[8]

Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's expostulation
with sleep--

'Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge . . .'

and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio--

'If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story . . .'

Take of Milton that Miltonic passage:

'Darken'd so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel; but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care
Sat on his faded cheek . . .'

add two such lines as--

'And courage never to submit or yield
And what is else not to be overcome . . .'

and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, the loss

'. . . which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world.'

These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of
themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, to save
us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate.

The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one another, but they
have in common this: the possession of the very highest poetical
quality. If we are thoroughly penetrated by their power, we shall find
that we have acquired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be laid
before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical quality is
present or wanting there. Critics give themselves great labour to draw
out what in the abstract constitutes the characters of a high quality
of poetry. It is much better simply to have recourse to concrete
examples;--to take specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest
quality, and to say: The characters of a high quality of poetry are
what is expressed _there_. They are far better recognized by being
felt in the verse of the master, than by being perused in the prose of
the critic. Nevertheless if we are urgently pressed to give some
critical account of them, we may safely, perhaps, venture on laying
down, not indeed how and why the characters arise, but where and in
what they arise. They are in the matter and substance of the poetry,
and they are in its manner and style. Both of these, the substance and
matter on the one hand, the style and manner on the other, have a mark,
an accent, of high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are asked to
define this mark a