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Man is an imitating being: honor an american Tasso, or an american Michæl Angelo, and instead of having too many, who aspire the presidency of the United States, you will have your Tassos, and your Michæl Angelos.
But we find this faculty of his in the very essence of his intellect; and trace it alike in the quiet cunning epigram, the allegory, the quaint device, reminding us of some Quarles or Bunyan; and in the /Fausts/, the /Tassos/, the /Mignons/, which in their pure and genuine personality, may almost remind us of the /Ariels/ and /Hamlets/ of Shakespeare.
In this city, under the shadow of the Alps, Torquato remained for a year in the home of his Roman schoolfellow. The inhabitants have ever since cherished with pride the connection of the Tassos with their town, and have erected a splendid monument to Torquato in the market-place. The exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood had a wonderful effect upon the mind of the youthful poet.
It will perhaps be deemed presumptuous, after naming those illustrious characters those "demigods of fame" to allude to Augustus Merton, who, although he obtained the distinction of first wrangler at Brazennose, Oxford, and carried off a multitude of prizes from that seat of learning, may yet be thought an inadequate testimony of the fact with which we set out, more especially when placed in juxtaposition with the Miltons, the Shakespeares, the Raphaels, and the Tassos of the world.
This is the end of his Mignons and Harpers, of his Tassos and Meisters. Poetry, as he views it, exists not in time or place, but in the spirit of man; and Art, with Nature, is now to perform for the poet, what Nature alone performed of old.
It is spirit-stirring rather than spirit-sharpening, to consider that there is one of the Prophets here with us in our own day: that a man who is to be numbered with the Sages and Sacri Vates, the Shakespeares, the Tassos, the Cervanteses of the world, is looking on the things which we look on, has dealt with the very thoughts which we have to deal with, is reigning in serene dominion over the perplexities and contradictions in which we are still painfully entangled.
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