This is not to say that there is no such thing
as originality; a poet is a poet first and most of all because he
discovers truths that have been known for ages, as things that are fresh
and new and vital for himself. He must speak of them in language that
has been used by other men just because they are known truths, but he
will use that language in a new way, and with a new significance, and
it is just in proportion to the freshness, and the air of personal
conviction and sincerity which he imparts to it, that he is great.
The point at issue bears very directly on the work of Sir Philip Sidney.
In the course of the history of English letters certain authors
disengage themselves who have more than a merely literary position: they
are symbolic of the whole age in which they live, its life and action,
its thoughts and ideals, as well as its mere modes of writing. There are
not many of them and they could be easily numbered; Addison, perhaps,
certainly Dr. Johnson, certainly Byron, and in the later age probably
Tennyson. But the greatest of them all is Sir Philip Sidney: his
symbolical relation to the time in which he lived was realized by his
contemporaries, and it has been a commonplace of history and criticism
ever since.
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