March 5. 1834
Shakspeare’s Intellectual Action — Crabbe and Southey — Peter Simple and Tom Cringle’s Log
Shakspeare’s intellectual action is wholly unlike that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter see the totality of a sentence or passage, and then project it entire. Shakspeare goes on creating, and evolving B. out of A., and C. out of B., and so on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems for ever twisting and untwisting its own strength.
I think Crabbe and Southey are something alike; but Crabbe’s poems are founded on observation and real life—Southey’s on fancy and books. In facility they are equal, though Crabbe’s English is of course not upon a level with Southey’s, which is next door to faultless. But in Crabbe there is an absolute defect of the high imagination; he gives me little or no pleasure: yet, no doubt, he has much power of a certain kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some pains, a catholic taste in literature. I read all sorts of books with some pleasure except modern sermons and treatises on political economy.
I have received a great deal of pleasure from some of the modern novels, especially Captain Marryat’s “Peter Simple.” That book is nearer Smollett than any I remember. And “Tom Cringle’s Log” in Blackwood is also most excellent.