ture; it is a composition of different skies, observed at different
times, and not the whole copied from any particular day. And why?
Because nature is not lavish of her beauties; they are widely
scattered and occasionally displayed, to be selected with care and
gathered with difficulty....

Art is not inferior to nature for poetical purposes. What makes a
regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of
mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and
artificial symmetry of their position and movements. A Highlander's
plaid, a Mussulman's turban, and a Roman toga are more poetical than
the tattooed or untattooed New Sandwich savages, altho they were
described by William Wordsworth himself like the "idiot in his glory."

I have seen as many mountains as most men, and more fleets than the
generality of landsmen; and, to my mind, a large convoy with a few
sail of the line to conduct them is as noble and as poetical a
prospect as all that inanimate nature can produce. I prefer the "mast
of some great admiral," with all its tackle, to the Scotch fir or the
Alpine tarnen, and think that more poetry has been made out of it. In
what does the infinite superiority of Falconer's "Shipwreck" over all
other shipwrecks consist? In his admirable application of the terms of
his art; in a poet sailor's description of the sailor's fate. These
very terms, by his application, make the strength and reality of his
poem. Why? because he was a poet, and in the hands of a poet art will
not be found less ornamental than nature. It is precisely in general
nature, and in stepping out of his element, that Falconer fails; where
he digresses to speak of ancient Greece, and "such branches of
learning."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: Letter to his half-sister, Augusta, dated "Harrow,
Saturday, 11th November, 1804." Byron was then in his seventeenth
year. Byron's sister, seven days after receiving this letter, wrote to
Hanson, his solicitor, a letter which resulted in Byron's spending his
Christmas holidays with Hanson instead of with his mother. Augusta
told Hanson she had talked with Lord Carlisle, a relative of Byron's,
and by his advice had requested Hanson to receive her brother as his
guest. Of the trouble between her brother and his mother she said: "As
they can not agree, they had better be separated, for such eternal
scenes of wrangling are enough to spoil the very best temper and
disposition in the univers