great cause that is operating to keep him from thousands of our young
countrymen and women, namely, the wide-spread _mediocrity_ that is
created and sustained by the universal diffusion of our so-called
cheap literature;--dear enough it will prove by and by!--But this is
needlessly digressing.

The very act of writing implies an art not born with the poet. This
process of forming letters and words with a pen is not natural, nor
will the poetic frenzy inspire us with the art to go through it. In
conceiving the language of passion, the _natural_ impulse is to imitate
the passion in gesture; there is something artificial in sitting quietly
at a table and hollaing, "Mortimer!" through a quill. If Hotspur's
language is in the highest degree natural, it is because the poet felt
the character, and words suggested themselves to him which he chose and
wrote down. The act of choice might have been almost spontaneous with
the feeling of the character and the situation, yet it was there,--the
conscious judgment was present; and if the poet wrote the first words
that came, (as no doubt he usually did,) it was because he was satisfied
with them at the time; there was no paroxysm of poetic inspiration,--the
workings of his mind were sane. His fertility was such that he was not
obliged to pause and compare every expression with all others he could
think of as appropriate;--judgment may decide swiftly and without
comparison, especially when it is supervising the suggestions of a vivid
fancy, and still be judgment, or taste, if we choose to call it by that
name. We know by the result whether it was present. The poet rapt into
unconsciousness would soon betray himself. Under the power of the
imagination, all his faculties waken to a higher life; his fancies are
more vivid and clear; all the suggestions that come to him are more
apt and congruous; and his faculties of selection, his perceptions of
fitness, beauty, and appropriateness of relation are more keen and