The difference between a historian and a poet is not that one writes in prose and the other in verse -- indeed the writings of Herodotus could be put into verse and yet would still be a kind of history, whether written in metre or not. The real difference is this, that one tells what happened and the other what might happen. For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serous than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers . . . if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style; namely: its untranslatableness in words of the same language without injury to the meaning.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.
Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers . . . if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.