superlative joy for ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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