f surrounding impressions.
And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's
dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a
being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to
which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe
of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our
inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder
of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to
imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has
been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted
by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso: _Non
merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta_.

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure,
virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best,
the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time
be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of
human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the
happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally
incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most
spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would
look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and
the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty
in a high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to
confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the
arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own
persons the incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, and
executioner, let us decide without trial, testimony, or form, that
certain motives of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not
soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard,
that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was
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