I confine myself to
institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my
judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered
the idea of the use of an institution. How fine, for example, is the idea
of the unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking together the
duke to the country gentleman in the primary distribution of justice, or
in the preservation of order and execution of law at least throughout the
country! Yet some men never seem to have thought of it for one moment, but
as connected with brewers, and barristers, and tyrannical Squire Westerns!
From what I saw of Homer, I thought him a superior man, in real
intellectual greatness.
* * * * *
Canning flashed such a light around the constitution, that it was difficult
to see the ruins of the fabric through it.
_May_ 12. 1830.
SHAKSPEARE.--MILTON.--HOMER.
Shakspeare is the Spinosistic deity--an omnipresent creativeness. Milton is
the deity of prescience; he stands _ab extra_, and drives a fiery chariot
and four, making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them in.
Shakspeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the
individual Shakspeare; but John Milton himself is in every line of the
Paradise Lost.
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