century, Edmund Burke likewise laid too much stress upon the physical
aspect of the poet's nature, in accounting for the sublime in poetry as
originating in the sense of pain, and the beautiful as originating in
pleasure. Yet he comes closer than most critics to laying his finger
onthe particular point which distinguishes poets from philosophers,
namely, their dependence upon sensation.

With the single exception of Burke, however, the critics of the
eighteenth century labored under a misapprehension no less blind than
the moral obsession which twisted Elizabethan criticism. In the
eighteenth century critics were prone to confuse the spiritual element
in the poet's nature with intellectualism, and the sensuous element with
emotionalism. Such criticism tended to drive the poet either into an
arid display of wit, on the one hand, or into sentimental excess, on the
other, and the native English distrust of emotion led eighteenth century
critics to praise the poet when the intellect had the upper hand. But
surely poets have made it clear enough that the intellect is not the
distinctive characteristic of the poet. To be intelligent is merely to
be human. Intelligence is only a tool, poets have repeatedly insisted,
in their quarrel with philosophers. In proportion as one is intelligent
within one's own field, one excels, poets would admit. If one is
intelligent with respect to fisticuffs one is likely to become a good
prize-fighter, but no matter how far refinement of intelligence goes in
this direction, it will not make a pugilist into a poet. Intelligence
must belong likewise, in signal degree, to the great poet, but it is
neither one of the two essential elements in his nature. Augustan
critics starved the spiritual element in poetry, even while they
imagined that they were feeding it, for in sharpening his wit the poet
came no nearer expressing the "poor soul, the center of his sinful
earth" than when he reveled in emotion. We no longer believe that in the