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8 INTEODUCTOEY ESSAY.
rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner,
and what he produces will be less a work
than an effluence.
That effluence cannot be
easily considered in abstraction from his
personality,—being indeed the very radiance
and aroma of his personahty, projected from
it but not separated.
Therefore, in our
approach to the poetry, we necessarily
approach the personality of the poet; in
apprehending it we apprehend him, and
certainly we cannot love it without loving
him.
Both for love's and for understanding's
sake we desire to know him, and as readers
of his poetry must be readers of his biography
also.
I shall observe, in passing, that it seems
not so much from any essential distinction in
the faculty of the two poets or in the nature
of the objects contemplated by either, as
in the more immediate adaptabihty of these
objects to the distinct purpose of each, that