in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical
temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the
greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of
feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to
the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in
proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always a
point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this
government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild
fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom of
Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The fact
is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into a
confused element of dreams. All the world is, to his stunned thought,
full of strange voices. 'Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the
cedars of Lebanon, saying, "Since thou art gone down to the grave, no
feller is come up against us."' So, still more, the thought of the
presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment.
'The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into
singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.'

Sec. 15. But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by
the strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is not
cause enough for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere
affectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almost
always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful
metaphorical expressions, as a sort of current coin; yet there is even
a worse, at least a more harmful, condition of writing than this, in
which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up,
but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately
wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make
an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead
leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost.

When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a
truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be
overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim:

Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.
You know him; he is near you; point him out.
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?

This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right. But