Note 13 — V.

[Footnote 13: In the greatest poetry, all the elements of human nature are burning in a single flame. The artifice of criticism is to detect what peculiar radiance each element contributes to the whole light; but this no more affects the singleness of the compounded energy in poetry than the spectroscopic examination of fire affects the single nature of actual flame. For the purposes of this book, it has been necessary to look chiefly at the contribution of intellect to epic poetry; for it is in that contribution that the development of poetry, so far as there is any development at all, really consists. This being so, it might be thought that Keats could hardly have done anything for the real progress of epic. But Keats's apparent (it is only apparent) rejection of intellect in his poetry was the result of youthful theory; his letters show that, in fact, intellect was a thing unusually vigorous in his nature. If the Keats of the letters be added to the Keats of the poems, a personality appears that seems more likely than any of his contemporaries, or than anyone who has come after him, for the work of carrying Miltonic epic forward without forsaking Miltonic form.]