was or could be derived from any obscure source. The interval between excellence and mediocrity removes all connexion; it is that between incurable impotence and genial creation. A great poet can never be essentially indebted even to his prototype.
If we may still be interested in watching the primitive vigour of the self-taught, compared with the intellectual ideal of the poetical character, we must not allow ourselves, as might be shown in one of the critics of the Saxon school, to mistake nature in her first poverty, bare, meagre, squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature of Cædmon was that of Milton, for what is obvious and familiar is the reverse of the beautiful and the sublime. We have seen the ideal being,
| Whose stature reach’d the sky, and on his crest Sat Horror plumed— |
by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, “fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet bound.”
Cædmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, hastening to Adam with the apples,—
| Some in her hands she bare, Some in her bosom lay, Of the unblest fruit. |
However natural or downright may be this specification, it is what could not have occurred with “the bosom” of our naked mother of mankind, and the artistical conception eluded the difficulty of carrying these apples—
| ————from the tree returning, in her hand A bough of fairest fruit.—ix. 850. |
In Cædmon, it costs Eve a long day to persuade the sturdy Adam, an honest Saxon, to “the dark deed;” and her prudential argument that “it were best to obey the pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his aversion,” however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may be certain of Adam’s fall—for
| ————in her face excuse Came prologue, and apology too prompt, Which with bland words at will, she thus address’d. |