Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

TI.] CRITICISM AND CREATION. 47
his manhood, from his Huntingdon seclusion, how
much of England's homeliest scenery has he described ;
how much of England's best life and sentiment at the
close of last century has he preserved for us ! But had
some representative of high criticism come across him,
and bidden him, before he essayed his Task, know all the
best that the world had thought or said on the same
subjects, how would the pen have dropped from his
sensitive hand, and left the poetic world so much the
poorer for his silence !
Gray, on the other hand, had fully laid to heart and
acted on the counsels of a refined criticism. He knew
whatever of best the world had produced before him.
Behind his poetic outcome lay a great effort of thought
and criticism, and we have the benefit of it in his scanty
and fastidious contribution to English Poetry, I would
not willingly underrate the author of the Elegy and of the
Ode to Adversity \ but, if the alternative were forced upon
us, I do not think that we should be prepared to give up
either Burns or Cowper in order to preserve Gray.
It is natural that in a scholarly and academic atmo-
sphere, criticism, knowledge, and appreciation of the
best should be highly prized, for this is just that which
academic study can give, and which can hardly be got
without it. But that which schools and universities can-
not give is the afflatus, the native inspiration which
originally produced that best. These are powerless to
awake the voice of the divine Sibyl, which, 'uttering