" In the eighteenth
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.
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