Is he to blame for the extravagances of modern diction,
which are but the reaction of the brazen age against the degeneracy of
art into artifice, that has characterized the silver period in every
literature? We see in them only the futile effort of misguided persons to
torture out of language the secret of that inspiration which should be in
themselves. We do not find the extravagances in Shakespeare himself. We
never saw a line in any modern poet that reminded us of him, and will
venture to assert that it is only poets of the second class that find
successful imitators. And the reason seems to us a very plain one. The
genius of the great poet seeks repose in the expression of itself, and
finds it at last in style, which is the establishment of a perfect mutual
understanding between the worker and his material.[128] The secondary
intellect, on the other hand, seeks for excitement in expression, and
stimulates itself into mannerism, which is the wilful obtrusion of self,
as style is its unconscious abnegation. No poet of the first class has
ever left a school, because his imagination is incommunicable; while,
just as surely as the thermometer tells of the neighborhood of an
iceberg, you may detect the presence of a genius of the second class in
any generation by the influence of his mannerism, for that, being an
artificial thing, is capable of reproduction.
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