tic inspiration.

Sec. 10. I separate these classes, in order that their character may be
clearly understood; but of course they are united each to the other by
imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the
influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into
the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less
man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of _alterability_. That is
to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much of
the past and future, and of all things beside and around that which
immediately affects him, to be in anywise shaken by it. His mind is
made up; his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways are
steadfast; it is not this or that new sight which will at once
unbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a rock
with deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of him to be moved.
The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at once
carried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want to do
before; he views all the universe in a new light through his tears; he
is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things come and
go to him. Therefore the high creative poet might even be thought, to
a great extent, impassive (as shallow people think Dante stern),
receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centre
of reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches the
feeling, as it were, from far off.

Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself, and
can look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word that
will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats and
Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves
subdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write as
choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain expressions and modes
of thought which are in some sort diseased or false.

Sec. 11. Now so long as we see that the _feeling_ is true, we pardon, or
are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces:
we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsley's, above
quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they
faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment the mind of the speaker
becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as
being for ever untrue in the external facts. And there is no greater
baseness in l