The Study of Poetry • Paragraph 272
Stage 1 of 6

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To return from this digression, the several monologues of which the poem consists, with the exception of those of the Canon Caponsacchi, Pompilia, and the Pope, are each curious and subtle and varied exponents of the workings, without the guidance of instinct at the heart, of the prepossessed, prejudiced intellect, and of the sources of its swerving into error. What is said of the “feel after the vanished truth” in the monologue entitled ‘Half Rome’--the speaker being a jealous husband--will serve to characterize, in a general way, “the feel after truth” exhibited in the other monologues: “honest enough, as the way is: all the same, harboring in the CENTRE OF ITS SENSE a hidden germ of failure, shy but sure, should neutralize that honesty and leave that feel for truth at fault, as the way is too. Some prepossession, such as starts amiss, by but a hair’s-breadth at the shoulder-blade, the arm o’ the feeler, dip he ne’er so brave; and so leads waveringly, lets fall wide o’ the mark his finger meant to find, and fix truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck.”