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
most truly poetic nature the intelligence of a Pope is joined with the
emotionalism of a Rousseau. We believe that the spirituality of a
Crashaw is blent with the sensuousness of a Swinburne.
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