"So far from it," said I, "that I know nothing more splendid in the whole mass of our poetry. And I feel almost guilty of high treason against the majesty of the sublimer Muses, in the remark I am going to hazard, on the celebrated lines which follow. The poet's object, through this and the two following pages, is to establish the infinite superiority of mind over unconscious matter, even in its fairest forms. The idea is as just as the execution is beautiful; so also is his supreme elevation of intellect, over
Greatness of bulk, or symmetry of parts.
Nothing again can be finer, than his subsequent preference of
The powers of genius and design,
over even the stupendous range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres.
He proceeds to ransack the stores of the mental and the moral world, as he had done the world of matter, and with a pen dipped in Hippocrene, opposes to the latter,
The charms of virtuous friendship, etc.
* * * * *
The candid blush
Of him who strives with fortune to be just.
* * * * *
All the mild majesty of private life.
The graceful tear that streams from others' woes.
"Why, Charles," said Sir John, "I am glad to find you the enthusiastic eulogist of the passage of which I suspected you were about to be the saucy censurer."