Consider Thomas Lovell Beddoes: a mediocre poet who began to write a few plays that were outmoded pastiches of Jacobean drama. With no feeling for human personality, no sense for dramatic structure, and no capacity for finishing what he had started, Beddoes would seem an unlikely candidate for greatness.
...Until you read the plays, to discover line after line of brilliant iambic pentameter, in speeches of astonishing power and beauty that can easily rival the best work of his generation.
Viewed from one perspective, Beddoes was a failed writer. Viewed from another, Beddoes was a writer of unique genius.
Both perspectives are true.
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