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Shelley, Percy Bysshe,1792-1822. en

A. defence of poetry,

[1904]

A DEFENCE OF POETRY

ADEFENCEOF POETRYPERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

EDITED BYMRS. SHELLEY

REPRINTED FROM THEEDITION OF MDCCCXLV

THE BOBBS-MERFttL COMPANYINDIANAPOLIS

Copyright 1904by

The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Reference

PNI03. Sfc

PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.

]E find, in the verse of a poet,"the record of the best andhappiest moments of thebest and happiest minds/' *

But this is not enough we desire toknow the man. We desire to learnhow much of the sensibility and im-agination that animates his poetry wasfounded on heartfelt passion, and puri-ty, and elevation of character; whetherthe pathos and the fire emanated fromtransitory inspiration and a power ofweaving words touchingly; or whetherthe poet acknowledged the might ofhis art in his inmost soul ; and whether

+ "A Defence of Poetry/'5

CITY (MO.) PUBLIC UBRARJRdD6817O74

his nerves thrilled to the touch of

generous emotion. Led by such curi-

osity, how many volumes have beenfilled with the life of the Scottish

plough-boy and the English peer; wewelcome with delight every fact which

proves that the patriotism and tender-ness expressed in the songs of Burns,

sprung from a noble and gentle heart;and we pore over each letter that we

expect will testify that the melancholyand the unbridled passion that darkens

Byron's verse, flowed from a soul de-voured by a keen susceptibility tointensest love, and indignant brood-

ings over the injuries done and suffered

by man. Let the lovers of Shelley'spoetry of his aspirations for a broth-erhood of love, his tender bewaiiingsspringing from a too sensitive spirithis sympathy with woe, his adorationof beauty, as expressed in his poetry;turn to these pages to gather proof of

sincerity, and to become acquaintedwith the form that such gentle sym-

6

pathies and lofty aspirations wore inprivate life."A Defence of Poetry" is the only

entirely finished prose work Shelleyleft. In this we find the reverencewith which he regarded his art. Wediscern his power of close reasoning,and the unity of his views of humannature. The language is imaginativebut not flowery; the periods have anintonation full of majesty and grace;and the harmony of the style beingunited to melodious thought, a musicresults, that swells upon the ear, andfills the mind with delight. It is awork whence a young poet, and onesuffering from wrong or neglect, maylearn to regard his pursuit and himselfwith that respect, without which hisgenius will get clogged in the mire ofthe earth: it will elevate him into thosepure regions/where there is neitherpain from the stings of insects, norpleasure in the fruition of a grossappetite for praise. He will learn to

7

rest his dearest boast on the dignity of

the art he cultivates, and become awarethat his best claim on the applause of

mankind, results from his being onemore in the holy brotherhood, whosevocation it is to divest life of its material

grossness and stooping tendencies, andto animate it with that power of turn-

ing all things to the beautiful and good,which is the spirit of poetry.

8

A Defence of Poetryby Percy Bysshe Shelley

ADEFENCEOF POETRY

CCORDINGTO ONE MODE OF RE-CARDING *sTHOSETWOCLASSES OFMENTAL ACTFHWHICHARECALLED

reason and imagination, the former

may be considered as mind contem-

plating the relations borne by one

thought to another,however produced;and the latter, as mind acting uponthose thoughts so as to colour themwith its own light,and composing fromthem,as from elements, other thoughts,

each containing within itself the princi-ple of its own integrity. The one is the16 jiouiiv, or the principle of synthesis,and has for its objects those formswhich are common to universal natureand existence itself; the other is the%6 Aoyl&iv, or principle of analysis, andits action regards the relations of thingssimply as relations; consideringthoughts, not in their integral unity,but as the algebraical representationswhich conduct to certain general re-sults. Reason is the enumeration ofquantities already known; imaginationis the perception of the value of those

quantities, both separately and as awhole. Reason respects the differences,and imagination the similitudes ofthings. Reason is to imagination asthe instrument to the agent, as the

body to the spirit, as the shadow tothe substance.

Poetry, in a general sense, may bedefined to be "the expression of the

imagination:" and poetry is connate12

with the origin of man. Man is aninstrument over which a series o ex-ternal and internal impressions aredriven, like the alternations of an ever-

changing wind over an Aeolian lyre,which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is a prin-ciple within the human being, andperhaps within all sentient beings,which acts otherwise than in the lyre,and produces not melody alone, butharmony, by an internal adjustment ofthe sounds or motions thus excited tothe impressions which excite them.It is as if the lyre could accommodateits chords to the motions of that whichstrikes them, in a determined propor-tion of sound; even as the musiciancan accommodate his voice to thesound of the lyre. A child at play byitself will express its delight by its voiceand motions; and every inflexion oftone and every gesture will bear exactrelation to a corresponding antitype inthe pleasurable impressions which

13

awakened it; it will be the reflected

image of that impression; and as the

lyre trembles and sounds after thewind has died away, so the child seeks,

by prolonging in its voice and motionsthe duration of the effect, to prolongalso a consciousness of the cause. In

relation to the objects which delight achild, theseexpressions arewhat poetryis to higher objects. The savage (forthe savage is to ages what the child isto years) expresses the emotions pro-duced in him by surrounding objects ina similar manner; and language and

gesture, together with plastic or picto-rial imitation, become the image of thecombined effect of those objects, andof his apprehension of them. Man insociety, with all his passions and his

pleasures, next becomes the object ofthe passions and pleasures of man; anadditional class of emotions producesan augmented treasure of expressions;and language, gesture, and the imita-tive arts, become at once the repre-

14

sentation and the medium, the penciland the picture, the chisel and thestatue, the chord and the harmony.The social sympathies, or those lawsfrom which, as from its elements,society results, begin to develop them-selves from the moment that twohuman beings co-exist; the future iscontained within the present, as the

plant within the seed; and equality,diversity, unity, contrast, mutual de-

pendence, become the principles alonecapable of affording the motives ac-

cording to which the will of a socialbeing is determined to action, inas-much as he is social; and constitutepleasure in sensation, virtue in senti-

ment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning,and love in the intercourse of kind.Hence men, even in the infancy of

society, observe a certain order in theirwords and actions, distinct from thatof the objects and the impressionsrepresented by them, all expressionbeing subject to the laws of that from

'5

which it proceeds. But let us dismissthose more general considerationswhich might involve an inquiry intothe principles of society itself, andrestrict our view to the manner inwhich the imagination is expressedupon its forms.

In the youth of the world, men danceand sing and imitate natural objects,observing in these actions, as in allothers, a certain rhythm or order. And,although all men observe a similar,they observe not the same order, inthe motions of the dance, in the melodyof the song, in the combinations oflanguage, in the series of their imita-tions of natural objects. For there isa certain order or rhythm belonging toeach of these classes of mimetic repre-sentation, from which the hearer andthe spectator receive an intenser and

purer pleasure than from any other:the sense of an approximation to thisorder has been called taste by modernwriters. Every man in the infancy of

16

art, observes an order which approxi-mates more or less closely to that fromwhich this highest delight results: butthe diversity is not sufficiently marked,as that its gradations should be sensi-ble, except in those instances wherethe predominance of this faculty ofapproximation to the beautiful (for sowe may be permitted to name therelation between this highest pleasureand its cause) is very great. Those inwhom it exists in excess are poets, inthe most universal sense of the word;and the pleasure resulting from themanner in which they express theinfluence of society or nature upontheir own minds, communicates itselfto others, and gathers a sort of redup-lication from that community. Their

language is vitally metaphorical; thatis, it marks the before unapprehendedrelations of things and perpetuatestheir apprehension, until the wordswhich represent them,become,throughtime, signs for portions or classes ofc 17

thoughts instead of pictures of inte-

gral thoughts; and then if no new poetsshould arise to create afresh the asso-ciations which have been thus disor-ganised, language will be dead to allthe nobler purposes of human inter-course. These similitudes or relationsare finely said by Lord Bacon to be"the same footsteps of nature im-pressed upon the various subjects ofthe world"t and he considers thefaculty which perceives them as thestorehouse of axioms common to all

knowledge. In the infancy of societyevery author is necessarily a poet,because language itself is poetry; andto be a poet is to apprehend the trueand the beautiful in a word, the goodwhich exists in the relation, subsisting,first between existence and perception,and secondly between perception and

expression. Every original languagenear to its source is in itself the chaos

^De Augment. Scient, cap. i, lib. iii.18

of a cyclic poem: the copiousness o

lexicography and the distinctions ofgrammar are the works of a later age,and are merely the catalogue and theform of the creations of poetry.

But poets, or those who imagineand express this indestructible order,are not only the authors of languageand of music, of the dance, and archi-tecture, and statuary, and painting;they are the institutors of laws, andthe founders of civil society, and theinventors of the arts of life, and theteachers, who draw into a certain pro-pinquity with the beautiful and thetrue, that partial apprehension of the

agencies of the invisible world whichis called religion. Hence all originalreligions are allegorical, or susceptibleof allegory, and, like Janus, have adouble face of false and true. Poets,according to the circumstances of the

age and nation in which they appeared,were called, in the earlier epochs of theworld, legislators, or prophets: a poet

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essentially comprises and unites boththese characters. For he not onlybeholds intensely the present as it is,and discovers those laws according towhich present things ought to beordered, but he beholds the future inthe present, and his thoughts are the

germs of the flower and the fruit oflatest time. Not that I assert poetsto be prophets in the gross sense ofthe word, or that they can foretell theform as surely as they foreknow the

spirit of events: such is the pretenceof superstition, which would makepoetry an attribute of prophecy, rather

than prophecy an attribute of poetry.A poet participates in the eternal, theinfinite, and the one; as far as relatesto his conceptions, time and place andnumber are not. The grammaticalforms which express the moods oftime, and the difference of persons,and the distinction of place, are con-vertible with respect to the highestpoetry without injuring it as poetry;

ao

and the choruses of Aeschylus, and thebook of Job, and Dante's Paradise,would afford, more than any otherwritings, examples of this fact, if thelimits of this essay did not forbid cita-tion. The creations of sculpture,painting, and music are illustrationsstill more decisive.

Language, colour, form, and religiousand civil habits of action, are all theinstruments and materials of poetry;they may be called poetry by thatfigure of speech which considers theeffect as a synonyme of the cause.But poetry in a more restricted sense

expresses those arrangements of lan-

guage, and especiallymetrical language,which are created by that imperial fac-ulty, whose throne is curtained withinthe invisible nature of man. And thissprings from the nature itself of lan-

guage, which is a more direct repre-sentation of the actions and passions ofour internal being, and is susceptible ofmorevariousanddelicatecombinations,

21

than colour, form, or motion, and ismore plastic and obedient to the con-trol of that faculty of which it is thecreation. For language is arbitrarilyproduced by the imagination, and hasrelation to thoughts alone; but allother materials, instruments, and con-ditions of art have relations amongeach other, which limit and interposebetween conception and expression.The former is as a mirror whichreflects, the latter as a cloud whichenfeebles, the light of which both aremediums of communication. Hencethe fame of sculptors, painters, andmusicians, although the intrinsic pow-ers of the great masters of these arts

may yield in no degree to that of thosewho have employed language as thehieroglyphic of their thoughts, hasnever equalled that of poets in therestricted sense of the term; as twoperformers of equal skill will produceunequal effects from a guitar and aharp. The fame of legislators and

22

founders of religions, so long as theirinstitutions last alone seems to exceedthat of poets in the restricted sense;but it can scarcely be a question,whether, if we deduct the celebritywhich their flattery of the gross opin-ions of the vulgar usually conciliates,

together with that which belonged tothem in their higher character ofpoets, any excess will remain.We have thus circumscribed the

word poetry within the limits of thatart which is the most familiar and themost perfect expression of the facultyitself. It is necessary, however, tomake the circle still narrower, and todetermine the distinction betweenmeasured and unmeasured language;for the popular division into prose andverse is inadmissible in accurate phi-losophy.Sounds as well as thoughts have

relation both between each other andtowards that which they represent,and a perception of the order of those

relations has always been found con-nected with a perception of the orderof the relations of thoughts. Hencethe language of poets has ever affectedacertainuniformandharmoniousrecur-rence of sound, without which it werenot poetry, and which is scarcely lessindispensable to the communicationof its influence, than the words them-selves, without reference to that pecu-liar order. Hence the vanity of trans-lation; it were as wise to cast a violetinto a crucible that you might discoverthe formal principle of its colour andodour, as seek to transfuse from one

language into another the creations ofa poet. The plant must spring againfrom its seed, or it will bear no flowerand this is the burthen of the curse

of Babel.An observation of the regular mode

of the recurrence of harmony in thelanguage of poetical minds, togetherwith its relation to music, producedmetre, or a certain system of tradi-

24

tional forms of haimony and language.Yet it is by no means essential that a

poet should accommodate his languageto this traditional form, so that the

harmony, which is its spirit, be ob-served. The practice is indeed conve-nient and popular, and to be preferred,especially in such composition asincludes much action: but every greatpoet must inevitably innovate uponthe example of his predecessors in theexact structure of his peculiar versifi-cation. The distinction between poetsand prose writers is a vulgar error.The distinction between philosophersand poets has been anticipated. Platowas essentially a poetthe truth andsplendour of his imagery, and themelody of his language, are the mostintense that it is possible to conceive.He rejected the measure of the epic,dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he

sought to kindle a harmony in thoughtsdivested of shape and action, and heforbore to invent any regular plan ofd 25

rhythm which would include, underdeterminate forms, the varied pausesof his

style. Cicero sought to imitatethe cadence of his periods, but withlittle success. Lord Bacon was apoet* His language has a sweet and

majestic rhythm, which satisfies thesense, no less than the almost super-human wisdom of his philosophysatisfies the intellect; it is a strainwhich distends, and then bursts the cir-cumference of the reader's mind, and

pours itself forth together with it intothe universal element with which ithas perpetual sympathy. All theauthors of revolutions in opinion arenot only necessarily poets as they areinventors, nor even as their wordsunveil the permanent analogy ofthings by images which participate inthe life of truth; but as their periodsare harmonious and rhythmical, and

* See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the

Essay on Death particularly.26

contain in themselves the elements ofverse; being the echo of the eternalmusic. Nor are those supreme poets,who have employed traditional formsof rhythm on account of the form andaction of their subjects, less capable ofperceiving and teaching the truth ofthings, than those who have omittedthat form, Shakespeare, Dante, andMilton (to confine ourselves to mod-ern writers) are philosophers of the

very loftiest power.A poem is the very image of life

expressed in its eternal truth. Thereis this difference between a story anda poem, that a story is a catalogue ofdetached facts, which have no otherconnection than time, place, circum-stance, cause and effect; the other isthe creation of actions according tothe unchangeable forms of humannature, as existing in the mind of theCreator, which is itself the image ofall other minds. The one is partial,and applies only to a definite period of

27

time, and a certain combination ofevents which can never again recur;the other is universal, and containswithin itself the germ of a relation towhatever motives or actions have placein the possible varieties of humannature. Time, which destroys thebeauty and the use of the story of par-ticular facts, stripped of the poetrywhich should invest them, augmentsthat of poetry, and for ever developsnew and wonderful applications of theeternal truth which it contains. Henceepitomes have been called the mothsof just history; they eat out the poetryof it. A story of particular facts is asa mirror which obscures and distortsthat which should be beautiful: poetryis a mirror which makes beautiful thatwhich is distorted.The parts of a composition may be

poetical, without the composition asa whole being a poem. A single sen-tence may be considered as a whole,though it may be found in the midst

of a series of unassimilated portions;a single word even may be a spark ofinextinguishable thought. And thusall the great historians, Herodotus,Plutarch, Livy, were poets; andalthough the plan of these writers,especially that of Livy, restrained themfrom developing this faculty in itshighest degree, they made copious andample amends for their subjection, byfilling all the interstices of their sub-

jects with living images.Having determined what is poetry,

and who are poets, let us proceed toestimate its effects upon society.

Poetry is ever accompanied withpleasure: all spirits upon which it fallsopen themselves to receive the wis-dom which is mingled with its delight.In the infancy of the world, neither

poets themselves nor their auditorsare fully aware of the excellence of

poetry: for it acts in a divine and un-apprehended manner, beyond andabove consciousness; and it is reserved

for future generations to contemplateand measure the mighty cause andeffect in all the strength and splendourof their union. Even in modern times,no living poet ever arrived at the ful-ness of his fame; the jury which sitsin judgment upon a poet, belonging ashe does to all time, must be composedof his peers: it must be impanneled byTime from the selectest of the wise ofmany generations. A poet is a night-ingale, who sits in darkness and singsto cheer its own solitude with sweetsounds; his auditors are as men en-tranced by the melody of an unseenmusician, who feel that they are movedand softened, yet know not whence orwhy. The poems of Homer and hiscontemporaries were the delight ofinfant Greece; they were the elementsof that social system which is the col-umn upon which all succeeding civili-sation has reposed. Homer embodiedthe ideal perfection of his age inhuman character; nor can we doubt

30

that those who read his verses wereawakened to an ambition of becominglike to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses:the truth and beauty of friendship,patriotism, and persevering devotionto an object, were unveiled to thedepths in these immortal creations:the sentiments of the auditors musthave been refined and enlarged by asympathy with such great and lovelyimpersonations, until from admiringthey imitated, and from imitation theyidentified themselves with the objectsof their admiration. Nor let it beobjected, that these characters areremote from moral perfection, andthat they can by no means be consid-ered as edifying patterns for generalimitation. Every epoch, under namesmore or less specious, has deified its

peculiar errors; Revenge is the nakedidol of the worship of a semi-barbar-ous age; and Self-deceit is the veiled

image of unknown evil, before whichluxury and satiety lie prostrate. But a

poet considers the vices of his contem-

poraries as the temporary dress inwhich his creations must be arrayed,and which cover without concealingthe eternal proportions of their beauty.An epic or dramatic personage is un-derstood to wear them around hissoul as he may the ancient armour orthe modern uniform around his body;whilst it is easy to conceive a dressmore graceful than either. The beautyof the internal nature cannot be so farconcealed by its accidental vesture,but that the spirit of its form shallcommunicate itself to the very dis-guise, and indicate the shape it hidesfrom the manner in which it is worn.A majestic form and graceful motionswill express themselves through themost barbarous and tasteless costume.Few poets of the highest class havechosen to exhibit the beauty of their

conceptions in its naked truth andsplendour; and it is doubtful whetherthe alloy of costume, habit, etc., be

35*

not necessary to temper this planetarymusic for mortal ears.The whole objection, however, of

the immorality of poetry rests upon amisconception of the manner in whichpoetry acts to produce the moral im-provement of man. Ethical science ar-

ranges the elements which poetry hascreated, and propounds schemes andproposes examples of civil and domesticlife: nor is it forwant of admirable doc-trines that men hate, and despise, andcensure, and deceive, and subjugate oneanother. But poetry acts in anotherand diviner manner. It awakens andenlarges the mind itself by renderingit the receptacle of a thousand unap-prehended combinations of thought.Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden

beauty of the world, and makes famil-iar objects be as if they were not famil-iar; it reproduces all that it represents,and the impersonations clothed in its

Elysian light stand thenceforward inthe minds of those who have oncee 33

contemplated them, as memorials ofthat gentle and exalted content whichextends itself ovei all thoughts andactions with which it coexists. Thegreat secret of morals is love; or a goingout of our nature, and an identificationof ourselves with the beautiful whichexists in thought, action, or person, notour own. A man, to be greatly good,must imagine intensely and compre-hensively; he must put himself in the

place of another and of many others;the pains and pleasures of his speciesmust become his own. The great in-strument of moral good is the imagi-nation; and poetry administers to theeffect by acting upon the cause. Poetryenlarges the circumference of theimagination by replenishing it withthoughts of ever new delight, whichhave the power of attracting and assi-

milating to their own nature all other

thoughts, and which form new inter-vals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strength-

34

ens the faculty which is the organ ofthe moral nature of man, in the samemanner as exercise strengthens a limb.A poet therefore would do ill to em-body his own conceptions of right andwrong, which are usually those of hisplace and time, in his poetical crea-tions, which participate in neither. Bythis assumption of the inferior officeof interpreting the effect, in whichperhaps after all he might acquit him-self but imperfectly, he would resigna glory in a participation in the cause.There was little danger that Homer,or any of the eternal poets, should haveso far misunderstood themselves as tohave abdicated this throne of theirwidest dominion. Those in whom thepoetical faculty, though great, is lessintense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso,Spenser, have frequently affected amoral aim, and the effect of theirpoetry is diminished in exact propor-tion to the degree in which they com-pel us to advert to this purpose.

35

Homer and the cyclic poets werefollowed at a certain interval by thedramatic and lyrical poets of Athens,who flourished contemporaneouslywith all that is most perfect in thekindred expressions of the poeticalfaculty; architecture, painting, music,the dance, sculpture, philosophy, andwe may add, the forms of civil life.For although the scheme t>f Athenian

society was deformed by many imper-fections which the poetry existing in

chivalry and Christianity has erasedfrom the habits and institutions ofmodern Europe; yet never at any other

period has so much energy, beauty, andvirtue been developed; never was blind

strength and stubborn form so disci-

plined and rendered subject to the willof man, or that will less repugnant to

the dictates of the beautiful and thetrue, as during the century which pre-ceded the death of Socrates. Of noother epoch in the history of our spe-cies have we records and fragments

36

stamped so visibly with the image ofthe divinity in man. But it is poetryalone, in form, in action, or in lan-

guage, which has rendered this epochmemorable above all others, and thestorehouse of examples to everlastingtime. For written poetry existed atthat epoch simultaneously with theother arts, and it is an idle inquiry todemandwhich gave andwhich receivedthe light, which all, as from a commonfocus, have scattered over the darkest

periods of succeeding time. We knowno more of cause and effect than aconstant conjunction of events: poetryis ever found to co-exist with what-ever other arts contribute to the hap-piness and perfection of man. I appealto what has already been establishedto distinguish between the cause andthe effect.

It was at the period here advertedto, that the drama had its birth; andhowever a succeeding writer may haveequalled or surpassed those few great

37

specimens of the Athenian dramawhich have been preserved to us, it isindisputable that the art itself neverwas understood or practised accordingto the true philosophy of it, as atAthens. For the Athenians employedlanguage, action, music, painting, thedance, and religious institutions, toproduce a common effect in the repre-sentation of the highest idealisms of

passion and of power; each divisionin the art was made perfect in its kindby artists of the most consummateskill, and was disciplined into a beauti-ful proportion and unity one towardsthe other. On the modern stage a fewonly of the elements capable of express-ing the image of the poet's conceptionare employed at once. We have trag-edy without music and dancing; andmusic and dancing without the highestimpersonations of which they are thefit accompaniment, and both withoutreligion and solemnity. Religious insti-tution has indeed been usually ban-

38

ishcd from the stage. Our system ofdivesting the actor's face of a mask,on which the many expressions appro-priated to his dramatic character mightbe moulded into one permanent andunchanging expression, is favourableonly to a partial and inharmoniouseffect; it is fit for nothing but a mono-

logue, where all the attention may bedirected to some great master of ideal

mimicry. Themodern practice ofblend-ing comedy with tragedy, though liableto great abuse in point of practice, isun-

doubtedly an extension of the dramaticcircle; but the comedy should be as inKing Lear, universal, ideal,and sublime.It is perhaps the intervention of this

principle which determines the balancein favour of King Lear against theOedipusTyrannus or the Agamemnon,or, if you will, the trilogies with whichthey are connected; unless the intense

power of the choral poetry, especiallythat of the latter, should be consideredas restoring the equilibrium. King

39

Lear, if it can sustain this comparison,may be judged to be the most perfectspecimen of the dramatic art existingin the world; in spite of the narrowconditions to which the poet was sub-jected by the ignorance of the philoso-phy of the drama which has prevailedin modern Europe. Calderon, in hisreligious Autos, has attempted to fulfilsome of the high conditions of dra-matic representation neglected byShakespeare; such as the establishinga relation between the drama andreligion, and the accommodating themto music and dancing; but he omits theobservation of conditions still moreimportant, and more is lost than gainedby the substitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms ofa distorted superstition for the livingimpersonations of the truth of humanpassion.

But I digressThe connection ofscenic exhibitions with the improve-ment or corruption of the manners of

40

men, has been universally recognised;in other words, the presence or absenceof poetry in its most perfect and uni-versal form has been found to be con-nected with good and evil in conductor habit. The corruption which hasbeen imputed to the drama as an effectbegins, when the poetry employed inits constitution ends: I appeal to the

history of manners whether the periodsof the growth of the one and thedecline of the other have not corres-

ponded with an exactness equal to anyexample of moral cause and effect.The drama at Athens, or whereso-

ever else it may have approached toits perfection, ever co-existed with themoral and intellectual greatness of the

age. The tragedies of the Athenianpoets are as mirrors in which thespectator beholds himself, under a thin

disguise of circumstance, stript of allbut that ideal perfection and energywhich every one feels to be the inter-nal type of all that he loves, admires,f 41

and would become. The imaginationis enlarged by a sympathy with painsand passions so mighty, that they dis-tend in their conception the capacityof that by which they are conceived;the good affections are strengthenedby pity, indignation, terror and sorrow;and an exalted calm is prolonged fromthe satiety of this high exercise ofthem into the tumult of familiar life:even crime is disarmed of half its hor-ror and all its contagion by being rep-resented as the fatal consequence ofthe unfathomable agencies of nature;error is thus divested of its wilfulness;men can no longer cherish it as thecreation of their choice. In a drama ofthe highest order there is little food forcensure or hatred; it teaches rather

self-knowledge and self-respect. Nei-ther the eye nor the mind can see it-self, unless reflected upon that whichit resembles. The drama, so long as itcontinues to express poetry, is as a

prismatic and many-sided mirror,4*

which collects the brightest rays ofhuman nature and divides and repro-duces them from the simplicity of theseelementary fprms, and touches themwith majesty and beauty, and multi-plies all that it reflects, and endows itwith the power of propagating its likewherever it may fall.

But in periods of the decay of sociallife, the drama sympathises with thatdecay. Tragedy becomes a cold imita-tion of the form of the great master-

pieces of antiquity, divested of allharmonious accompaniment of thekindred arts; and often the very formmisunderstood, or a weak attempt toteach certain doctrines, which thewriter considers as moral truths; andwhich are usually no more than spe-cious flatteries of some gross vice or

weakness, with which the author, incommon with his auditors, are infec-ted. Hence what has been called theclassical and domestic drama. Addi-son's "Cato" is a specimen of the one;

43

and would it were not superfluous tocite examples of the other! To suchpurposes poetry can not be made sub-servient. Poetry is a sword of light-ning, ever unsheathed, which consumesthe scabbard that would contain it.And thus we observe that all dramaticwritings of this nature are unimagina-tive in a singular degree; they affectsentiment and passion, which, divestedof imagination, are other names for

caprice and appetite. The period inour own history of the grossest degra-dation of the drama is the reign ofCharles II., when all forms in whichpoetry had been accustomed to beexpressed became hymns to the tri-umph of kingly power over liberty andvirtue. Milton stood alone illumina-ting an age unworthy of him. At suchperiods the calculating principle per-vades all the forms of dramatic exhi-bition, and poetryceases to be expressedupon them. Comedy loses its ideal uni-versality: wit succeeds to humour; we

44

laugh from self-complacency and tri-umph, instead of pleasure; malignity,sarcasm, and contempt succeed tosympathetic merrimentj we hardlylaugh, but we smile. Obscenity, whichis ever blasphemy against the divine

beauty in life, becomes, from the veryveil which it assumes, more active ifless disgusting: it is a monster for whichthe corruption of society for ever bringsforth new food, which it devours insecret.

The drama being that form underwhich a greater number of modes ofexpression of poetry are susceptible of

being combined than any other, theconnexion of poetry and social good ismore observable in the drama than inwhatever other form. And it is indis-putable that the highest perfection ofhuman society has ever correspondedwith the highest dramatic excellence;and that the corruption or the extinc-tion of the drama in a nation where ithas once flourished, is a mark of a

45

corruption of manners, and an extinc-tion of the energies which sustain thesoul of social life. But as Machiavellisays of political institutions, that life

may be preserved and renewed, if menshould arise capable of bringing backthe drama to its principles. And thisis true with respect to poetry in itsmost extended sense: all language,institution and form, require not onlyto be produced but to be sustained: theoffice and character of a poet partici-pates in the divine nature as regardsprovidence, no less than as regardscreation.

Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and thefatal predominance first of the Mace-donian, and then of the Roman arms,were so many symbols of the extinc-tion or suspension of the creative facul-

ty in Greece. The bucolic writers, whofound patronage under the letteredtyrants of Sicily and Egypt, were thelatest representatives of its most glor-ious reign. Their poetry is intensely

melodious; like the odour of the tube-rose, it overcomes and sickens thespirit with excess of sweetness; whilstthe poetry of the preceding age wasas a meadow-gale of June, which min-gles the fragrance of all the flowersof the field and adds a quickening and

harmonising spirit of its own whichendows the sense with a power ofsustaining its extreme delight. Thebucolic and erotic delicacy in written

poetry is correlative with that softnessin statuary, music, and the kindredarts, and even in manners and institu-tions, which distinguished the epochto which I now refer, "Nor is it thepoetical faculty itself, or any misappli-cation of it, to which this want ofharmony is to be imputed. An equalsensibility to the influence of the sensesand the affections is to be found in the

writings of Homer and Sophocles: theformer, especially, has clothed sensualand pathetic images with irresistibleattractions. Their superiority over

47

these succeeding writers consists in the

presence o those thoughts whichbelong to the inner faculties of ournature, not in the absence of thosewhich are connected with the external:their incomparable perfection consistsin a harmony of the union of all. It isnot what the erotic poets have, butwhat they have not, in which theirimperfection consists. It is not inas-much as they were poets, but inasmuchas they were not poets, that they canbe considered with any plausibility asconnected with the corruption of their

age. Had that corruption availed so asto extinguish in them the sensibility to

pleasure, passion, and natural scenery,which is imputed to them as an im-perfection, the last triumph of evilwould have been achieved. For theend of social corruption is to destroyall sensibility to pleasure; and, there-

fore, it is corruption. It begins at the

imagination and the intellect as at thecore, and distributes itself thence as a

48

paralysing venom, through the affec-tions into the very appetites, until allbecome a torpid mass in which hardlysense survives. At the approach ofsuch a period, poetry ever addressesitself to those faculties which are thelast to be destroyed, and its voice isheard, like the footsteps of Astraea,

departing from the world. Poetry evercommunicates all the pleasure whichmen are capable of receiving: it is everstill the light of life; the source ofwhatever of beautiful or generous ortrue can have place in an evil time. Itwill readily be confessed that thoseamong the luxurious citizens of Syra-cuse and Alexandria,whowere delight-ed with the poems of Theocritus, wereless cold, cruel, and sensual than theremnant of their tribe. But corruptionmust utterly have destroyed the fabricof human society before poetry canever cease. The sacred links of thatchain have never been entirely disjoin-ted, which descending through theg 49

minds of many men is attached tothose great minds, whence as from amagnet the invisible effluence is sentforth, which at once connects, ani-mates, and sustains the life of all. It isthe faculty which contains within itselfthe seeds at once of its own and ofsocial renovation. And let us not cir-cumscribe the effects of the bucolic anderotic poetry within the limits of the

sensibility of those to whom it wasaddressed. They may have perceivedthe beauty of those immortal compo-sitions, simply as fragments and isola-ted portions: thosewho are more finelyorganised, or born in a happier age,may recognise them as episodes to thatgreat poem, which all poets, like theco-operating thoughts of one greatmind, have built up since the beginningof the world.The same revolutions within a

narrower sphere had place in ancientRome; but the actions and forms ofits social life never seem to have been

50

perfectly saturated with the poeticalelement. The Romans appear to haveconsidered the Greeks as the selectesttreasuries of the selectest forms ofmanners and of nature, and to haveabstained from creating in measuredlanguage, sculpture, music, or archi-tecture, anything which might bear a

particular relation to their own condi-

tion, whilst it should bear a general oneto the universal constitution of theworld. But we judge from partial evi-dence, and we judge perhaps partially.Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius,all great poets, have been lost. Lucre-tius is in the highest, and Virgil in a

very high sense, a creator. The chosen

delicacy of expressions of the latter,are as a mist of light which concealfrom us the intense and exceedingtruth of his conceptions of nature. Livyis instinct with poetry. Yet Horace,Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other

great writers of the Virgilian age,saw man and nature in the mirror of

Greece. The institutions also, and thereligion of Rome, were less poeticalthan those of Greece, as the shadowis less vivid than the substance. Hence

poetry in Rome seemed to follow,rather than accompany, the perfectionof political and domestic society. Thetrue poetry of Rome lived in its insti-tutions; for whatever of beautiful, true,and majestic, they contained, couldhave sprung only from the facultywhich creates the order in which theyconsist. The life of Camillus, the deathof Regulus; the expectation of the sen-ators, in their godlike state, of thevictorious Gauls; the refusal of the

republic to make peace with Hanni-bal, after the battle of Cannae, werenot the consequences of a refined cal-culation of the probable personal ad-

vantage to result from such a rhythmand order in the shows of life, to thosewho were at once the poets and theactors of these immortal dramas. Theimagination beholding the beauty of

5*

this order, created it out of itself accor-

ding to its own idea; the consequencewas empire, and the reward ever-livingfame. These things are not the lesspoetry, quia carent vate sacro. Theyare the episodes of that cyclic poemwritten by Time upon the memoriesof men. The Past, like an inspiredrhapsodist, fills the theatre of ever-

lasting generations with their harmony.At length the ancient system of re-

ligion and manners had fulfilled thecircle of its revolutions. And the worldwould have fallen into utter anarchyand darkness, but that there werefound poets among the authors of theChristian and chivalric systems ofmanners and religion, who createdforms of opinion and action never be-fore conceived; which, copied into the

imaginations of men, became as gene-rals to the bewildered armies of their

thoughts. It is foreign to the presentpurpose to touch upon the evil pro-duced by these systems: except that we

53

protest, on the ground of the principlesalready established, that no portion ofit can be attributed to the poetry theycontain.

It is probable that the poetry ofMoses, Job, David, Solomon, and Isa-iah had produced a great effect uponthe mind of Jesus and his disciples.The scattered fragments preserved tous by the biographers of this extraor-dinary person, are all instinct with themost vivid poetry. But his doctrinesseem to have been quickly distorted.At a certain period after the preva-lence of a system of opinions founded

upon those promulgated by him, thethree forms into which Plato had dis-tributed the faculties of mind under-went a sort of apotheosis, and be-came the object of the worship ofthe civilised world. Here it is to beconfessed that

"Light seems to thick-en," and"The crow makes wing to the rooky

wood,54

Good things of day begin to droopand drowse,

And night's black agents to their preysdo rouze."

But mark how beautiful an order hassprung from the dust and blood of thisfierce chaos! how the world, as froma resurrection, balancing itself on the

golden wings of knowledge and ofhope, has reassumed its yet unwearied

flight into the heaven of time. Listento the music, unheard by outward ears,which is as a ceaseless and invisiblewind, nourishing its everlasting coursewith strength and swiftness.The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus

Christ, and the mythology and institu-tions of the Celtic conquerors of theRoman empire, outlived the darknessand the convulsions connected withtheir growth and victory, and blendedthemselves in a new fabric of mannersand opinion. It is an error to imputethe ignorance of the dark ages to theChristian doctrines or the predomi-

55

nance of the Celtic nations. Whateverof evil their agencies may have con-tained sprang from the extinction ofthe poetical principle, connected withthe progress of despotism and super-stition. Men, from causes too intricateto be here discussed, had become insen-sible and selfish: their own will hadbecome feeble, and yet they were itsslaves, and thence the slaves of the willof others: lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, andfraud, characterised a race amongstwhom no one was to be found capableof creating in form, language, or insti-tution. The moral anomalies of sucha state of society are not justly to be

charged upon any class of events im-mediately connected with them, andthose events are most entitled to ourapprobation which could dissolve itmost expeditiously. It is unfortunatefor those who can not distinguishwords from thoughts, that many ofthese anomalies have been incorpora-ted into our popular religion.

56

It was not until the eleventh centu-

ry that the effects of the poetry of theChristian and chivalric systems beganto manifest themselves. The principleof equality had been discovered andapplied by Plato in his Republic, as thetheoretical rule of the mode in whichthe materials of pleasure and of powerproduced by the common skill andlabour of human beings ought to bedistributed among them. The limita-tions of this rule were asserted by himto be determined only by the sensibilityof each, or the utility to result to all.Plato, following the doctrines of Tim-aeus and Pythagoras, taught also amoral and intellectual system of doc-trine, comprehending at once the past,the present, and the future conditionof man. Jesus Christ divulged thesacred and eternal truths contained inthese views to mankind, and Christi-

anity, in its abstract purity, became theexoteric expression of the esoteric doc-trines of the poetry and wisdom ofh 57

antiquity. The incorporation of theCeltic nations with the exhaustedpopulation o the south, impressedupon it the figure of the poetry exist-

ing in their mythology and institutions.The result was a sum of the action andreaction of all the causes included init; for it may be assumed as a maximthat no nation or religion can super-sede any other without incorporatinginto itself a portion of that which itsupersedes. The abolition of personaland domestic slavery, and the emanci-pation of women from a great part ofthe degrading restraints of antiquity,were among the consequences of theseevents.

The abolition of personal slavery isthe basis of the highest political hopethat it can enter into the mind of manto conceive. The freedom of womenproduced the poetry of sexual love.Love became a religion, the idols ofwhose worship were ever present. Itwas as if the statues of Apollo and the

58

Muses had been endowed with life andmotion, and had walked forth amongtheir worshippers; so that earth becamepeopled by the inhabitants of a divinerworld. The familiar appearance andproceedings of life became wonderfuland heavenly, and a paradise wascreated as out of the wrecks of Eden.And as this creation itself is poetry, soits creators were poets; and languagewas the instrument of their art: "Gal-eotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse." TheProvencal Trouveurs, or inventors,preceded Petrarch, whose verses are asspells, which unseal the inmost en-chanted fountains of the delight whichis in the grief of love. It is impossibleto feel them without becoming a por-tion of that beauty which we contem-plate: it were superfluous to explainhow the gentleness and the elevationof mind connected with these sacredemotions can render men more ami-able, more generous and wise, and liftthem out of the dull vapours of the

59

little world of self. Dante understoodthe secret things of love even morethan Petrarch. His Vita Nuova is aninexhaustible fountain of purity of sen-

timent and language: it is the idealised

history of that period, and those inter-vals of his life which were dedicatedto love. His apotheosis of Beatrice inParadise, and the gradations of hisown love and her loveliness, by whichas by steps he feigns himself to haveascended to the throne of the SupremeCause, is the most glorious imaginationof modern poetry. The acutest criticshave justly reversed the judgment ofthe vulgar, and the order of the greatacts of the "Divine Drama," in themeasure of the admiration which theyaccord to the Hell, Purgatory, andParadise. The latter is a perpetualhymn of everlasting love. Love, whichfound a worthy poet in Plato alone ofall the ancients, has been celebrated

by a chorus of the greatest writers ofthe renovated world; and the music

60

has penetrated the caverns of society,and its echoes still drown the disso-nance of arms and superstition. Atsuccessive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso,

Shakespeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rous-seau, and the great writers of our own

age, have celebrated the dominion oflove, planting as it were trophies in the

human mind of that sublimest victoryover sensuality and force. The truerelation borne to each other by thesexes into which human kind is dis-tributed, has become less misunder-stood; and if the error which con-founded diversity with inequality ofthe powers of the two sexes has been

partially recognised in the opinions andinstitutions of modern Europe, we owethis great benefit to the worship ofwhich chivalry was the law, and poetsthe prophets.The poetry of Dante may be con-

sidered as the bridge thrown over thestream of time, which unites themodern and ancient world. The dis-

61

torted notions of invisible things whichDante and his rival Milton have ideal-ised, are merely the mask and themantle in which these great poetswalk through eternity enveloped anddisguised. It is a difficult question todetermine how far they were consciousof the distinction which must havesubsisted in their minds between theirown creeds and that of the people.Dante at least appears to wish to markthe full extent of it by placing Riph-aeus, whom Virgil calls justissimusunus, in Paradise, and observing a mostheretical caprice in his distribution ofrewards and punishments. And Mil-ton's poem contains within itself aphilosophical refutation of that system,of which, by a strange and naturalantithesis, it has been a chief and pop-ular support. Nothing can exceed theenergy and magnificence of the char-acter of Satan as expressed in "ParadiseLost." It is a mistake to suppose thathe could ever have been intended for

the popular personification of evil.

Implacable hate, patient cunning, anda sleepless refinement of device to in-flict the extremest anguish on an ene-

my, these things are evil; and, althoughvenial in a slave, are not to be forgivenin a tyrant; although redeemed bymuch that ennobles his defeat in onesubdued, are marked by all that dis-honours his conquest in the victor.Milton's Devil as a moral being is asfar superior to his God, as one whoperseveres in some purpose which hehas conceived to be excellent in spiteof adversity and torture, is to one whoin the cold security of undoubted tri-umph inflicts the most horrible revengeupon his enemy, not from any mistakennotion of inducing him to repent of aperseverance in enmity, but with the

alleged design of exasperating him todeserve new torments. Milton has sofar violated the popular creed (if thisshall be judged to be a violation) as tohave alleged no superiority of moral

63

virtue to his God over his Devil. Andthis bold neglect of a direct moral pur-pose is the most decisive proof of the

supremacy of Milton's genius. He min-gled as it were the elements of humannature as colours upon a single palletand arranged them in the compositionof his great picture according to the lawsof epic truth; that is, according to thelaws of that principle by which a seriesof actions of the external universe andof intelligent and ethical beings is cal-culated to excite the sympathy of suc-

ceeding generations of mankind. TheDivina Commedia and Paradise Losthave conferred upon modern myth-ology a systematic form; and whenchange and time shall have added onemore superstition to the mass of thosewhich have arisen and decayed uponthe earth, commentators will be learn-

edly employed in elucidating the relig-ion of ancestral Europe, only not ut-

terly forgotten because it will have been

stamped with the eternity of genius.

Homer was the first and Dante thesecond epic poet: that is, the secondpoet, the series of whose creations borea defined and intelligible relation to the

knowledge and sentiment and religionof the age in which he lived, and of theages which followed it, developing it-self in correspondence with their de-velopment. For Lucretius had limed thewings of his swift spirit in the dregs ofthe sensible world; and Virgil, with amodesty that ill became his genius, hadaffected the fame of an imitator, evenwhilsthe createdanew allthathecopied;and noneamongtheflock of mock-birds,though their notes were sweet, Apol-lonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber,Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian,have soughteven to fulfil a single condi-tion of epic truth. Milton was the thirdepic poet. For if the title of epic in its

highest sense be refused to the Aeneid,still less can it be conceded to theOrlando Furioso, the GerusalemmeLiberata,the Lusiad,or the FairyQueen,

i 65

Dante and Milton were both deeplypenetrated with the ancient religion ofthe civilised world; and its spirit existsin their poetry probably in the same

proportion as its forms survived in theunreformedworship ofmodern Europe.The one preceded and the other fol-lowed the Reformation at almost equalintervals, Dante was the first religiousreformer, and Luther surpassed himrather in the rudeness and acrimony,than in the boldness of his censures of

papal usurpation. Dante was the firstawakener of entranced Europe; hecreated a language, in itself music and

persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmoni-ous barbarisms. He was the congre-gator of those great spirits who presi-ded over the resurrection of learning;the Lucifer of that starry flock whichin the thirteenth century shone forthfrom republican Italy, as from a heaven,into the darkness of the benightedworld. His very words are instinctwith

spirit; each is as a spark, a burning66

atom of inextinguishable thought; and

many y,et lie covered in the ashes oftheir birth, and pregnant with thelightning which has yet found no con-ductor. All high poetry is infinite; it isas the first acorn, which contained alloaks potentially. Veil after veil maybe undrawn, and the inmost nakedbeauty of the meaning never exposed.A great poem is a fountain for everoverflowing with the waters of wisdomand delight; and after one person andone age has exhausted all its divineeffluence which their peculiar relationsenable them to share, another and yetanother succeeds, and new relationsare ever developed, the source of anunforeseen and an unconceived delight .The age succeeding to that of Dante,

Petrarch, and Boccaccio,was character-ised by a revival of painting, sculpture,and architecture. Chaucer caught thesacred inspiration, and the superstruc-ture of English literature is based uponthe materials of Italian invention.

67

But let us not be betrayed from adefence into a critical history of poetryand its influence on society. Be itenough to have pointed out the effectsof poets, in the large and true sense ofthe word, upon their own and all suc-

ceeding times.But poets have been challenged to

resign the civic crown to reasoners andmechanists, on another plea. It is ad-mitted that the exercise of the imagi-nation is most delightful, but it is

alleged that that of reason is moreuseful. Let us examine as the groundsof this distinction what is here meantby utility. Pleasure or good, in a gen-eral sense, is that which the conscious-ness of a sensitive and intelligent beingseeks, and in which, when found, itacquiesces. There are two kinds ofpleasure, one durable, universal, and

permanent; the other transitory and

particular. Utility may either expressthe means of producing the former orthe latter. In the former sense, what-

68

ever strengthens and purifies the affec-tions, enlarges the imagination, andadds spirit to sense, is useful. But anarrower meaning may be assigned tothe word

utility, confining it to expressthat which banishes the importunityof the wants of our animal nature, the

surrounding men with security of life,the dispersing the grosser delusions of

superstition, and the conciliating sucha degree of mutual forbearance amongmen as may consist with the motivesof personal advantage.

Undoubtedly the promoters of util-

ity, in this limited sense, have theirappointed office in society. They followthe footsteps of poets, and copy thesketches of their creations into thebook of common life. They make space,and give time. Their exertions are ofthe highest value, so long as they con-fine their administration of the con-cerns of the inferior powers of ournature within the limits due to thesuperior ones. But whilst the sceptic

69

destroys gross superstitions, let himspare to deface, as some of the Frenchwriters have defaced, the eternal truthscharactered upon the imaginations ofmen. Whilst the mechanist abridges,and the political economist combineslabour, let them beware that theirspeculations, for want of correspond-ence with those first principles which

belong to the imagination, do not tend,as they have in modern England, toexasperate at once the extremes of

luxury and want. They have exempli-fied the saying, "To him that hath,more shall be given; and from him thathath not, the little that he hath shallbe taken away." The rich have becomericher, and the poor have become poor-er; and the vessel of the state is drivenbetween the Scylla and Charybdis ofanarchy and despotism. Such are theeffects which must ever flow from an

unmitigated exercise of the calculatingfaculty.

It is difficult to define pleasure in its

70

highest sense; the definition involvinga number of apparent paradoxes. For,from an inexplicable defect of harmo-

ny in the constitution of human nature,the pain of the inferior is frequentlyconnected with the pleasures of thesuperior portions of our being. Sorrow,terror, anguish, despair itself, are oftenthe chosen expressions of an approxi-mation to the highest good. Our sym-pathy in tragic fiction depends on this

principle; tragedy delights by affordinga shadow of the pleasure which existsin pain. This is the source also of the

melancholy which is inseparable fromthe sweetest melody. The pleasure thatis in sorrow is sweeter than the pleas-ure of pleasure itself. And hence thesaying, "It is better to go to the house of

mourning, than to the house of mirth."Not that this highest species of pleas-ure is necessarily linked with pain.The delight of love and friendship, theecstacy of the admiration of nature, the

joy of the perception and still more of71

the creation of poetry, is often whollyunalloyed.The production and assurance of

pleasure in this highest sense is true

utility. Those who produce and pre-serve this pleasure are poets or poet-ical philosophers.The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gib-

bon, Voltaire, Rousseau,* and theirdisciples, in favour of oppressed anddeluded humanity, are entitled to the

gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy tocalculate the degree of moral and in-tellectual improvement which theworld would have exhibited, had theynever lived. A little more nonsensewould have been talked for a centuryor two; and perhaps a few more men,women, and children burnt as heretics.We might not at this moment have

+ Although Rousseau has been thusclassed, he was essentially a poet. Theothers, even Voltaire, were merereasoners.

7*

been congratulating each other on theabolition of the Inquisition in Spain.But it exceeds all imagination to con-ceive what would have been the moralcondition of the world if neither Dante,Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shake-

speare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, norMilton, had ever existed; if Raphaeland Michael Angelo had never beenborn; if the Hebrew poetry had neverbeen translated; if a revival of the studyof Greek literature had never takenplace; if nomonuments of ancient sculp-ture had been handed down to us; andif the poetry of the religion of the an-cient world had been extinguished to-

gether with its belief. The human mindcould never, except by the interventionof these excitements, have been awak-ened to the invention of the grossersciences, and that application of analyt-ical reasoning to the aberrations of

society, which it is now attempted toexalt over the direct expression of theinventive and creative faculty itself.

j 73

Wehavemore moral, political and his-torical wisdom that we know how toreduce intopractice;wehave morescien-tific and economical knowledge than canbe accommodated to the just distribu-tion of the produce which it multiplies.The poetry in these systems of thoughtis concealed by the accumulation offacts and calculating processes. Thereis no want of knowledge respectingwhat is wisest and best in morals, gov-ernment, and political economy, or atleast, what is wiser and better thanwhat men now practise and endure.But we let "I dare not wait upon Iwould, like the poor cat in the adage."Wewant the creative faculty to imaginethat which we know; we want thegenerous impulse to act that which weimagine; we want the poetry of life:our calculations have outrun concep-tion; we have eaten more than we can

digest. The cultivation of those scienceswhich have enlarged the limits of theempire of man over the external world,

74

has, for want of the poetical faculty,proportionally circumscribed those ofthe internal world; and man, having en-slaved the elements, remains himself aslave, To what but a cultivation of themechanical arts in a degree dispropor-tioned to the presence of the creative

faculty, which is the basis of all knowl-edge, is to be attributed the abuse ofall invention for abridging and combin-ing labour, to the exasperation of the

inequality of mankind? From whatother cause has it arisen that the dis-coveries which should have lightened,have added a weight to the curse im-posed on Adam? Poetry, and the prin-ciple of Self, of which money is thevisible incarnation, are the God andMammon of the world.The functions of the poetical faculty

are two-fold; by one it creates newmaterials of knowledge, and power, and

pleasure; by the other it engendersin the mind a desire to reproduce andarrange them according to a certain

75

rhythm and order which may be calledthe beautiful and the good. The culti-vation of poetry is never more to bedesired than at periods when, from anexcess of the selfish and calculatingprinciple, the accumulation of the ma-terials of external life exceed the quan-tity of the power of assimilating themto the internal laws of human nature.The body has thenbecome too unwieldyfor that which animates it.

Poetry is indeed something divine. Itis at once the centre and circumferenceof knowledge; it is that which compre-hends all science, and that to which allscience must be referred. It is at thesame time the root and blossom of allother systems of thought; it is that fromwhich all spring, and that which adornsall; and that which, if blighted, deniesthe fruit and the seed, and withholdsfrom the barren world the nourishmentand the succession of the scions of thetree of life. It is the perfect and con-summate surface and bloom of all

76

things; it is as the odour and the colourof the rose to the texture of the ele-ments which compose it, as the formand splendour of unfaded beauty to thesecrets of anatomy and corruption.What were virtue, love, patriotism,friendship what were the scenery ofthis beautiful universe which we inhab-it; what were our consolations on thisside of the grave and what were our

aspirations beyond it, if poetry did notascend to bring light and fire from thoseeternal regions where the owl-wingedfaculty of calculation dare not eversoar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a

power to be exerted according to thedetermination of the will A man can-not

say, "I will compose poetry." The

greatest poet even can not say it; for

the mind in creation is as a fading coal,which some invisible influence, like aninconstant wind, awakens to transitorybrightness; this power arises fromwith-in, like the colour of a flower whichfades and changes as it is developed,

77

and the conscious portions of our na-tures are unprophetic either of its ap-proach or its departure. Could thisinfluence be durable in its original purityand force, it is impossible to predict thegreatness of the results; but whencomposition begins, inspiration is al-ready on the decline, and the mostglorious poetry that has ever been com-municated to the world is probably afeeble shadow of the original concep-tions of the poet. I appeal to the great-est poets of the present day, whetherit is not an error to assert that the finest

passages of poetry are produced bylabour and study. The toil and the delayrecommended by critics can be justlyinterpreted to mean no more than acareful observation of the inspired mo-ments, and an artificial connexion ofthe spaces between their suggestionsby the intertexture of conventional ex-pressions; a necessity only imposed bythe limitedness of the poetical facultyitself; for Milton conceived the Para-

78

dise Lost as a whole before he execu-ted it in portions. We have his ownauthority also for the muse having"dictated" to him the

"unpremeditatedsong/' And let this be an answer tothose who would allege the fifty-sixvarious readings of the first line of theOrlando Furioso. Compositions soproduced are to poetry what mosaic isto painting* This instinct and intuitionof the poetical faculty is still more ob-servable in the plastic and pictorialarts; a great statue or picture growsunder the power of the artist as a childin the mother's womb; and the verymind which directs the hands in form-ation is incapable of accounting to itselffor the origin, the gradations, or themedia of the process.

Poetry is the record of the best and

happiest moments of the happiest andbest minds. We are aware of evanes-cent visitations of thought and feelingsometimes associated with place orperson, sometimes regarding our own

79

mind alone, and always arising unfore-seen and departing unbidden, but ele-

vating and delightful beyond all expres-sion: so that even in the desire and the

regret they leave, there cannot but be

pleasure, participating as it does in thenature of its object. It is as it were the

interpenetration of a diviner nature

through our own; but its footsteps arelike those of a wind over the sea, whichthe coming calm erases, and whosetraces remain only as on the wrinkledsand which paves it. These and cor-responding conditions of being are ex-

perienced principally by those of themost delicate sensibility and the most

enlarged imagination; and the state ofmind produced by them is at war withevery base desire. The enthusiasm ofvirtue, love, patriotism, and friendshipis essentially linked with such emotions;and whilst they last, self appears aswhat it is, an atom to a universe. Poetsare not only subject to these experien-ces as spirits of the most refined organ-

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isation, but they can colour all thatthey combine with the evanescent huesof this ethereal world; a word, a traitin the representation of a scene or a

passion will touch the enchanted chord,and reanimate, in those who have everexperienced these emotions, the sleep-ing, the cold, the buried image of thepast, Poetry thus makes immortal allthat is best and most beautiful in theworld; it arrests the vanishing appari-tions which haunt the interlunations oflife, and veiling them, or in languageor in form, sends them forth amongmankind, bearing sweet news of kind-red joy to those with whom their sistersabide abide, because there is no portalof expression from the caverns of the

spirit which they inhabit into the uni-verse of things. Poetry redeems from

decay the visitations of the divinity inman.

Poetry turns all things to loveliness;it exalts the beauty of that which ismost beautiful, and it adds beauty tok 81

that which is most deformed; it marriesexultation and horror, grief and pleas-ure, eternity and change; it subdues tounion under its light yoke all irrecon-cilable things. It transmutes all that it

touches, and every form moving withinthe radiance of its presence is changedby wondrous sympathy to an incarna-tion of the spirit which it breathes; itssecret alchemy turns to potable goldthe poisonous waters which flow fromdeath through life; it strips the veil of

familiarity from the world, and laysbare the naked and sleeping beauty,which is the

spirit of its forms.All things exist as they are perceived:

at least in relation to the percipient."The mind is its own place, and ofitself can make a heaven of hell, a hellof heaven." But poetry defeats the cursewhich binds us to be subjected to theaccident of surrounding impressions.And whether it spreads its own figuredcurtain, or withdraws life's dark veilfrom before the scene of things, it

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equally creates for us a being withinour being. It makes us the inhabitantsof a world to which the familiar worldis a chaos. It reproduces the commonuniverse of which we are portions andpercipients, and it purges from our in-ward sight the film of familiarity whichobscures from us the wonder of ourbeing. It compels us to feel that whichwe perceive, and to imagine that whichwe know. It creates anew the universe,after it hasbeen annihilated in our minds

by the recurrence of impressions blunt-ed by reiteration. It justifies the boldand true words of Tasso: Non meritanome di creatore, se non Iddio ed ilPoeta.

A poet, as he is the author to othersof the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue,and glory, so he ought personally to bethe happiest, the best, the wisest, andthe most illustrious of men. As to his

glory, let time be challenged to declarewhether the fame of any other institu-tor of human life be comparable to that

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of a poet. That he is the wisest, the

happiest and the best, inasmuch as heis a poet, is equally incontrovertible:the greatest poets have been men ofthe most spotless virtue, of the mostconsummate prudence, and, if wewouldlook into the interior of their lives, themost fortunate of men: and the excep-tions, as they regard those who pos-sessed the poetic faculty in a high yetinferior degree, will be found on con-sideration to confine rather than destroythe rule. Let us for a moment stoop tothe arbitration of popular breath, and

usurping and uniting in our own per-sons the incompatible characters ofaccuser, witness, judge, and execution-er, let us decide without trial, testimo-

ny, or form, that certain motives ofthose who are "there sitting where wedare not soar," are reprehensible. Letus assume that Homer was a drunkard,that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horacewas a coward, that Tasso was a mad-man, that Lord Bacon was a peculator,

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that Raphael was a libertine, that Spen-ser was a poet laureate. It is inconsis-tent with this division of our subjectto cite living poets, but posterity hasdone ample justice to the great namesnow referred to. Their errors have been

weighed, and found to have been dustin the balance; if their sins "were asscarlet, they are now white as snow:"

they have been washed in the blood ofthe mediator and redeemer, Time. Ob-serve in what a ludicrous chaos theimputations of real or fictitious crimehave been confused in the contempo-rary calumnies against poetry and poets;consider how little is, as it appears orappears, as it is; look to your ownmotives, and judge not, lest ye bejudged.

Poetry, as has been said, differs inthis respect from logic, that it is notsubject to the control of the activepowers of the mind, and that its birthand recurrence have no necessary con-nexion with the consciousness or will,

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It is presumptuous to determine thatthese are the necessary conditions of all

mental causation, when mental effectsare experienced unsusceptible of beingreferred to them. The frequent recur-rence of the poetical power, it is obvi-ous to suppose, may produce in themind a habit of order and harmonycorrelative with its own nature andwith its effect upon other minds. Butin the intervals of inspiration, and theymay be frequent without being durable,a poet becomes a man, and is abandonedto the sudden reflux of the influencesunder which others habitually live. Butas he is more delicately organised thanother men, and sensible to pain andpleasure, both his own and that ofothers, in a degree unknown to them,he will avoid the one and pursue theother with an ardour proportioned tothis difference. And he renders himselfobnoxious to calumny,when he neglectsto observe the circumstances underwhich these objects of universal pursuit

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and flight have disguised themselves inone another's garments.

But there is nothing necessarily evilin this error, and thus cruelty, envy, re-venge, avarice, and the passions purelyevil, have never formed any portion ofthe popular imputations on the lives of

poets.I have thought it most favourable to

the cause of truth to set down theseremarks according to the order inwhich theywere suggested to my mind,by a consideration of the subject itself,instead of observing the formality of a

polemical reply; but if the view whichthey contain be just, they will be foundto involve a refutation of the arguersagainst poetry, so far at least as regardsthe first division of the subject. I can

readily conjecture what should havemoved the gall of some learned and in-telligent writers who quarrel with cer-tain versifiers; I confess myself, likethem, unwilling to be stunned by theTheseids of the hoarse Codri of the day.

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Bavius and Maevius undoubtedly are,as they ever were, insufferable persons.But it belongs to a philosophical criticto distinguish rather than confound.The first part of these remarks has

related to poetry in its elements and

principles; and it has been shown, aswell as the narrow limits assigned themwould permit, that what is calledpoetry, in a restricted sense, has a com-mon source with all other forms oforder and of beauty, according to whichthe materials of human life are suscep-tible of being arranged, and which ispoetry in an universal sense.The second part will have for its

object an application of these principlesto the present state of the cultivationof poetry, and a defence of the attemptto idealise the modern forms of man-ners and opinions, and compel theminto a subordination to the imaginativeand creative faculty. For the literatureof England, an energetic developmentof which has ever preceded or accom-

panied a great and ree development ofthe national will, has arisen as it werefrom a new birth. In spite of the low-

thoughted envy which would under-value contemporary merit our own willbe a memorable age in intellectualachievements, andwe live among suchphilosophers and poets as surpass be-

yond comparison any who have ap-peared since the last national strugglefor civil and religious liberty. The mostunfailing herald, companion, and fol-lower of the awakening of a greatpeople to work a beneficial change inopinion or institution, is poetry. Atsuch periods there is an accumulationof the power of communicating andreceiving intense and impassioned con-ceptions respecting man and nature.The persons in whom this power re-sides, may often, as far as regards manyportions of their nature, have little ap-parent correspondence with that spiritof good of which they are the ministers.But even whilst they deny and abjure,

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they are yet compelled to serve, the

power which is seated on the throneof their own soul. It is impossible toread the compositions of the most cele-brated writers of the present day with-out being startled with the electric lifewhich burns within their words. Theymeasure the circumference and soundthe depths of human nature with acomprehensive and all-penetratingspirit and they are themselves perhapsthe most sincerely astonished at itsmanifestations; for it is less their spiritthan the spirit of the age. Poets arethe hierophants of an unapprehendedinspiration; the mirrors of the giganticshadows which futurity casts upon the

present; the words which express what

they understand not; the trumpetswhich sing to battle, and feel not what

they inspire; the influence which ismoved not but moves. Poets are theunacknowledged legislators of theworld.

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This copy of "A Defence of Poetry"is one of an edition of 500 copiesprinted on French Hand-made paperand 8 on Imperial Japan Vellum at thepress of Geo. F. McKiernan 6i Co., inChicago: after which the type has beendistributed. Designed by and printedunder the supervision of Ralph Fletcher

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