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There are some poets who write too much at their ease, from the facility
with which they please themselves. They do not often enough
Feel their burdened breast
Heaving beneath incumbent Deity.
So that to posterity their wreaths will look unseemly. Here, perhaps, an
everlasting Amaranth, and, close by its side, some weed of an hour,
sere, yellow, and shapeless. Their very beauties will lose half their
effect, from the bad company they keep. They rely too much on story and
event, to the neglect of those lofty imaginings that are peculiar to,
and definite of the Poet.
The story of Milton might be told in two pages. It is this which
distinguishes an epic poem from a romance in metre. Observe the march of
Milton; his severe application; his laborious polish; his deep
metaphysical researches; his prayer to God before he began his great
work; all that could lift and swell his intellect, became his daily
food.
I should not think of devoting less than twenty years to an epic poem.
Ten years to collect materials and warm my mind with universal science.
I would be a tolerable Mathematician. I would thoroughly understand
Mechanics; Hydrostatics; Optics and Astronomy; Botany; Metallurgy;
Fossilism; Chemistry; Geology; Anatomy; Medicine; then the mind of man;
then the minds of men, in all Travels, Voyages, and Histories.
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