Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/19

 poems, is not the perspicuous delivery of a low invention; but high and hearty invention expressed in most significant and unaffected phrase." That is admirably said; but when we turn to the practical comment supplied by the poetry which illustrates this critical profession of faith, we find it hard to stomach the preacher's application of his text. In this same dedication, which is well worth note and regard from all students of Chapman—and with all his shortcomings we may reasonably hope that the number of them will increase, with the first issue of his complete works, among all professed students of English poetry at its highest periods—he proceeds to a yet more distinct avowal of his main principle; and it is something to know that he had any, though the knowledge be but too likely to depress the interest and dishearten the sympathy of a reader who but for this assurance of design would probably have supposed that great part of these poems had been written in a chaotic jargon, where grammar, metre, sense, sound, coherence and relevancy are hurled together on a heap of jarring and hurtling ruins, rather because the author wanted skill or care