more than he could give utterance to. Every subject, especially every
subject of poetic capability, having infinite relations, he who most
apprehends this boundlessness--and indeed because he does apprehend
it--can do or say what will open it to you or me; and the degree of
his genius is measured by the extent to which he can present or expose
it. The unimaginative gives surface-work, and, suggesting nothing, is
at once exhausted.

The poetic imagination shows itself in the epithets the poet has at
his command, creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of
an object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps
feeding it with significance, bringing out its aptness the longer we
look. Sometimes epithets are brighter than their object; the
unimaginative thus futilely striving to impart power instead of
deriving it. To be lasting, the light of the epithet must be struck by
the imagination out of its object. The inspired poet finds a word so
sympathetic with the thought that it caresses and hugs it.

Depth and breadth of nature are implied in the full poetic
imagination. The love of the beautiful, wielding a keen intellect,
needs furthermore rich material to mold, and only out of the poet's
individual resources can this be drawn. To make a high artist, you
must have very much of a man. Behind "Paradise Lost" and "Samson
Agonistes" is a big Miltonic man. The poet has to put a great deal of
himself, and the best of him, into his work; thence, for high poetry,
there must be a great deal of high self to put in. He must coin his
soul, and have a large soul to coin; the best work cannot be made out
of materials gathered by memory and fancy. His stream of thought must
flow from springs, not from reservoirs. Hence the universal
biographical interest in such men; they have necessarily a rich