In the two latter I could not find anything which has not been
much better said before; but `Leaves of Grass' was real refreshing to me
-- like rude salt spray in your face -- in spite of its
enormous fundamental error that a thing is good because it is natural,
and in spite of the world-wide difference between my own conceptions of art
and the author's." Another good one is that on Shelley: "In truth,
Shelley appears always to have labored under an essential immaturity:
it is very possible that if he had lived a hundred years
he would never have become a man; he was penetrated with modern ideas,
but penetrated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch,
and with a constant tendency to the extravagant and illogical;
so that I call him the modern boy."
Lanier writes of the songs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
as "short and unstudied little songs, as many of them are, songs which
come upon us out of that obscure period like brief little bird-calls
from a thick-leaved wood." He speaks of Chaucer's works
as "full of cunning hints and twinkle-eyed suggestions
which peep between the lines like the comely faces of country children
between the fence bars as one rides by." He draws a fine comparison
between William Morris and Chaucer: "How does the spire of hope
spring and upbound into the infinite in Chaucer; while, on the other hand,
how blank, world-bound, and wearying is the stone facade of hopelessness
which rears itself uncompromisingly behind the gayest pictures
of William Morris! .
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