only love or hate; and we are glad we love him. It is perfectly singular to say that you can at once understand all his work, as if a single piece of poem, when you have once found hew his energy worked, what association he sought for evoking emotion; and you will find in him rarely a surprise when the sound, colour, and form have become in mutual relation with you; in fact, you will get from him what you expect. From such a point of view, he is never a great poet.
However, his attitude as a poet is most admirable; and I should say it is not a question with us whether he was a small poet or a big one. Indeed, his attitude makes us respect and think of him perhaps more than he was in fact; what he lacked we will fill at once with imagination, and when he is too perfect our imagination will make him imperfect to advantage, taking its usual free course, and let us fee his fresh beauty; thus he is a gainer in either case. It goes without saying that he was democratic on the one hand; we see only that cosmopolitan side of beauty and emotion, and allow ourselves to speculate and connect with
