Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/265

Rh. You would not be confused and obscure, for you have the power to express what your mind really pictures."

The true poet, said Joubert, "has a mind full of very clear images, while ours is only filled Conceptive faculty of the true poet. with confused descriptions." Now, vagueness of impression engenders a kind of excitement in which a neophyte fancies that his gift is particularly active. He mistakes the wish to create for the creative power. Hence much spasmodic poetry, full of rhetoric and ejaculations, sound and empty fury; hence the gasps which indicate that vision and utterance are impeded, the contortions without the inspiration. Hence, also, the "fatal facility," Pseudo-inspiration. the babble of those who write with ease and magnify their office. The impassioned artist also dashes off his work, but his need for absolute expression makes the final execution as difficult as it is noble. Another class, equipped with taste and judgment, but lacking imagination, proffer as a substitute beautiful and recondite materials gathered here and there. Southey's work is an example of this process, and that of the popular and scholarly author of "The Light of Asia" is not free from it; indeed, you see it everywhere in the verse of the minor art-school, and even in Tennyson's and Longfellow's early poems. But the chief vice The turbid shoal. of many writers is obscure expression. Their seeming depth is often mere turbidness, though it is true that thought may be so analytic