ABSTRACT
From the romantic point of view the most curious sorts of poetry, even the most eccentric and the monstrous, are of value as preliminary exercises to universality, provided there is in them some grain of originality. But the highest beauty, indeed the highest order is then ultimately only that of chaos, that is, a state awaiting the touch of love to unfold it into a harmonious universe, a state such as existed in ancient mythology and poetry. Beauty has only a single prototype, the ugly a thousand. It is because beauty, to put it in human terms, is just form in its simplest relationship, its highest consonance, its closest cohesion to our own structure. Consequently, it always affords a harmonious whole, though it is finite, like us. In the epoch called romantic, everything attests to its intimate and creative union with beautiful. Everything, down to the most naive popular legends, illuminates with unerring instinct this mystery of modern art.
