Sweetness and strength do not go together, and I have strength." But that is not the real question.

The question is--Is the strength poetical?
Has it imagination?
It is rough, powerful, full of humanity, and that is well.

But is it half prose, or wholly prose?
Or is it poetry, or fit to be called so?
He thinks that _Prince Hohenstiel_, or _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, are poetry.

They are, it is true, strong; and they are not sweet.

But have they the strength of poetry in them, and not the strength of something else altogether?
That is the question he ought to have answered, and it does not occur to him.
Yet, he was, in this very book, half-way out of this muddle.