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to deny that the author of these great poems found a rich fund of
tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse from whence he might derive
both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to use existing
romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem
itself from such materials. What consistency of style and execution can be
hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather, what bad taste and tedium will
not be the infallible result?
A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other bards,
are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. In fact, the
most original writer is still drawing upon outward impressions--nay, even
his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents which support and feed the
impulses of imagination. But unless there be some grand pervading
principle--some invisible, yet most distinctly stamped archetypus of the
great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never come to the birth. Traditions
the most picturesque, episodes the most pathetic, local associations
teeming with the thoughts of gods and great men, may crowd in one mighty
vision, or reveal themselves in more substantial forms to the mind of the
poet; but, except the power to create a grand whole, to which these shall
be but as details and embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but
a scrap-book, a parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each
other in their wild redundancy: we shall have a cento of rags and tatters,
which will require little acuteness to detect.
Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware as
I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief, it
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