of it. Of
him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may say what he himself
says of Shakspeare: 'His characters are like watches with dial-plates
of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the
inward mechanism also is all visible.'

The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things;
what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped-up in these
often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye
that something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You
can laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or
other genially relate yourself to them;--you can, at lowest, hold your
peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till
the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At
bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have
intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or
failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at
all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on
accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on
his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his
boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart
of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists
has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and
exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of
Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort
soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, _See_. If
you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together,
jingling sensibilities against each other, and _name_ yourself a Poet;
there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in
action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old
Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are
ye sure he's _not a dunce_?" Why, really one might ask the same thing
in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider
it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is,
in this world, no other entirely fatal person.

For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a
correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty,
I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all
under that. What indeed are