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Among modern men, one finds, in strictness,
almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of
Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he _saw_ the object;
you may say what he himself says of Shakspeare: "His characters are like
watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour
like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible."
The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things;
what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped up in these often
rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that
something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can
laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other
genially relate yourself to them;--you can, at lowest, hold your peace
about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour
come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, it
is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect
enough.


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