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 Shakespeare's faculty, I
should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under
that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were
distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination,
fancy, etc., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error.
Then again, we hear of a man's "intellectual nature," and of his "moral
nature," as if these again were divisible, and existed apart.
Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we
must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But
words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our
apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified
thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that
these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man's spiritual nature,
the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible;
that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are
but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly
connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we kne