But his
views of the complexity and dignity of poetry have been much
developed, and he is willing now to draw his favourable instances
from Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil, and himself.
His own practice underwent a corresponding change. It is only to
a few poems of his earlier years that the famous parody of the
_Rejected Addresses_ fairly applies.
My father's walls are made of brick,
But not so tall and not so thick
As these; and goodness me!
My father's beams are made of wood,
But never, never half so good
As those that now I see!
Lines something like these might have occurred in _The Thorn_ or
_The Idiot Boy_. Nothing could be more different from the style of
the sonnets, or of the _Ode to Duty_, or of _Laodamia_. And yet both
the simplicity of the earlier and the pomp of the later poems were
almost always noble; nor is the transition from the one style to the
other a perplexing or abnormal thing. For all sincere styles are
congruous to one another, whether they be adorned or no, as all high
natures are congruous to one another, whether in the garb of peasant
or of prince. What is incongruous to both is affectation, vulgarity,
egoism; and while the noble style can be interchangeably childlike
or magnificent, as its theme requires, the ignoble can neither
simplify itself into purity nor deck itself into grandeur.
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