Novalis[275] or Rueckert,[276] for instance, have their
eye fixed on nature, and have undoubtedly a feeling for natural magic; a
rough-and-ready critic easily credits them and the Germans with the
Celtic fineness of tact, the Celtic nearness to nature and her secret;
but the question is whether the strokes in the German's picture of
nature[277] have ever the indefinable delicacy, charm, and perfection of
the Celt's touch in the pieces I just now quoted, or of Shakespeare's
touch in his daffodil,[278] Wordsworth's in his cuckoo,[279] Keats's in
his Autumn, Obermann's in his mountain birch-tree, or his Easter-daisy
among the Swiss farms.[280] To decide where the gift for natural magic
originally lies, whether it is properly Celtic or Germanic, we must
decide this question.
In the second place, there are many ways of handling nature, and we are
here only concerned with one of them; but a rough-and-ready critic
imagines that it is all the same so long as nature is handled at all,
and fails to draw the needful distinction between modes of handling her.
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