These two characteristics, viz., (1) _deep and original thinking_, (2) _perfection of workmanship, or mastery of an extremely difficult stanza_--embrace that in "Nosce Teipsum," regarded broadly, which I am anxious to have the Reader recognize and 'prove' for himself. Subsidiary to them is one other thing--not shared with many of our Poets and therefore demanding specific statement--viz. its _condensation throughout_. Hallam and Craik have called attention to this; and the student cannot fail to be struck with it. It is not simply that the stanzas are as so many rings of gold each complete in itself--much as Proverbs are--but that whether it be idea or opinion or metaphor there is no beating of it out, as though yards of gold-leaf or tin-foil were more valuable than the relatively small solid ore that has been so manipulated: or the common mistake of imagining that a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of lead. From Dean Donne until now "comparisons are odious." Nevertheless when one recalls the attenuated thought and the blatant verbiage of not a few of our Poets, this resolute sifting out of everything extraneous is not less noticeable than commendable. It assures us that the Poet was conscious of his resources--of his unused wealth of thought and imagination and fancies. He who compacts his carbon into a Koh-i-noor has infinite supplies of it. Similarly a Poet who could and did so lavishly add great thought to great thought and vivid metaphor to vivid metaphor, and still go on adding in smallest possible compass, declares his intellect to be of the highest. I take two stanzas as illustrative equally of condensed thought and condensed metaphor concerning our First Parents:-- When their reasons eye was sharpe and cleare, And (as an eagle can behold the sunne) Could haue approcht th' Eternall Light as neare, As the intellectuall angels could haue done: Euen then to them the _Spirit of Lyes_ suggests That they were blind, because they saw not ill; And breathes into their incorrupted brests A curious _wish_, which did corrupt their _will_. Your Rhetorician-poet would have expatiated on his 'Eagle' through a hundred lines. Your mere Metaphysician would have entangled himself with distinctions between 'wish' and 'will' endlessly. Similarly how succinctly memorable is this of man's un-willinghood to know himself--every stanza a perfect circle but all the circles interlinked:-- We study _Speech_ but others we perswade; We _leech-craft_ learne, but others cure with it; We interpret _lawes_, which other men haue made, But reade not those which in our hearts are writ. Is it because the minde is like the eye, Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees-- Whose rayes reflect not, but spread outwardly: Not seeing it selfe when other things it sees?