energies of man are manifold, and while we rightly set the poetic energy
above the rest, there are others which are only less rare, and in their
most notable manifestations yielding to it alone in worthiness of homage
which will, indeed, often be more generally paid. Such an energy is the
profound intellectual control of material, as distinct from profound
emotional sensitiveness to material; the capacity for ordering great masses
of detail into a whole of finely balanced and duly related proportions.
Caesar and Napoleon had it, marshalling great armies to perfectly conceived
designs; Fielding had it, using it to draw a multitude of character and
event into the superbly shaped lines of his story; the greatest political
leaders have had it; Cromwell had it, organising an enthusiasm; Elizabeth,
organising a national adventure.[1] Again, there is the energy
of morality, ardently desiring justice and right fellowship, sublimely
lived by men who have made goodness great, like Lincoln, sublimely spoken
by men who made sermons passionate, like Ruskin and Carlyle. To take one
other instance, there is the highly specialised energy that delights in the
objective perception of differentiations of character, the chief energy of
the deftest wits such as Samuel Johnson and the best comic dramatists.

[1: It may be necessary to point out that while the poetic energy
does not include this architectural power, the intellectual co-ordination
of large masses of material, it does, of course, include the shapely
control of the emotion which is its being. It is, indeed, difficult to see
precisely what can be meant by the suggestion that is often made that the
emotions can ever be translated into poetic form wholly without the play of
intellect. If the emotion is intense enough for the creation of poetry at
all, it will inevitably call up the intellectual power necessary to its
shaping, otherwise it would be ineffectually diffused. Mr. John Bailey, in
his masterly if sometimes provoking essay on Milton says, in the midst
of some admirable remarks on this subject, "It has been said by a living