Page:Tennyson - Walter Irving (1873).djvu/13

 sweet fruits of a Redeemer's love. It was only towards the close of the seventh century that Cedmon sung that hymn of praise, which was to inaugurate the richest and purest hymnology in Christendom. Onward comes the heavenly chorus, fuller and more full, now swelling, then rising, in all its beauty and purity, to its highest amplitude, its full fruition in that hymn of Mr Lytes', which beautifully expresses the deep craving of the creature for the protection, sympathy, and love of the great Creator.

Poetry, in its highest form, is an ecstacy of words, extolling the purest sentiments, describing the loftiest conceptions, and expressing the golden thoughts of wisdom, by which sensibility is maintained, the imagination refined, and the mind enriched. In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Burns, we find this composite feature prominently displayed. The distribution of these qualities is not equal in all; there is more or less an excess of one over the other; but none are absent. This difference is accounted for by natural causes, and the nature and character of their subjects. Spenser's sentiments and conceptions are in excess of his knowledge of human nature. Shakespeare's knowledge of that vast mine of wealth, human nature, has never been equalled, and in all probability such an exhibition of it will never again be given; but his conceptions are not so lofty as Spenser's, they are fine spun: a beautiful net-work, of golden threads. His sentiments are as pure as Spenser's. It is necessary to point out that a distinction must be made between the sentiments of Shakespeare's villains, bullies, and swaggerers, and Shakespeare's own. Although Shakespeare has drawn villains and bullies to the life, yet we must not identify their thoughts and actions with his own, which were dictated by high moral principles, while his villains