may
move or speak according to rule, but that by the very exercise our
voice and carriage may become so unembarrassed as to allow of our
doing what we will with them.

A talent for composition then is no essential part of poetry, though
indispensable to its exhibition. Hence it would seem that attention to
the language _for its own sake_ evidences not the true poet but the
mere artist. Pope is said to have tuned our tongue. We certainly owe
much to him--his diction is rich, musical, and expressive. Still he is
not on this account a poet; he elaborated his composition for its own
sake. If we give him poetical praise on this account, we may as
appropriately bestow it on a tasteful cabinet-maker. This does not
forbid us to ascribe the grace of his verse to an inward principle of
poetry, which supplied him with archetypes of the beautiful and
splendid to work by. But a similar internal gift must direct the skill
of every fancy-artist who subserves the luxuries and elegancies of
life. On the other hand, though Virgil is celebrated as a master of
composition, yet his style is so identified with his conceptions, as
their outward development, as to preclude the possibility of our
viewing the one apart from the other. In Milton, again, the harmony of
the verse is but the echo of the inward music which the thoughts of
the poet breathe. In Moore's style the ornament continually outstrips
the sense. Cowper and Walter Scott, on the other hand, are slovenly in
their versification. Sophocles writes, on the whole, without studied
attention to the style; but Euripides frequently affects a simplicity
and prettiness which exposed him to the ridicule of the comic poets.
Lastly, the style of Homer's poems is perfect in their particular
department. It is free, manly, simple, perspicuous, energetic, and
varied. It is the style of one who rhapsodized without deference to
hearer or judge, in an age prior to the temptations which more or less
prevailed over succeeding writers--before the theatre had degraded
poetry into an exhibition, and criticism narrowed it into an art.

THOMAS CARLYLE

1795-1881

THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKESPEARE (1840)

The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old
ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain
rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific
knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world
vacant, or almost vacant of scienti