Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum) and can never recur. That nothing should be old or borrowed however cannot be.

Letter to Coventry Patmore (C. C. Abbott (ed.), The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges, (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 263)