o much compensated by the propagation, on a large
scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands which an open mind and a
flexible intelligence naturally engender, genius itself in the long run
so greatly finds its account in this propagation, and bodies like the
French Academy have such power for promoting it, that the general
advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the whole, rather furthered
than impeded by their existence.

How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! how much better, in
general, do the productions of its spirit show in the qualities of
genius than in the qualities of intelligence! One may constantly remark
this in the work of individuals: how much more striking, in general,
does any Englishman--of some vigor of mind, but by no means a poet--seem
in his verse than in his prose! His verse partly suffers from his not
being really a poet, partly no doubt from the very same defects which
impair his prose, and he cannot express himself with thorough success in
it, but how much more powerful a personage does he appear in it, by dint
of feeling and of originality and movement of ideas, than when he is
writing prose! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it is just the reverse:
set him to write poetry, he is limited, artificial, and impotent; set
him to write prose, he is free, natural, and effective. The power of
French literature is in its prose writers, the power of English
literature is in its poets. Nay, many of the celebrated French poets
depend wholly for their fame upon the qualities of intelligence which
they exhibit,--qualities which are the distinctive support of prose;
many of the celebrated English prose writers depend wholly for their
fame upon the qualities of genius and imagination which they
exhibit,--qualities which are the distinctive support of poetry.

But as I have said, the qualities of genius are less transferable than
the qualities of intelligence; less can be immediately learned and
appropriated from their product; they are less direct and stringent
intellectual agencies, though they may be more beautiful and divine.
Shakespeare and our great Elizabethan group were certainly more gifted
writers than Corneille and his group; but what was the sequel to this
great literature, this literature of genius, as we may call it,
stretching from Marlowe to Milton? What did it lead up to in English
literature? To our provincial and second-rate literature of the
eighteenth century. What, on th