Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 79, No. 484, February, 1856

Transcriber’s Note:
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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCLXXXIV.      FEBRUARY, 1856.      Vol. LXXIX.
“Poets,” said the ancient wisdom, “are not made, but born.” We have made miraculous progress in all the arts of manufacture since the time of this saying, but we have not been able to controvert the judgment of our forefathers. Education, refinement, taste, and talent, are great things in their way, and men do wonders with them; but we have not fallen yet upon a successful method of bringing down the divine spark into the marble, let us work it ever so curiously. The celestial gift in these new times, as in the old, comes down with divine impartiality, yet seldom into the tenement most specially built and garnished for its reception. We can make critics, connoisseurs, “an enlightened audience,” but, let us labour at it as we will, we cannot make a poet.