iginal purity and force, it is
impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition
begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious
poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble
shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest
poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the
finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and
the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no
more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an
artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the
intermixture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by
the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the
"Paradise Lost" as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have
his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the
"unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who would
allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the "Orlando
Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to
painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still
more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or
picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's
womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is
incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the
media of the process.

"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest
and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and
feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding
our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing
unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that
even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be
pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as
it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but
its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming
calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which
paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced
principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most
enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war
with every base desire. The enthus