Almost every
thing really, that is, intellectually, great in that country seems to me of
Grecian origin.
* * * * *
I think nothing can be added to Milton's definition or rule of poetry,--
that it ought to be simple, sensuous, and impassioned; that is to say,
single in conception, abounding in sensible images, and informing them all
with the spirit of the mind.
Milton's Latin style is, I think, better and easier than his English. His
style, in prose, is quite as characteristic of him as a philosophic
republican, as Cowley's is of _him_ as a first-rate gentleman.
If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?
* * * * *
_June_ 2. 1824.
CRANVILLE PENN AND THE DELUGE.--RAINBOW.
I confess I have small patience with Mr. Granville Penn's book against
Professor Buckland. Science will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to
be referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to
attribute so much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an olive-tree
standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely have
been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations observable on the face of
the earth.
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