Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/405

Rh His qualities as a poet were of a high order, but not of the highest. He possessed great imaginative power, his language is clear and vigorous, free from vagueness and the shallow affectation of profundity, while the elaborate machinery of the ancient mythologies he handles with a Titan's grasp. But through all his efforts, there is a something wanting which is indescribable, but which is the soul of poetry. They are but as the lifeless copy, which we leave for the breathing original. It is the presence of this element, which in spite of their defects will render immortal the writings of his gifted antagonist Lord Byron, those writings which express most tersely the exaggerated passion of a wonderful epoch, and constitute our true "revolutionary epic."

And yet, no writer ever had a higher opinion of his own capacity. This self-confidence breaks out perpetually through the entire range of his correspondence. Writing in his twenty-seventh year, he says: "In literature, as in the playthings of schoolboys, and the frippery of women, there are the ins and outs of fashion. Sonnets and satires have their day—and my 'Joan of Arc' has revived the Epomania that Boileau cured the French of 120 years ago; but it is not every one that can shoot with the bow of Ulysses, and the gentlemen who think they can bend the bow because I make the string twang, will find themselves somewhat disappointed." Of "Thalaba" he says: "Such as it is, I know no poem which can claim a place between it and the 'Orlando.' Let it be weighed with the 'Oberon;' perhaps were I to speak out, I should not dread a trial with Ariosto; my proportion of ore to dross is greater."

Writing some years later of "Madoc," he observes: "Taylor has said, it is the best English poem that has left the press since the 'Paradise Lost'—indeed this is not exaggerated praise, for unfortunately there is no