Caesar and Napoleon had it, marshalling great armies to perfectly conceived
designs; Fielding had it, using it to draw a multitude of character and
event into the superbly shaped lines of his story; the greatest political
leaders have had it; Cromwell had it, organising an enthusiasm; Elizabeth,
organising a national adventure.[1] Again, there is the energy
of morality, ardently desiring justice and right fellowship, sublimely
lived by men who have made goodness great, like Lincoln, sublimely spoken
by men who made sermons passionate, like Ruskin and Carlyle. To take one
other instance, there is the highly specialised energy that delights in the
objective perception of differentiations of character, the chief energy of
the deftest wits such as Samuel Johnson and the best comic dramatists.
[1: It may be necessary to point out that while the poetic energy
does not include this architectural power, the intellectual co-ordination
of large masses of material, it does, of course, include the shapely
control of the emotion which is its being. It is, indeed, difficult to see
precisely what can be meant by the suggestion that is often made that the
emotions can ever be translated into poetic form wholly without the play of
intellect.
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