A LIST OF BOOKS - JScholarship

INTEODUCTOEY ESSAY. 17
but as it is supposed to be for some unreal
neutral mood, midway between both and of
value to neither, and living its brief minute
simply through the indolence of whoever
accepts it or his incapacity to denounce a cheat.
Although of such depths of failure there
can be no question here we must in every
case betake ourselves to the review of a
poet's life ere we determine some of the nicer
questions concerning his poetry,—more especially
if the performance we seek to estimate
aright, has been obstructed and cut short of
completion by circumstances,—a
disastrous
youth or a premature death. We may learn
from the biography whether his spirit invariably
saw and spoke from the last height to
which it had attained.
An absolute vision is
not for this world, but we are permitted a
continual approximation to it, every degree
of which in the individual, provided it exceed
the attainment of the masses, must procure