rsue any other
object, with greater ardour; for energy of character is commonly the
offspring of strong feeling. If, therefore, the most impassioned
natures do not ripen into the most powerful intellects, it is always
from defect of culture, or something wrong in the circumstances by
which the being has originally or successively been surrounded.
Undoubtedly strong feelings require a strong intellect to carry them,
as more sail requires more ballast: and when, from neglect, or bad
education, that strength is wanting, no wonder if the grandest and
swiftest vessels make the most utter wreck.

Where, as in some of our older poets, a poetic nature has been united
with logical and scientific culture, the peculiarity of association
arising from the finer nature so perpetually alternates with the
associations attainable by commoner natures trained to high
perfection, that its own particular law is not so conspicuously
characteristic of the result produced, as in a poet like Shelley, to
whom systematic intellectual culture, in a measure proportioned to the
intensity of his own nature, has been wanting. Whether the superiority
will naturally be on the side of the philosopher-poet or of the mere
poet--whether the writings of the one ought, as a whole, to be truer,
and their influence more beneficent, than those of the other--is too
obvious in principle to need statement: it would be absurd to doubt
whether two endowments are better than one; whether truth is more
certainly arrived at by two processes, verifying and correcting each
other, than by one alone. Unfortunately, in practice the matter is not
quite so simple; there the question often is, which is least
prejudicial to the intellect, uncultivation or malcultivation. For, as
long as education consists chiefly of the mere inculcation of
traditional opinions, many of which, from the mere fact that the human
intellect has not yet reached perfection, must necessarily be false;
so long as even those who are best taught, are rather taught to know
the thoughts of others than to think, it is not always clear that the
poet of acquired ideas has the advantage over him whose feeling has
been his sole teacher. For the depth and durability of wrong as well
as of right impressions is proportional to the fineness of the
material; and they who have the greatest capacity of natural feeling
are generally those whose artificial feelings are the strongest.
Hence, doubtless, among other reasons