to his German side and to be less sincere and vital. I mean a real power
of seeing things suddenly, not apparently reached by any process; a
grand power of guessing. He _saw_ the crowd of the new States General,
Danton with his "rude flattened face," Robespierre peering mistily
through his spectacles. He _saw_ the English charge at Dunbar. He
_guessed_ that Mirabeau, however dissipated and diseased, had something
sturdy inside him. He _guessed_ that Lafayette, however brave and
victorious, had nothing inside him. He supported the lawlessness of
Cromwell, because across two centuries he almost physically _felt_ the
feebleness and hopelessness of the moderate Parliamentarians. He said a
word of sympathy for the universally vituperated Jacobins of the
Mountain, because through thick veils of national prejudice and
misrepresentation, he felt the impossibility of the Gironde. He was
wrong in denying to Scott the power of being inside his characters: but
he really had a good deal of that power himself. It was one of his
innumerable and rather provincial crotchets to encourage prose as
against poetry. But, as a matter of fact, he himself was much greater
considered as a kind of poet than considered as anything else; and the
central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

He first emerged, as it were, as a student and disciple of Goethe. The
connection was not wholly fortunate. With much of what Goethe really
stood for he was not really in sympathy; but in his own obstinate way,
he tried to knock his idol into shape instead of choosing another. He
pushed further and further the extravagances of a vivid but very
unbalanced and barbaric style, in the praise of a poet who really
represented the calmest classicism and the attempt to restore a Hellenic
equilibrium in the mind. It is like watching a shaggy Scandinavian
decorating a Greek statue washed up by chance on his shores. And while
the strength of Goethe was a strength of completion and serenity, which