in the 'sonnet's scanty
plot of ground.' Once more, the highest poetry must be that which
expresses not only the richest but the healthiest nature. Disease means
an absence or a want of balance of certain faculties, and therefore
leads to false reasoning or emotional discord. The defect of character
betrays itself in some erroneous mode of thought or baseness of
sentiment. And since morality means obedience to those rules which are
most essential to the spiritual health, vicious feeling indicates some
morbid tendency, and is so far destructive of the poetical faculty. An
immoral sentiment is the sign either of a false judgment of the world
and of human nature, or of a defect in the emotional nature which shows
itself by a discord or an indecorum, and leads to a cynicism or
indecency which offends the reason through the taste. What is called
immorality does not indeed always imply such defects. Sound moral
intuitions may be opposed to the narrow code prevalent at the time; or a
protest against puritanical or ascetic perversions of the standard may
hurry the poet into attacks upon true principles. And, again, the keen
sensibility which makes a man a poet, undoubtedly exposes him to certain
types of disease. He is more likely than his thick-skinned neighbour to
be vexed by evil, and to be drawn into distorted views of life by an
excess of sympathy or indignation. Injudicious admirers prize the
disease instead of the strength from which it springs; and value the
cynicism or the despair instead of the contempt for heartless
commonplace or the desire for better things with which it was
unfortunately connected. A strong moral sentiment has a great value,
even when forced into an unnatural alliance. Nay, even when it is, so to
speak, inverted, it often receives a kind of paradoxical value from its
efficacy against some opposite form of error. It is only a complete
absence of the moral faculty which is irredeemably bad. The poet in whom
it does not exist is condemned to the lower sphere, and can only deal
with the deepest feelings on penalty of shocking us by indecency or
profanity. A man who can revel in 'Epicurus' stye' without even the
indirect homage to purity of remorse and bitterness, can do nothing but
gratify our lowest passions. They, perhaps, have their place, and the
man who is content with such utterances may not be utterly worthless.
But to place him on a level with his betters is to confound every sound
principle of