Your letter gave me great satisfaction, more on account of its
friendliness than any relish of that matter in it which is accounted
so acceptable in the _genus irritabile_. The best answer I can
give you is in a clerklike manner to make some observations on two
principal points which seem to point like indices into the midst of
the whole _pro_ and _con_ about genius, and views, and achievements,
and ambition, _et coetera_. 1st. As to the poetical character itself
(I mean that sort, of which, if I am anything, I am a member; that
sort distinguished from the Wordsworthian, or egotistical sublime;
which is a thing _per se_, and stands alone), it is not itself--it has
no self--it is everything and nothing--it has no character--it enjoys
light and shade--it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low,
rich or poor, mean or elevated--it has as much delight in conceiving
an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights
the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side
of things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because
they both end in speculation. A poet is the most unpoetical of
anything in existence, because he has no identity; he is continually
in for, and filling, some other body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and
men and women, who are creatures of impulse, are poetical, and have
about them an unchangeable attribute; the poet has none, no identity.
He is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's creatures. If, then,
he has no self, and if I am a poet, where is the wonder that I should
say I would write no more? Might I not at that very instant have been
cogitating on the characters of Saturn and Ops? It is a wretched thing
to confess, but it is a very fact, that not one word I ever utter can
be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature.
How can it, when I have no nature? When I am in a room with people,
if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then,
not myself goes home to myself, but the identity of every one in the
room begins to press upon me, [so] that I am in a very little time
annihilated--not only among men; it would be the same in a nursery of
children. I know not whether I make myself wholly understood: I hope
enough so to let you see that no dependence is to be placed on what I
said that day.
In the second place, I will speak of my views, and of the life I
purpose to myself. I am ambitious of doing the world some good: if
I should be spared, that may be the work of maturer years--in the
interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in poetry as the
nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of
poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead. All I
hope is, that I may not lose all interest in human affairs--that
the solitary indifference I feel for applause, even from the finest
spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not
think it will. I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning
and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labours
should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them.
But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself, but from some
character in whose soul I now live ...