Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from English Poets: Twelve Essays
Burns, crabbe and wordsworth All these writers are called poets. To all belong more or less the traits vivid imagination, sympathy, wit, humour, command of language and love of harmony in verse. But all these qualities, except the last, may be found in the form of prose. Addison's Roger de Coverley, in prose, is more genial and imaginative than his Cato in blank verse. Sir \valter scott's novels and romances, in prose, are more richly imaginative than his metrical poetry. Jeremy taylor and Sir thomas browne are poets, and irving and hawthorne may be classed with the poets of America. It may, therefore, for a moment appear that verse is but an accidental form of some writings called poetry, and that - suppressing the formal distinction of verse and prose - creative or poetical writers may be well classified with a View to their more important characteristics; their thoughts, sympathies, and tendencies. For, putting aside their verse-writing, there is hardly one characteristic of the men commonly called poets that may not be found in prose-writers. On the other hand, the fact that two men write in verse serves Of itself to indicate but a superficial likeness. Though swie T wrote verses and shelley wrote verses, what concord had one with the other?
After all, it remains true that, in popular language, a poet means a man who writes with imaginative and emotional power, and who writes well in verse. And there are good reasons for this closer definition. For.
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