He _saw_ the English charge at Dunbar. He
_guessed_ that Mirabeau, however dissipated and diseased, had something
sturdy inside him. He _guessed_ that Lafayette, however brave and
victorious, had nothing inside him. He supported the lawlessness of
Cromwell, because across two centuries he almost physically _felt_ the
feebleness and hopelessness of the moderate Parliamentarians. He said a
word of sympathy for the universally vituperated Jacobins of the
Mountain, because through thick veils of national prejudice and
misrepresentation, he felt the impossibility of the Gironde. He was
wrong in denying to Scott the power of being inside his characters: but
he really had a good deal of that power himself. It was one of his
innumerable and rather provincial crotchets to encourage prose as
against poetry. But, as a matter of fact, he himself was much greater
considered as a kind of poet than considered as anything else; and the
central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.
He first emerged, as it were, as a student and disciple of Goethe. The
connection was not wholly fortunate.
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