In brief, all are more or less partial.
Perhaps a few examples may make this clearer, and show, too, the
difficulty of the problem.
"Poetry," says Shelley, "is the record of the best and happiest
moments of the happiest and best minds." But how can this include that
genuine poetic genius, Byron, who gloried in being neither good nor
happy? Lord Jeffrey, one of the keenest of critics, says that the term
may properly be applied to "every metrical composition from which we
derive pleasure without any laborious exercise of the understanding."
In this category, what becomes of Browning, whom Sharp characterizes
"the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry
since Shakespeare"? Wordsworth, who has influenced all the poets since
his day, declares poetry to be "the breath and finer spirit of all
knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance
of all science." Matthew Arnold accepts this dictum, and uses it to
further his own idea of the great future of poetry as that to which
mankind will yet turn, "to interpret life for us, to console us, to
sustain us,"--even in place of religion and philosophy. And yet, some
of the highest and finest of known poetic flights have been in the
expression of religious and philosophical truth; while on the other
hand Wordsworth's characterization of poetry turns the cold shoulder
to that which is neither knowledge nor science, the all-powerful
passion of Love--probably the most universal fount and origin of
poetry since the human race began to express its thoughts and feelings
at all.
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