And
when I say this, you suppose me to be attacking the care for style, the
care for argument. I am not; I attack the resting in them, the not
looking to the end which is beyond them."[372]
Now, when we come across a poet like Theophile Gautier,[373] we have a
poet who has taken up his abode at an inn, and never got farther. There
may be inducements to this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to
find delight in him, to cleave to him; but after all, we do not change
the truth about him,--we only stay ourselves in his inn along with him.
And when we come across a poet like Wordsworth, who sings
"Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope,
And melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolations in distress,
OF moral strength and intellectual power,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread--"[374]
then we have a poet intent on "the best and master thing," and who
prosecutes his journey home. We say, for brevity's sake, that he deals
with _life_, because he deals with that in which life really consists.
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