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general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the
error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein
Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the
end-with the two latter the means. The poet of the "Creation" wished,
by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral
truth-the poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment
through channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete
failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by
a path which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumph
which is not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of
the multitude. But in this view even the "metaphysical verse" of Cowley
is but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. And
he was in this but a type of his school-for we may as well designate
in this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in
the volume before us, and throughout all of whom there runs a very
perceptible general character. They used little art in composition.
Their writings sprang immediately from the soul-and partook intensely of
that soul's nature. Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of this
abandon-to elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind-but, again,
so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all good
things, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and imbecility, as to
render it not a matter of doubt that the average results of mind in
such a school will be found inferior to those results in one (ceteris
paribus) more artificial.
We can not bring ourselves to believe that the selections of the "Book
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