Literature and the Fine Arti^. xxxvii 



It is a melancholy thing, however, when a consciousness 

 of the writing- faculty prompts the possessor, he not being a 

 poet, to make verses. Christopher North, it will be 

 remembered by those who are familiar with his now not 

 much read, but undeservedly neglected works, especially the 

 Nodes AmbivsioMce, begins one of his reviews with this 

 epigrammatic declaration — " All men, women, and children, 

 are poets, except those who write verses." And at a some- 

 what later period, it will be remembered that Carlyle wrote, 

 in acknowledgment of a sonnet he had received from his 

 friend, Dr. W. C. Bennett, as follows : — " Your name, 

 hitherto, is known to me chiefly as associated with verse. 

 It is one of my constant i^egrets, in this generation, that men 

 to whom the gods have given a genius, which means a light 

 of intelligence, of courage and all manfulness, or else means 

 nothing, will insist in such an earnest time as ours has 

 grown, in bringing out their divine gift in the shape of verse, 

 which now no man reads entirely in earnest. That a man has 

 to bring out his gift in words of any kind, and not in silent 

 divine actions, which alone are fit to express it well, seems 

 to me a great misfortune for him ; but that he should select 

 verse with its half credibilities and other sad accompani- 

 ments, when he might have prose and be wholly credible, if 

 he desired it, this I lay at the door of our Spiritual teachers 

 (pedants mostly, and speaking an obsolete dialect), who 

 thereby incalculably rot the world, making him who might 

 have been a soldier and fighter (so terribly wanted just at 

 present), a mere preacher and idle singer. This is a fixed 

 perception of mine, growing ever more fixed these many 

 years ; and I ofier it to you as I have done to many othei's 

 in the like case, not much hoping that you will believe in it 

 at once. But certainly a good, wise, earnest, piece in prose 

 from you, would please me better than the musicalest verses 

 could." 



God forbid that I should discourage the true poet from 

 scattering his pearls upon the earth. A genuine poet is a 

 creature to be worshipped, but although there may be only 



