He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that,
perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so,
whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what
extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on his having had a singing-master,
on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables
him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there
(for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not
hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the
gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort
soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, _See_. If
you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together,
jingling sensibilities against each other, and _name_ yourself a Poet;
there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in
action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster
used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are ye sure he's _not
a dunce_?" Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every
man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry
needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other
entirely fatal person.
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