were not
inwardly Beauty? In this point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which
has staggered several, may have meaning: "The Beautiful," he intimates,
"is higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it the Good." The
_true_ Beautiful; which however, I have said somewhere, "differs from
the _false_ as Heaven does from Vauxhall!" So much for the distinction
and identity of Poet and Prophet.--

In ancient and also in modern periods we find a few Poets who are
accounted perfect; whom it were a kind of treason to find fault with.
This is noteworthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is only an
illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect Poet! A vein
of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men; no man is made altogether of
Poetry. We are all poets when we _read_ a poem well. The "imagination
that shudders at the Hell of Dante," is not that the same faculty,
weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but Shakspeare can embody,
out of _Saxo Grammaticus_, the story of _Hamlet_ as Shakspeare did: but
every one models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies it
better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no
specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must
be more or less arbitrary. A man that has _so_ much more of the poetic
element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called
Poet by his neighbors. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for
perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises
_so_ far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such
critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and
must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches
of the Universal; no man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are very
soon forgotten: but not the noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them can be
remembered _forever_;--a day comes when he too is not!

Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference between true
Poetry and true Speech not poetical: what is the difference? On this
point many things have been written, especially by late German Critics,
some of which are not very intelligible at first. They say, for
example, that the Poet has an _infinitude_ in him; communicates an
_Unendlichkeit_, a certain character of "infinitude," to whatsoever he
delineates. This, though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is
worth remembering: if well meditated, some meaning will gradua