It will be conceded to Mr. Ruskin that it is not the highest order of poet who, as he looks out on Nature, is so overmastered by his emotions as to be continually coloring it with his own mental hues. It is higher to feel intensely and still think truly, than merely to feel intensely without true thought. But Mr. Ruskin would allow that for the poet, whether dramatic, epic, or other, to represent his characters as coloring the world with their own excited feelings, is neither falsity nor weakness, but is merely keeping true to a fact of human nature. Numerous instances of this will occur to every one. Take one from Shakespeare’s delineations of character. Ariel, breaking through the elements and powers of Nature, quickens the remorse of Alonso, king of Naples, for a crime committed twelve years before, till the sounds of Nature become the voice of conscience—
“Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;
The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass,
Therefore my son i’ the ooze is bedded, and
I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded,
And with him there lie mudded.”