r as its form and
workmanship are concerned), affects us no more than some pale, faded
picture, so that we are not carried away by it at all, and the
gorgeousness of its diction only serves to increase the frost which it
permeates us with? Why is this, but because the poet has never really
_seen_ what he is telling us about: the events and incidents have never
appeared to his mental vision, in all their joy, terror, splendour,
majesty, gloom, and sadness, inspiring him, and setting him aglow, so
that his inward fire blazes forth in words of lightning? It is useless
for a poet to set to work to make us believe in a thing which he does
not believe in himself, cannot believe in, because he has never really
seen it. What can the characters of a poet of this sort--who
(according to the old expression) is not at the same time a genuine
seer--be but deceptive puppets, glued together out of heterogeneous
stuff? Your hermit, dear Cyprian, was a true poet. He had actually seen
what he described; and that was why he affected people's hearts and
souls. Poor Serapion! Wherein did your madness consist? except that
some hostile star had taken away your faculty of discerning that
duplexity which is, really, the essential condition of our earthly
existence. There is an inner world; and a spiritual faculty of
discerning it with absolute clearness, nay, with the most minute and
brilliant distinctness. But it is part of our earthly lot that it is
the _outer_ world, in which we are encased, which is the lever that
brings that spiritual faculty into play. The things of the inner world
appear to us only inside the circle which is formed round us by the
objects of the outer world, beyond which circle our spirits cannot
soar, except in dim mysterious bodings--never; becoming distinct
images--that such things exist. But you, happy hermit, lost sight of
the outer world, and did not perceive the lever which set your inward
faculty in motion; and when, with that gruesome acumen of yours, you
declared that it is only the mind which sees, hears, and takes
cognizance of events and incidents, and that, as a consequence,
whatever the mind takes cognizance of has actually happened, you forgot
that it is the outer world which causes the spirit to exercise those
functions which, take cognizance. Your life was a constant dream, from
which your awaking in another world was assuredly not a painful one. I
consecrate this glass to your memory."

"Don't you not