The Online Library of Liberty

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• Introduction
• The Autobiography
• Literary Essays
• Appendices
• Textual Principles and Methods
• Acknowledgments
• Autobiography and Literary Essays
• Autobiography Parallel Reading Texts of the Early Draft and the Columbia Ms
• Editors’ Note
• [early Draft]
• [yale Fragment]
• Chapter I: Childhood, and Early Education
• Chapter II: Moral Influences In Early Youth. My Father’s Character and Opinions
• Chapter III: Last Stage of Education, and First of Self-education
• Chapter IV: Youthful Propagandism. the Westminster Review
• Chapter V: A Crisis In My Mental History. One Stage Onward
• Chapter VI: Commencement of the Most Valuable Friendship of My Life. My Father’s Death. Writings and Other Proceedings Up to 1840
• Chapter VII: General View of the Remainder of My Life
• Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review 1824
• Editors’ Note
• Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review
• On Genius 1832
• Editors’ Note
• On Genius
• Thoughts On Poetry and Its Varieties 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Thoughts On Poetry and Its Varieties
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [i] 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [i]
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [ii] 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [ii]
• Views of the Pyrenees 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Views of the Pyrenees
• Tennyson’s Poems 1835
• Editors’ Note
• Tennyson’s Poems
• Aphorisms: Thoughts In the Cloister and the Crowd 1837
• Editors’ Note
• Aphorisms: Thoughts In the Cloister and the Crowd
• Ware’s Letters From Palmyra 1838
• Editors’ Note
• Ware’s Letters From Palmyra
• Writings of Alfred De Vigny 1838
• Editors’ Note
• Writings of Alfred De Vigny
• Milnes’s Poems 1838
• Editors’ Note
• Milnes’s Poems
• Milnes’s Poetry For the People 1840
• Editors’ Note
• Milnes’s Poetry For the People
• Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome 1843
• Editors’ Note
• Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome
• Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, On James Mill 1844
• Editors’ Note
• Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, On James Mill[*]
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Juvenilia
• The History of Rome By John Stuart Mill Aged 6½ Yrs
• Appendix B: Mill’s Early Reading, 1809-22
• Appendix C: Mill’s Early Writing, 1811?-22
• Appendix D: A Few Observations On Mr. Mill (1833)
• Appendix E: Browning’s Pauline (1833)
• Appendix F: Editorial Notes In the London and Westminster Review
• Appendix H: Helen Taylor’s Continuation of the Autobiography
• Appendix I: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited, With Variants and Notes

THOUGHTS ON POETRY AND ITS VARIETIES

1833

EDITORS’ NOTE

Dissertations and Discussions, 2nd ed. (1867), Vol. I, pp. 63-94, where the title is footnoted, “Monthly Repository, January and October 1833.” Running title: “Poetry and Its Varieties.” Republished from “What Is Poetry?” MR, n.s. VII (Jan., 1833), 60-70; and “The Two Kinds of Poetry,” ibid., n.s. VII (Oct., 1833), 714-24. Both signed: “Antiquus.” Running titles as titles. Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘What is Poetry’ and signed Antiquus in the 73d numb. of the Monthly Repository. (In Jan. 1833)” (MacMinn, p. 24), and “An article headed ‘The two kinds of Poetry’ and signed ‘Antiquus’ in the same number of the Monthly Repository”—i.e., the number for Oct., 1833, in which his “Blakey’s History of Moral Science” appeared (MacMinn, p. 34). In the copy in Somerville College of the first of these, “paga pii” is corrected to “paga fui” (351.11); this correction was made in D&D. Also, in a passage not reprinted in D&D, Mill indicated that each “a” should read “or” in “a loveliness, a cheerfulness, a wildness, a melancholy, a terror” (353^s-s) (This is a frequent confusion in Mill’s hand.) In the Somerville College copy of the second, the dubious grammar at 364.29 is called into question by a pencilled underlining, possibly by Mill’s wife, of “impressions, is proportional”, and by a “?” in the margin; the passage, however, was unaltered in D&D, and is left unaltered here.

For comment on the essay, see the Introduction, pp. xxxii-xxxvi and xliii-xliv above.

The following text, taken from the 2nd ed. of D&D (the last in Mill’s lifetime), is collated with that in D&D, 1st ed. (1859), and those in MR. In the footnoted variants, “33” indicates MR; “59” indicates D&D, 1st ed. (1859); and “67” indicates D&D, 2nd ed. (1867).

Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties

I

it has often been asked, What is Poetry? And many and various are the answers which have been returned. The vulgarest of all—one with which no person possessed of the faculties to which poetry addresses itself can ever have been satisfied—is that which confounds poetry with metrical composition: yet to this wretched mockery of a definition, many ^ahad^a been led back, by the failure of all their attempts to find any other that would distinguish what they have been accustomed to call poetry, from much which they have known only under other names.

That, however, the word ^bpoetry imports^b something quite peculiar in its nature, something which may exist in what is called prose as well as in verse, something which does not even require the instrument of words,^[*] but can speak through ^cthe^c other audible symbols called musical sounds, and even through the visible ones which are the language of sculpture, painting, and architecture; all this,^d we believe, is and must be felt, though perhaps indistinctly, by all upon whom poetry in any of its shapes produces any impression beyond that of tickling the ear. ^eThe^e distinction between poetry and what is not poetry, whether explained or not, is felt to be ^ffundamental: and where^f every one feels a difference, a difference there must be. All other appearances may be fallacious, but the appearance of a difference is^g a real difference. Appearances too, like other things, must have a cause, and that which can ^hcause^h anything, even an illusion, must be a reality. And hence, while a half-philosophy disdains the classifications and distinctions indicated by popular language, philosophy carried to its highest point ⁱframesⁱ new ones, but ^jrarely^j sets aside the old, content with correcting and regularizing them. It cuts fresh channels for thought, but^k does not fill up such as it finds readymade^l; it^l traces, on the contrary, more deeply, broadly, and distinctly, those into which the current has spontaneously flowed.

Let us then attempt, in the way of modest inquiry, not to coerce and confine nature within the bounds of an arbitrary definition, but rather to find the boundaries which she herself has set, and erect a barrier round them: not calling mankind to account for having misapplied the word ^mpoetry,^m but attempting to clear upⁿ the conception which they already attach to it, and to bring ^oforward^o as a distinct ^pprinciple^p that which, as a vague ^qfeeling^q , has really guided them in their^r employment of the term.

The object of poetry is confessedly to act upon the emotions; and therein is poetry sufficiently distinguished from what Wordsworth affirms to be its logical opposite, namely, not prose, but matter of fact or science.^[*] The one addresses itself to the belief, the other to the feelings. The one does its work by convincing or persuading, the other by moving. The one acts by presenting a proposition to the understanding, the other by offering interesting objects of contemplation to the sensibilities.

This, however, leaves us very far from a definition of poetry. ^sThis distinguishes^s it from one thing, but we are bound to distinguish it from everything. To ^tbring^t thoughts or images ^ubefore^u the mind for the purpose of acting upon the emotions, does not belong to poetry alone. It is equally the province (for example) of the novelist: and yet the faculty of the poet and ^vthat^v of the novelist are as distinct as any other two faculties; as the ^wfaculties^w of the novelist and of the orator, or of the poet and the metaphysician. The two characters may be united, as characters the most disparate may; but they have no natural connexion.

Many of the ^xgreatest^x poems are in the form of ^yfictitious narratives^y , and in almost all good ^zserious fictions^z there is true poetry. But there is a radical distinction between the interest felt in a ^astory^a as such, and the interest excited by poetry; for the one is derived from ^bincident^b , the other from the representation of ^cfeeling^c . In one, the source of the emotion excited is the exhibition of a state or states of human sensibility; in the other, of a series of states of mere outward circumstances. Now, all minds are capable of being affected more or less by representations of the latter kind, and all, or almost all, by those of the former; yet the two sources of interest correspond to two distinct, and (as respects their greatest development) mutually exclusive, characters of mind.^d

At what age is the passion for a story, for almost any kind of story, merely as a story, the most intense? In childhood. But that also is the age at which poetry, even of the simplest description, is least relished and least understood; because the feelings with which it is especially conversant are yet undeveloped, and not having been even in the slightest degree experienced, cannot be sympathized with. In what stage of the progress of society, again, is story-telling most valued, and the story-teller in greatest request and honour?—In a rude state, like that of the Tartars and Arabs at this day, and of almost all nations in the earliest ages. But in this state of society there is little poetry except ballads, which are mostly narrative, that is, essentially ^estories^e , and derive their principal interest from the ^fincidents^f . Considered as poetry, they are of the lowest and most elementary kind: the feelings depicted, or rather indicated, are the simplest our nature has; such joys and griefs as the immediate pressure of some outward event excites in rude minds, which live wholly immersed in outward things, and have never, either from choice or a force they could not resist, turned themselves to the contemplation of the world within. Passing now from childhood, and from the childhood of society, to the grown-up men and women of this most grown-up and unchildlike age—the minds and hearts of greatest depth and elevation are commonly those which take greatest delight in poetry; the shallowest and emptiest, on the contrary, are, ^gat all events, not those least^g addicted to novel-reading. This accords, too, with all analogous experience of human nature. The sort of persons whom not merely in books, but in their lives, we find perpetually engaged in hunting for excitement from without, are invariably those who do not possess, either in the vigour of their intellectual powers or in the depth of their sensibilities, that which would enable them to find ample excitement nearer^h home. The ⁱmost idle and frivolous personsⁱ take a natural delight in fictitious narrative; the excitement it affords is of the kind which comes from without. Such persons are rarely lovers of poetry, though they may fancy themselves so, because they relish novels in verse. But poetry, which is the delineation of the deeper and more secret workings of ^jhuman emotion^j , is interesting only to those to whom it recals what they have felt, or whose imagination it stirs up to conceive what they could feel, or what they might have been able to feel had their outward circumstances been different.

Poetry, when it is really such, is truth; and fiction also, if it is good for anything, is truth: but they are different truths. The truth of poetry is to paint the human soul truly: the truth of fiction is to give a true picture of ^klife^k . The two kinds of knowledge are different, and come by different ways, come mostly to different persons. Great poets are often proverbially ignorant of life. What they know has come by observation of themselves; they have found ^lwithin them^l one highly delicate and sensitive^m specimen of human nature, on which the laws ofⁿ emotion are written in large characters, such as can be read off without much study^o. Other^o knowledge of mankind, such as comes to men of the world by outward experience, is not indispensable to them as poets: but to the novelist such knowledge is all in all; he has to describe outward things, not the inward man; actions and events, not feelings; and it will not do for him to be numbered among those who, as Madame Roland said of Brissot, know man but not ^pmen^p .^[*]

All this is no bar to the possibility of combining both elements, poetry and narrative or incident, in the same work, and calling it either a novel or a poem; but so may red and white combine on the same human features, or on the same canvas^q . There is one order of composition which requires the union of poetry and incident, each in its highest kind—the dramatic. Even there the two elements are perfectly distinguishable, and may exist of unequal quality, and in the most various proportion. The incidents of a dramatic poem may be scanty and ineffective, though the delineation of passion and character may be of the highest order; as in Goethe’s ^radmirable^rsTorquato Tasso^s ;^[†] or again, the story as a mere story may be well got up for effect, as is the case with some of the most trashy productions of the Minerva press: it may even be, what those are not, a coherent and probable series of events, though there be scarcely a feeling exhibited which is not ^trepresented^t falsely, or in a manner absolutely commonplace. The combination of the two excellencies is what renders Shakespeare so generally acceptable, each sort of readers finding in him what is suitable to their faculties. To the many he is great as a story-teller, to the few as a poet.

In limiting poetry to the delineation of states of feeling, and denying the name where nothing is delineated but outward objects, we may be thought to have done what we promised to avoid—to have not ^ufound^u , but ^vmade^v a definition, in opposition to the usage of^w language, since it is established by common consent that there is a poetry called ^xdescriptive^x . We deny the charge. Description is not poetry because there is descriptive poetry, no more than science is poetry because there is such a thing as a didactic poem^y . But an object which admits of being described, or a truth which may fill a place in a scientific treatise, may ^zalso^z furnish an occasion for the generation of poetry, which we thereupon choose to call descriptive or didactic. The poetry is not in the object itself, nor in the scientific truth itself, but in the state of mind in which the one and the other may be contemplated. The mere delineation of the dimensions and colours of external objects is not poetry, no more than a geometrical ground-plan of St. Peter’s or Westminster Abbey is painting. Descriptive poetry consists, no doubt, in description, but in description of things as they appear, not as they ^aare^a ; and it paints them not in their bare and natural lineaments, but ^bseen through the medium and arrayed in the colours^b of the imagination set in action by the feelings. If a poet ^cdescribes^c a lion, he ^ddoes not describe^d him as a naturalist would, nor even as a traveller would, who was intent upon stating the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He ^edescribes^e him by ^fimagery^f , that is, by suggesting the most striking likenesses and contrasts which might occur to a mind contemplating the lion, in the state of awe, wonder, or terror, which the spectacle naturally excites, or is, on the occasion, supposed to excite. Now this is describing the lion professedly, but the state of excitement of the spectator really. The lion may be described falsely or ^gwith exaggeration^g , and the poetry be all the better; but if the human emotion be not painted with^h scrupulous truth, the poetry is bad poetry, i.e. is not poetry at all, but a failure.

Thus far our progress towards a clear view of the essentials of poetry has brought us very close to the last two attempts at a definition of poetry which we happen to have seen in print, both of them by poets and men of genius. The one is by Ebenezer Elliott, the author of Corn-Law Rhymes, and other poems of still greater merit. “Poetry,” says he, “is impassioned truth.”^[*] The other is by a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, and comes, we think, still nearer the mark. ⁱHe definesⁱ poetry, “man’s thoughts tinged by his feelings.”^[†] There is in either definition a near approximation to what we are in search of. Every truth which ^ja human being can enunciate^j , every thought, even every outward impression, which can enter into his consciousness, may become poetry when shown through any impassioned medium, when invested with the colouring of joy, or grief, or pity, or affection, or admiration, or reverence, or awe, or even hatred or terror: and, unless so coloured, nothing, be it as interesting as it may, is poetry. But both these definitions fail to discriminate between poetry and eloquence. Eloquence, as well as poetry, is impassioned truth; eloquence, as well as poetry, is thoughts coloured by the feelings. Yet common apprehension and philosophic criticism alike recognise a distinction between the two: there is much that every one would call eloquence, which no one would think of classing as poetry. A question will sometimes arise, whether some particular author is a poet; and those who maintain the negative commonly allow, that though not a poet, he is a highly ^keloquent^k writer.^l The distinction between poetry and eloquence appears to us to be equally fundamental with the distinction between poetry and narrative, or between poetry and description^m, while it^m is still farther from having been satisfactorily cleared up than either of the othersⁿ .

Poetry and eloquence are both alike the expression or ^outterance^o of feeling. But if we may be excused the^p antithesis, we should say that eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard. Eloquence supposes an audience; the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a listener. Poetry is feeling, confessing itself to itself in moments of solitude, and ^qembodying itself^q in symbols, which are the nearest possible representations of the feeling in the exact shape in which it exists in the poet’s mind. Eloquence is feeling pouring itself ^rout^r to other minds, courting their sympathy, or endeavouring to influence their belief, or move them to passion or to action.

All poetry is of the nature of soliloquy. It may be said that poetry which is printed on hot-pressed paper and sold at a bookseller’s shop, is a soliloquy in full dress, and on the stage. ^sIt is so; but^s there is nothing absurd in the idea of such a mode of soliloquizing. What we have said to ourselves, we may tell to others afterwards; what we have said or done in solitude, we may voluntarily reproduce when we know that other eyes are upon us. But no trace of consciousness that any eyes are upon us must be visible in the work itself. The actor knows that there is an audience present; but if he act as though he knew it, he acts ill. A poet may write poetry ^tnot only^t with the intention of ^uprinting^u it^v, but^v for the express purpose of being paid for it; that it should be poetry, being written under^w such influences, is^x less probable; not, however, impossible; but no otherwise possible than if he can succeed in excluding from his work every vestige of such lookings-forth into the outward and every-day world, and can express his ^yemotions^y exactly as he has felt them in solitude, or as he ^zis conscious^z that he should feel them though they were to remain for ever unuttered^a, or (at the lowest) as he knows that others feel them in similar circumstances of solitude^a . But when he turns round and addresses himself to another person; when the act of utterance is not itself the end, but a means to an end—viz. by the feelings he himself expresses, to work upon the feelings, or upon the belief, or the will, of another,—when the expression of his emotions, or of his thoughts tinged by his emotions, is tinged also by that purpose, by that desire of making an impression upon another mind, then it ceases to be poetry, and becomes eloquence.

Poetry, accordingly, is the natural fruit of solitude and meditation; eloquence, of intercourse with the world. The persons who have most feeling of their own, if intellectual culture ^bhas^b given them a language in which to express it, have the highest faculty of poetry; those who best understand the feelings of others, are the most eloquent. The persons, and the nations, who commonly excel in poetry, are those whose character and tastes render them least dependent^c upon the applause, or sympathy, or concurrence of the world in general. Those to whom that applause, that sympathy, that concurrence are most necessary, generally excel most in eloquence. And hence, perhaps, the French, who are the ^dleast^d poetical of all great and ^eintellectual^e nations, are among the ^fmost^f eloquent: the French, also, being the most sociable, the vainest, and the least self-dependent.

If the above be, as we believe, the true theory of the distinction commonly admitted between eloquence and poetry; or ^geven^g though it be not ^hso^h , yet if, as we cannot doubt, the distinction above stated be a real boná fide distinction, it will be found to hold, not merely in the language of words, but in all other language, and to intersect the whole domain of art.

Take, for example, music: we shall find in that art, so peculiarly the expression of passion, two perfectly distinct styles; one of which may be called the poetry, the other the oratory of music. This difference, being seized, would put an end to much musical sectarianism. There has been much contention whether the ⁱmusic of the modern Italian school, that of Rossini and his successors, be impassioned or notⁱ . Without doubt, the passion it expresses is not the musing, meditative tenderness, or pathos, or grief of Mozart ^jor Beethoven^j . Yet it is passion, but ^kgarrulous^k passion—the passion which pours itself into other ears; and therein the better calculated for ^ldramatic^l effect, having a natural adaptation for dialogue. Mozart also is great in musical oratory; but his most touching compositions are in the opposite style—that of soliloquy. Who can imagine “Dove sono”^[*]heard? We imagine it overheard.^m

Purely pathetic music commonly partakes of soliloquy. The soul is absorbed in its distress, and though there may be bystanders, it is not thinking of them. When the mind is looking within, and not without, its state does not often or rapidly vary; and hence the even, uninterrupted flow, approaching almost to monotony, which a good reader, or a good singer, will give to words or music of a pensive or melancholy cast. But grief taking the form of a prayer, or of a complaint, becomes oratorical; no longer low, and even, and subdued, it assumes a more emphatic rhythm, a more rapidly returning accent; instead of a few slow equal notes, following one after another at regular intervals, it crowds note upon note, and ⁿoftenⁿ assumes a hurry and bustle like joy. Those who are familiar with some of the best of Rossini’s serious compositions, such as the air “Tu che i miseri conforti,” in the opera of Tancredi, or the duet “Ebben per mia memoria,” in La Gazza Ladra,^[*] will at once understand and feel our meaning. Both are highly tragic and passionate; the passion of both is that of oratory, not poetry. The like may be said of that most moving ^oinvocation^o in Beethoven’s Fidelio—

• Komm, Hoffnung, lass das letzte Stern
• Der Mude nicht erbleichen.

in which Madame ^pSchröder^p Devrient^q exhibited such consummate powers of pathetic expression.^[†] How different from Winter’s beautiful “Paga fui,”^[‡] the very soul of melancholy exhaling itself in solitude; fuller of meaning, and, therefore, more profoundly poetical than the words for which it was composed—for it seems to express not simple melancholy, but the melancholy of remorse.

If, from vocal music, we now pass to instrumental, we may have a specimen of musical oratory in any fine military symphony or march: while the poetry of music seems to have attained its consummation in Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont^r, so wonderful in its mixed expression of grandeur and melancholy^r .

In the arts which speak to the eye, the same distinctions will be found to hold, not only between poetry and oratory, but between poetry, oratory, narrative, and simple imitation or description.

Pure ^sdescription^s is exemplified in a ^tmere^t portrait or a ^umere^u landscape—productions of art, it is true, but of the mechanical rather than of the fine arts, being works of simple imitation, not ^vcreation^v . We say, a ^wmere^w portrait, or a ^xmere^x landscape, because it is possible for a portrait or a landscape, without ceasing to be such, to be also a ^ypicture; like Turner’s landscapes, and the great portraits by Titian or Vandyke.^y

Whatever in painting or sculpture expresses human feeling—or ^zcharacter^z , which is only a certain state of feeling grown habitual—may be called, according to circumstances, the poetry, or the eloquence, of the painter’s or the sculptor’s art: the poetry, if the feeling declares itself by such signs as escape from us when we are unconscious of being seen; the oratory, if the signs are those we use for the purpose of voluntary communication.^a

The narrative style answers to what is called historical painting, which it is the fashion among connoisseurs to treat as the climax of the pictorial art. That it is the most difficult branch of the art we do not doubt, because, in its perfection, it includes^b the perfection of all the other branches^c: as in like manner^c an epic poem, though in so far as it is epic (i.e. narrative) it is not poetry at all, is yet esteemed the greatest effort of poetic genius, because there is no kind whatever of poetry which may not appropriately find a place in it. But an historical picture as such, that is, as the representation of an incident, must necessarily, as it seems to us, be poor and ineffective. The narrative powers of painting are extremely limited. Scarcely any picture, scarcely ^deven any series^d of pictures,^e tells its own story without the aid of an interpreter^f . But it is the single figures which, to us, are the great charm even of an historical picture. It is in these that the power of the art is really seen^g. In^g the attempt to ^hnarrate^h , visible and permanent signs are ⁱtooⁱ far behind the fugitive audible ones, which follow so fast one after another, while the faces and figures in a narrative picture, even though they be Titian’s, stand still. Who would not prefer one Virgin and Child of Raphael, to all the pictures which Rubens, with his fat, frouzy Dutch Venuses, ever painted? Though Rubens, besides excelling almost every one in his mastery over^j the mechanical parts of his art, often shows real genius in ^kgrouping^k his figures, the peculiar problem of historical painting. But then, who, except a mere student of drawing and colouring, ever cared to look twice at any of the figures themselves? The power of painting lies in poetry, of which Rubens had not the slightest tincture—not in narrative, ^lwherein^l he might have excelled.

The single figures, however, in an historical picture, are rather the ^meloquence^m of painting than the poetry; they mostly (unless they are quite out of place in the picture) express the feelings of one person as modified by the presence of others. Accordingly the minds whose bent leads them rather to eloquence than to poetry, rush to historical painting. The French painters, for instance, seldom attempt, because they could make nothing of, single heads, like those glorious ones of the Italian masters, with which they might ⁿfeedⁿ themselves day after day in their own Louvre. They must all be ^ohistorical^o ; and they are, almost to a man, attitudinizers. If we wished to give^p any young artist the most impressive warning our ^qimagination^q could devise against that kind of vice in the pictorial, which corresponds to rant in the histrionic art, we would advise him to walk once up and once down the gallery of the Luxembourg^r . Every figure in French painting or statuary seems to be showing itself off before spectators: they are ^snot poetical, but in the worst style of corrupted eloquence.^s

II

^tnascitur poëta^t is a maxim of classical antiquity, which has passed to these latter days with less questioning than most of the doctrines of that early age. When it originated, the human faculties were occupied, fortunately for posterity, less in examining how the works of genius are created, than in creating them: and the adage, probably, had no higher source than the tendency common among mankind to consider all power which is not visibly the effect of practice, all skill which is not capable of being reduced to mechanical rules, as the result of a peculiar gift. Yet this aphorism, born in the infancy of psychology, will perhaps be found, now when that science is in its adolescence, to be as true as an epigram ever is, that is, to contain some truth; truth, however, which has been so compressed and bent out of shape, in order to tie it up into so small a knot of only two words, that it requires an almost infinite amount of unrolling and laying straight, before it will resume its just proportions.

We are not now intending to remark upon the grosser misapplications of this ancient maxim, which have engendered so many races of poetasters. The days are gone by, when every raw youth whose borrowed phantasies have set themselves to a borrowed tune, mistaking, as Coleridge says, an ardent desire of poetic reputation for poetic genius,^[*] while unable to disguise from himself that he had taken no means whereby he might ^ubecome^u a poet, could fancy himself a born one. Those who would reap without sowing, and gain the victory without fighting the battle, are ambitious now of another sort of distinction, and are born novelists, or public speakers, not poets. And the wiser thinkers^v understand and acknowledge that poetic excellence is subject to the same necessary conditions with any other mental endowment; and that to no one of the spiritual benefactors of mankind is a higher or a more assiduous intellectual culture needful than to the poet. It is true, he possesses this advantage over others who use the “instrument of words,”^[†] that, of the truths which he utters, a larger proportion are derived from personal consciousness, and a smaller from philosophic investigation. But the power itself of discriminating between what really is consciousness, and what is only a process of inference completed in a single instant—and the capacity of distinguishing whether that of which the mind is conscious be an eternal truth, or but a dream—are among the last results of the most matured and ^wperfect^w intellect. Not to mention that the poet, no more than any other person who writes, confines himself altogether to intuitive truths, nor has any means of communicating even these but by words, every one of which derives all its power of conveying a meaning, from a whole host of acquired notions, and facts learnt by study and experience.

Nevertheless, it seems undeniable in point of fact, and consistent with the principles of a sound metaphysics, that there are poetic natures. There is a mental and physical constitution or temperament, peculiarly fitted for poetry. This temperament will not of itself make a poet, no more than the soil will the fruit; and as good fruit may be raised by culture from indifferent soils, so may good poetry from naturally unpoetical minds. But the poetry of one who is a poet by nature, will be clearly and broadly distinguishable from the poetry of mere culture. It may not be truer; it may not be more useful; but it will be different: fewer will appreciate it, even though many should affect to do so; but in those few it will find a keener sympathy, and will yield them a deeper enjoyment.

One may write genuine poetry, and not be a poet; for whosoever writes out truly any^x human feeling, writes poetry. All persons, even the most unimaginative, in moments of strong emotion, speak poetry; and hence the drama is poetry, which else were always prose, except when a poet is one of the characters. What ^yis^y poetry, but the thoughts and words in which emotion spontaneously embodies itself? As there are few who are not, at least for ^zsome moments and in some situations, capable of some^z strong feeling, poetry is natural to most persons at some period of their lives. And any one whose feelings are genuine, though but of the average strength,—if he be not diverted by uncongenial thoughts or occupations from the indulgence of them, and if he acquire by culture, as all persons may, the faculty of delineating them correctly,—has it in his power to be a poet, so far as a life passed in writing unquestionable poetry may be considered to confer that title. But ^aought^a it to do so? Yes, perhaps, in^b a collection of “British Poets.” But “poet” is the name also of a variety of ^cman^c , not solely of the author of a particular variety of ^dbook^d : now, to have written whole volumes of real poetry, is possible to almost all kinds of characters, and implies no greater peculiarity of mental construction than to be the author of a history or a novel.

Whom, then, shall we call poets? Those who are so constituted, that emotions are the links of association by which their ideas, both sensuous and spiritual, are connected together. This constitution belongs (within certain limits) to all in whom poetry is a pervading principle. In all others, poetry is something extraneous and superinduced: something out of themselves, foreign to the habitual course of their every-day lives and characters; a^e world to which they may make occasional visits, but where they are sojourners, not dwellers, and which, when out of it, or even when in it, they think of, peradventure, but as a phantom-world, a place of ignes fatui and spectral illusions. Those only who have the peculiarity of association which we have mentioned, and which is ^fa natural though not an universal consequence^f of intense sensibility, instead of seeming not themselves when they are uttering poetry, scarcely seem themselves when uttering anything to which poetry is foreign. Whatever be the thing which they are contemplating, ^gif it be capable of connecting itself with their emotions,^g the aspect under which it first and most naturally paints itself to them, is its poetic aspect. The poet of culture sees his object in prose, and describes it in poetry; the poet of nature actually sees it in poetry.

This point is perhaps worth some little illustration; the rather, as metaphysicians (the ultimate arbiters of all philosophical criticism), while they have busied themselves for two thousand years, more or less, about the few ^huniversal^h laws of human nature, have strangely neglected the analysis of its ⁱdiversitiesⁱ . Of these, none lie deeper or reach further than the varieties which difference of nature and of education makes in what may be termed the habitual bond of association. In a mind entirely uncultivated, which is also without any strong feelings, objects, whether of sense or of intellect, arrange themselves in the mere casual order in which they have been seen, heard, or otherwise perceived. Persons of this sort may be said to think chronologically. If they remember a fact, it is by reason of a fortuitous coincidence with some trifling incident or circumstance which took place at the very time. If they have a story to tell, or testimony to deliver in a witness-box, their narrative must follow the exact order in which the events took place: dodge them, and the thread of association is broken; they cannot go on. Their associations, to use the language of philosophers, are chiefly of the successive, not the synchronous kind, and whether successive or synchronous, are mostly ^jcasual^j .

To the man of science, again, or of business, objects group themselves according to the artificial classifications which the understanding has voluntarily made for the convenience of thought or of practice. But where any of the impressions are vivid and intense, the associations into which these enter are the ruling ones: it being a well-known law of association, that the stronger a feeling is, the more ^kquickly^k and strongly it associates itself with any other object or feeling. Where, therefore, nature has given strong feelings, and education has not created factitious tendencies stronger than the natural ones, the prevailing associations will be those which connect objects and ideas with emotions, and with each other through the intervention of emotions. Thoughts and images will be linked together, according to the similarity of the feelings which cling to them. A thought will introduce a thought by first introducing a feeling which is allied with it. At the centre of each group of thoughts or images will be found a feeling; and the thoughts or images ^lwill be there only^l because the feeling was there. ^mThe^m combinations which the mind puts together,ⁿ the pictures which it paints,^o the wholes which imagination constructs out of the materials supplied by fancy, will be indebted to some dominant ^pfeeling^p , not as in other natures to a dominant ^qthought^q , for their unity and consistency of character—for what distinguishes them from incoherencies.

The difference, then, between the poetry of a poet, and the poetry of a cultivated but not naturally ^rpoetic^r mind, is, that in the latter, with however bright a halo of feeling the thought may be surrounded and glorified, the thought itself is ^salways^s the conspicuous object; while the poetry of a poet is feeling itself, employing thought only as the medium of its ^texpression^t . In the one, feeling waits upon thought; in the other, thought upon feeling. The one writer has a distinct aim, common to him with any other didactic author; he desires to convey the thought, and he conveys it clothed in the feelings which it excites in himself, or which he deems most appropriate to it. The other merely pours forth the overflowing of his feelings; and all the thoughts which those feelings suggest are floated promiscuously along the stream.

It may assist in rendering our meaning intelligible, if we illustrate it by a parallel between the two English authors of our own day who have produced the greatest quantity of true and enduring poetry, Wordsworth and Shelley. Apter instances could not be wished for; the one might be cited as the type, the exemplar, of what the poetry of culture may accomplish; the other as perhaps the most striking example ever known of the poetic temperament. How different, accordingly, is the poetry of these two great ^uwriters.^u In Wordsworth, the poetry is almost always the mere setting of a thought. The thought may be more valuable than the setting, or it may be less valuable, but there can be no question as to which was first in his mind: what he is impressed with, and what he is anxious to impress, is some proposition, more or less distinctly conceived; some truth, or something which he deems such. He lets the thought dwell in his mind, till it excites, as is the nature of thought, other thoughts, and also such feelings as the measure of his sensibility is adequate to supply. Among these thoughts and feelings, had he chosen a different walk of authorship (and there are many in which he might equally have excelled), he would probably have made a different selection of media for enforcing the parent thought: his habits, however, being those of poetic composition, he selects in preference the strongest feelings, and the thoughts with which most of feeling is naturally or habitually connected. His poetry, therefore, may be defined to be, his thoughts, coloured by, and impressing themselves by means of, emotions.^[*] Such poetry, Wordsworth has occupied a long life in producing. And well and wisely has he so done. Criticisms, no doubt, may be made occasionally both upon the thoughts themselves, and upon the skill he has demonstrated in the choice of his ^vmedia^v : for, an affair of skill and study, in the most rigorous sense, it evidently was. But he has not laboured in vain: he has exercised, and continues to exercise, a powerful, and mostly a highly beneficial influence over the formation and growth of not a few of the most cultivated and vigorous of the youthful minds of our time, over whose heads poetry of the opposite description would have flown, for want of an original organization, physical ^wor^w mental, in sympathy with it.

On the other hand, Wordsworth’s poetry is never bounding, never ebullient; has little even of the appearance of spontaneousness: the well is never so full that it overflows. There is an air of calm deliberateness about all he writes, which is not characteristic of the poetic temperament: his poetry seems one thing, himself another; he seems to be poetical because he wills to be so, not because he cannot help it: did he will to dismiss poetry, he need never again, it might almost seem, have a poetical thought. He never seems possessed by ^xany^x feeling; no emotion seems ever so strong as to have entire sway, for the time being, over the current of his thoughts. He never, even for the space of a few stanzas, appears entirely ^ygiven up^y to exultation, or grief, or pity, or love, or admiration, or devotion, or even animal spirits. He now and then, though seldom, ^zattempts^z to write as if he were; and never, we think, without leaving an impression of poverty: as the brook which on nearly level ground quite fills its banks, appears but a thread when running rapidly down a precipitous declivity. He has feeling enough to form a decent, graceful, even beautiful decoration to a thought which is in itself interesting and moving; but not so much as suffices to stir up the soul by mere sympathy with itself in its simplest manifestation, nor enough to summon up that array of “thoughts of power” which in a richly stored mind always attends the call of really intense feeling. It is for this reason, doubtless, that the genius of Wordsworth is essentially unlyrical. Lyric poetry, as it was the earliest kind, is also, if the view we are now taking of poetry be correct, more eminently and peculiarly poetry than any other: it is the poetry most natural to a really poetic temperament, and least capable of being successfully imitated by one not so endowed by nature.^a

Shelley is the very reverse of all this. Where Wordsworth is strong, he is weak; where Wordsworth is weak, he is strong. Culture, that culture by which Wordsworth has reared from his own inward nature the richest harvest ever brought forth by a soil of so little depth, is precisely what was wanting to Shelley: or let us rather say, he had not, at the period of his deplorably early death, reached sufficiently far in that intellectual progression of which he was capable, and which, if it has done so much for ^bgreatly^b inferior natures, might have made of him the ^cmost perfect, as he was already the most gifted,^c of our poets. For him, ^dvoluntary^d mental discipline had done little: the vividness of his emotions and of his sensations had done all. He seldom follows up an idea; it starts into life, summons from the fairy-land of his inexhaustible fancy some three or four bold images, then vanishes, and straight he is off on the wings of some casual association into quite another sphere. He had ^escarcely^e yet acquired the consecutiveness of thought necessary for a long poem; his more ambitious compositions too often resemble the scattered fragments of a mirror; colours brilliant as life, single images without end, but no picture. It is only when under the overruling influence of some one state of feeling, either actually experienced, or summoned up in^f the vividness of reality by a fervid imagination, that he writes as a great poet; unity of feeling being to him the harmonizing principle which a central idea is to minds of another class, and supplying the coherency and consistency which would else have been wanting. Thus it is in many of his smaller, and especially his lyrical poems. They are obviously written to exhale, perhaps to relieve, a state of feeling, or of conception of feeling, almost oppressive from its vividness. The thoughts and imagery are suggested by the feeling, and are such as it finds unsought. The state of feeling may be either of soul or of sense, or oftener (might we not say invariably?) of both: for the poetic temperament is usually, perhaps always, accompanied by exquisite senses. The exciting cause may be either an object or an idea. But whatever of sensation enters into the feeling, must not be local, or consciously ^gorganic^g , it is a ^hcondition^h of the whole frame, not of a part onlyⁱ. Likeⁱ the state of sensation produced by a fine climate, or indeed like all strongly pleasurable or painful sensations in an impassioned nature, it pervades the entire nervous system. States of feeling, whether sensuous or spiritual, which thus possess the whole being, are the fountains of that^j which we have called the poetry of poets; and which is little else than ^ka pouring forth^k of the thoughts and images that pass across the mind while some permanent state of feeling is occupying it.

To the same original fineness of organization, Shelley was doubtless indebted for another of his rarest gifts, that exuberance of imagery, which when unrepressed, as in many of his poems it is, amounts^l to a ^mfault^m . The susceptibility of his nervous system, which made his emotions intense, made also the impressions of his external senses deep and clear: and agreeably to the law of association by which, as already remarked, the strongest impressions are those which associate themselves the most easily and strongly, these vivid sensations were readily recalled to mind by all objects or thoughts which had coexisted with them, ⁿandⁿ by all feelings which in any degree resembled them. Never did a fancy so teem with sensuous imagery as Shelley’s. Wordsworth economizes an image, and detains it until he has distilled all the poetry out of it, and it will not yield a drop more: Shelley lavishes his with a profusion which is unconscious because it is inexhaustible.^o

If, then, the maxim Nascitur poëta, mean, either that the power of producing poetical compositions is a peculiar faculty which the poet brings into the world with him, which grows with his growth like any of his bodily powers, and is as independent of culture as his height, and his complexion; or that ^pany^p natural peculiarity ^qwhatever^q is implied in producing poetry, real poetry, and in any quantity—such poetry too, as, to the majority of educated and intelligent readers, shall appear quite as good as, or even better than, any other; in either sense the doctrine is false. And nevertheless, there is poetry which could not emanate but from a mental and physical constitution peculiar, not in the ^rkind,^r but in the ^sdegree^s of its susceptibility: a constitution which makes its possessor capable of greater happiness than mankind in general, and also of greater unhappiness; and because greater, so also more various. And such poetry, to all who know enough of nature to own it as being ^tin^t nature, is much ^umore^u poetry, is poetry in a far higher sense, than any other; since the common element of all poetry, that which constitutes poetry, human feeling, enters far more largely into this than into the poetry of culture. Not only because the natures which we have called poetical, really feel more, and consequently have more feeling to express; but because, the capacity of feeling being so great, feeling, when excited and not voluntarily resisted, seizes the helm of their thoughts, and the succession of ideas and images becomes the mere utterance of an emotion; not, as in other natures, the emotion a mere ornamental colouring of the thought.

Ordinary education and the ordinary course of life are constantly at work counteracting this quality of mind, and substituting habits more suitable to their own ends: if instead of ^vsubstituting,^v they were content to ^wsuperadd, there would be^w nothing to complain of. But when will education consist, not in repressing any mental faculty or power, from the uncontrolled action of which danger is apprehended, but in training up to its proper strength the corrective and antagonist power?

In whomsoever the quality which we have described exists, and is not stifled, that person is a poet. Doubtless he is a ^xgreater^x poet in proportion as the fineness of his perceptions, whether of sense or of internal consciousness, furnishes him with an ampler supply of lovely images—the vigour and richness of his intellect with a greater abundance of moving thoughts. For it is through these thoughts and images that the feeling speaks, and through their impressiveness that it impresses itself, and finds response in other hearts; and from these media of transmitting it (contrary to the laws of physical nature) increase of intensity is reflected back upon the feeling itself. But all these it is possible to have, and not be a poet; they are mere materials, which the poet shares in common with other people. What constitutes the poet is not the imagery nor the thoughts, nor even the feelings, but the law according to which they are called up. He is a poet, not because he has ideas of any particular kind, but because the succession of his ideas is subordinate to the course of his emotions.

Many who have never acknowledged this in theory, bear testimony to it in their particular judgments. In listening to an oration, or reading a written discourse not professedly poetical, when do we begin to feel that the speaker or author is putting off the character of the orator or the prose writer, and is passing into the poet? Not when he begins to show strong feeling; ^ythen^y we merely say, he ^zis in earnest, he feels^z what he says; still less when he expresses himself in imagery; ^athen^a , unless illustration be manifestly his sole object, we are apt to say, This is affectation. It is when the feeling (instead of passing away, or, if it continue, letting the train of thoughts run on exactly as they would have done if there were no influence at work but the mere intellect) becomes itself the originator of another train of association, which expels, or blends, with the former; ^bwhen (for example) either his words, or the mode of their arrangement, are such as^b we spontaneously use only when in a state of excitement, ^cproving^c that the mind is at least as much occupied by a passive state of its own feelings, as by the desire of attaining the premeditated end which the discourse has in view.^*

Our judgments of authors who lay actual claim to the title of poets, follow the same principle. ^jWhenever^j , after a writer’s meaning is fully understood, it is still matter of reasoning and discussion whether he is a poet or not, he will be found to be wanting in the characteristic peculiarity of association^k so often adverted to. When, on the contrary, after reading or hearing one or two passages, ^lwe^l instinctively and without hesitation ^mcry^m out. This is a poet, the probability is, that the passages are strongly marked with this peculiar quality. And we may add that in such case, a critic who, not having sufficient feeling to respond to the poetry, is also without sufficient philosophy to understand it though he feel it not, will be apt to pronounce, not “this is prose,” but “this is exaggeration,” “this is mysticism,” or, “this is nonsense.”

Although a philosopher cannot, by culture, make himself, in the peculiar sense in which we now use the term, a poet, unless at least he have that peculiarity of nature which would probably have made poetry his earliest pursuit; a poet may always, by culture, make himself a philosopher. The poetic laws of association are by no means incompatible with the more ordinary laws; are by no means such as ⁿmustⁿ have their course, even though a deliberate purpose require their suspension. If the peculiarities of the poetic temperament were uncontrollable in any poet, they might be supposed so in Shelley; yet how powerfully, in The Cenci,^[*] does he coerce and restrain all the characteristic qualities of his ^ogenius; what severe simplicity, in place of his usual barbaric splendour; how rigidly does he keep the feelings and the imagery in subordination to the thought.^o

The investigation of nature requires no habits or qualities of mind, but such as may always be acquired by industry and mental activity. Because ^pat one time^p the mind may be so given up to a state of feeling, that the succession of its ideas is determined by the present enjoyment or suffering which pervades it, ^qthis^q is no reason but that in the calm retirement of study, when under no peculiar excitement either of the outward or of the inward sense, it may form any combinations, or pursue any trains of ideas, which are most conducive to the purposes of philosophic inquiry: and may, while in that state, form deliberate convictions, from which no excitement will afterwards make it swerve. Might we not go even further than this? We shall not pause to ask whether it be not a misunderstanding of the nature of passionate feeling to imagine that it is inconsistent with ^rcalmness;^r whether they who so deem of it, do not ^smistake passion in the militant or antagonistic state, for the type of passion universally; do not confound passion struggling towards an outward object, with passion brooding over itself^s . But without entering into this deeper investigation; that capacity of strong feeling, which is supposed necessarily to disturb the judgment, is also the material out of which all motives are made; the motives, consequently, which lead human beings to the pursuit of truth. The greater the individual’s capability of happiness and of misery, the stronger interest has that individual in arriving at truth; and when once that interest is felt, an impassioned nature is sure to pursue this, as to pursue any other object, with greater ardour; for energy of character is ^tcommonly^t the offspring of strong feeling. If, therefore, the most impassioned natures do not ripen into the most powerful intellects, it is always from defect of culture, or something wrong in the circumstances by which the being has originally or successively been surrounded. Undoubtedly strong feelings ^urequire^u a strong intellect to carry them, as more sail requires more ballast: and when, from neglect, or bad education, that strength is wanting, no wonder if the grandest and swiftest vessels make the most utter wreck.

Where, as in ^vsome of our older poets^v , a poetic nature has been united with logical and scientific culture, the peculiarity of association arising from the finer nature so perpetually alternates with the associations attainable by commoner natures trained to high perfection, that its own particular law is not so conspicuously characteristic of the result produced, as in a poet like Shelley, to whom systematic intellectual culture, in a measure proportioned to the intensity of his own nature, has been wanting. Whether the superiority will naturally be on the side of the ^wphilosopher-poet^w or of the mere poet—whether the writings of the one ought, as a whole, to be truer, and their influence more beneficent, than those of the other—is too obvious in principle to need statement: it would be absurd to doubt whether two endowments are better than one; whether truth is more certainly arrived at by two processes, verifying and correcting each other, than by one alone. Unfortunately, in practice the matter is not quite so simple; there the question often is, which is least prejudicial to the intellect, uncultivation or malcultivation. For, as long as ^xeducation^x consists chiefly of the mere inculcation of traditional opinions, many of which, from the mere fact that the human intellect has not yet reached perfection, must necessarily be false; ^yso long as even those who are best taught, are rather taught to know the thoughts of others than to think,^y it is not always clear that the poet of acquired ideas has the advantage over him whose feeling has been his sole teacher. For, the depth and durability of wrong as well as of right impressions, is proportional to the fineness of the material; and they who have the greatest capacity of natural feeling are generally those whose artificial feelings are the strongest. Hence, doubtless, among other reasons, it is, that in an age of revolutions in opinion, the ^zcotemporary^z poets, those at least who deserve the name, those who have any individuality of character, if they are not before their age, are almost sure to be behind it. An observation curiously verified all over Europe in the present century. Nor let it be thought disparaging. However urgent may be the necessity for a breaking up of old modes of belief, the most strongminded and discerning, next to those who head the movement, are generally those who bring up the rear of it.^a

[a-a]33, 59 have

[b-b]33 “poetry” does import] 59 “poetry” imports

[[*] ]Wordsworth, “To B. R. Haydon, Esq.,” in Poetical Works (1827), Vol. II, p. 296 (l. 2).

[c-c]33 those

[d]33 as

[e-e]33 To the mind, poetry is either nothing, or it is the better part of all art whatever, and of real life too, and the

[f-f]33 fundamental. [paragraph] Where

[g]33 itself

[h-h]33 cause

[i-i]33 may frame

[j-j]33 never

[k]33 it

[l-l]33 , but

[m-m]33, 59 “poetry,”

[n]33 to them

[o-o]33 before their minds

[p-p]33 principle

[q-q]33 feeling

[r]33 actual

[[*] ]“Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads,” ibid., Vol. IV, p. 368n (note to para. 12).

[s-s]33 We have distinguished

[t-t]33 present

[u-u]33 to

[v-v]33 the faculty

[w-w]33 faculty

[x-x]33 finest

[y-y]33 novels

[z-z]33 novels

[a-a]33 novel

[b-b]33 incident

[c-c]33 feeling

[d]33 So much is the nature of poetry dissimilar to the nature of fictitious narrative, that to have a really strong passion for either of the two, seems to presuppose or to superinduce a comparative indifference to the other

[e-e]33 stories

[f-f]33 incidents

[g-g]33 by universal remark, the most

[h]33 at

[i-i]33 same persons whose time is divided between sight-seeing, gossip, and fashionable dissipation,

[j-j]33 the human heart

[k-k]33 life

[l-l]33 there

[m]33 and refined

[n]33 human

[o-o]33 . and other

[p-p]33, 59 men

[[*] ]Marie Jeanne Phlipon Roland de la Platière, Appel à l’impartiale postérité, ed. Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc, 4 pts. (Paris: Louvet, 1795), Pt. I, p. 36.

[q]33 ; and so may oil and vinegar, though opposite natures, blend together in the same composite taste

[r-r]33 glorious

[s-s]33 “Torquato Tasso” [italics added to the present text]

[[†] ]In Werke, 55 vols. (Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1828-33), Vol. IX, pp. 99-245.

[t-t]33 exhibited

[u-u]33 found

[v-v]33 made

[w]33 the English

[x-x]33 descriptive

[y]33 , no more, we might almost say, than Greek or Latin is poetry because there are Greek and Latin poems

[z-z]33 also

[a-a]33 are

[b-b]33 arranged in the colours and seen through the medium

[c-c]33 is to describe

[d-d]33 will not set about describing

[e-e]33 will describe

[f-f]33 imagery

[g-g]33 in exaggerated colours

[h]33 the most

[[*] ]Ebenezer Elliott, Preface to 3rd ed., Corn Law Rhymes (London: Steill, 1831), p. v.

[i-i]33 We forget his exact words, but in substance he defined

[[†] ]Mill almost certainly has John Wilson in mind, but these exact words have not been located.

[j-j]33 man can announce

[k-k]33 eloquent

[l]33 [paragraph]

[m-m]33 . It

[n]33 , unless, which is highly probable, the German artists and critics have thrown some light upon it which has not yet reached us. Without a perfect knowledge of what they have written, it is something like presumption to write upon such subjects at all, and we shall be the foremost to urge that, whatever we may be about to submit, may be received, subject to correction from them

[o-o]33 uttering forth

[p]33 seeming affectation of the

[q-q]33 bodying itself forth

[r-r]33 forth

[s-s]33 But

[t-t]+59, 67

[u-u]33 publishing

[v-v]33 ; he may write it even

[w]33 any

[x]33 far

[y-y]33 feelings

[z-z]33 feels

[a-a]+59, 67

[b-b]33 have

[c]33 for their happiness

[d-d]33 least

[e-e]33 refined

[f-f]33 most

[g-g]+59, 67

[h-h]33 that

[i-i]33 character of Rossini’s music—the music, we mean, which is characteristic of that composer—is compatible with the expression of passion

[j-j]33 , the great poet of his art

[k-k]33 garrulous

[l-l]33 dramatic

[[*] ]Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, Act III, Scene viii (first London performance, King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 18 June, 1812).

[m]33 The same is the case with many of the finest national airs. Who can hear those words, which speak so touchingly the sorrows of a mountaineer in exile:

• My heart’s in the Highlands—my heart is not here.
• My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer
• A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe—
• My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go

Who can hear those affecting words, married to as affecting an air, and fancy that he sees the singer? That song has always seemed to us like the lament of a prisoner in a solitary cell, ourselves listening, unseen, in the next. As the direct opposite of this, take “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” where the music is as oratorical as the poetry. [The two songs are by Robert Burns.]

[n-n]33 ofttimes

[[*] ]Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, Tancredi, Act II, Scene i (first London performance, King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 4 May, 1820), and La gazza ladra, Act II, Scene vi (first London performance, King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 10 Mar., 1821).

[o-o]33 prayer

[p-p]+59, 67

[q]33 , last summer,

[[†] ]Ludwig van Beethoven, Fidelio, Act I; she appeared in the first London performance, King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 18 May, 1832.

[[‡] ]Peter von Winter, Il ratto di Proserpina, Act II, Scene i (first London performance, King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 3 May, 1804).

[r-r]33 We question whether so deep an expression of mixed grandeur and melancholy was ever in any other instance produced by mere sounds

[s-s]33 description

[t-t]33 mere

[u-u]33 mere

[v-v]33 creation

[w-w]33 mere

[x-x]33 mere

[y-y]33 picture A portrait by Lawrence, or one of Turner’s views, is not a mere copy from nature: the one combines with the given features that particular expression (among all good and pleasing ones) which those features are most capable of wearing, and which, therefore, in combination with them, is capable of producing the greatest positive beauty. Turner, again, unites the objects of the given landscape with whatever sky, and whatever light and shade, enable those particular objects to impress the imagination most strongly. In both, there is creative art—not working after an actual model, but realizing an idea

[z-z]33 character

[a]33 [paragraph] The poetry of painting seems to be carried to its highest perfection in the Peasant Girl of Rembrandt, or in any Madonna or Magdalen of Guido, that of sculpture, in almost any of the Greek statues of the gods, not considering these in respect to the mere physical beauty, of which they are such perfect models, nor undertaking either to vindicate or to contest the opinion of philosophers, that even physical beauty is ultimately resolvable into expression; we may safely affirm, that in no other of man’s works did so much of soul ever shine through mere inanimate matter

[b]33 , in a manner.

[c-c]33 . As

[d-d]33 any series even

[e]33 which we know of,

[f]33 , you must know the story beforehand; then, indeed, you may see great beauty and appropriateness in the painting

[g-g]33 ; in

[h-h]33 narrate

[i-i]+59, 67

[j]33 all

[k-k]33, 59 grouping

[l-l]33 where

[m-m]33 eloquence

[n-n]33 glut

[o-o]33 historical

[p]33 to

[q-q]33 imaginations

[r]33 ; even now when David, the great corrupter of taste, has been translated from this world to the next, and from the Luxembourg, consequently, into the more elevated sphere of the Louvre

[s-s]33 in the worst style of corrupted eloquence, but in no style of poetry at all. The best are stiff and unnatural, the worst resemble figures of cataleptic patients. The French artists fancy themselves imitators of the classics, yet they seem to have no understanding and no feeling of that repose which was the peculiar and pervading character of Grecian art, until it began to decline a repose tenfold more indicative of strength than all their stretching and straining; for strength, as Thomas Carlyle says, does not manifest itself in spasms. [See “CornLaw Rhymes,” Edinburgh Review, LV (July, 1832), 351.]

There are some productions of art which it seems at first difficult to arrange in any of the classes above illustrated. The direct aim of art as such, is the production of the beautiful, and as there are other things beautiful besides states of mind, there is much of art which may seem to have nothing to do with either poetry or eloquence as we have defined them. Take for instance a composition of Claude, or Salvator Rosa. There is here creation of new beauty by the grouping of natural scenery, conformably indeed to the laws of outward nature, but not after any actual model; the result being a beauty more perfect and faultless than is perhaps to be found in any actual landscape. Yet there is a character of poetry even in these, without which they could not be so beautiful. The unity, and wholeness, and æsthetic congruity of the picture still lies in singleness of expression, but it is expression in a different sense from that in which we have hitherto employed the term. The objects in an imaginary landscape cannot be said, like the words of a poem or the notes of a melody, to be the actual utterance of a feeling, but there must be some feeling with which they harmonize, and which they have a tendency to raise up in the spectator’s mind. They must inspire a feeling of grandeur, or loveliness, or cheerfulness, or wildness, or melancholy, or terror. The painter must surround his principal objects with such imagery as would spontaneously arise in a highly imaginative mind, when contemplating those objects under the impression of the feelings which they are intended to inspire. This, if it be not poetry, is so nearly allied to it, as scarcely to require being distinguished.

In this sense we may speak of the poetry of architecture. All architecture, to be impressive, must be the expression or symbol of some interesting idea, some thought, which has power over the emotions. The reason why modern architecture is so paltry, is simply that it is not the expression of any idea, it is a mere parroting of the architectural tongue of the Greeks, or of our Teutonic ancestors, without any conception of a meaning.

To confine ourselves, for the present, to religious edifices: these partake of poetry, in proportion as they express, or harmonize with, the feelings of devotion. But those feelings are different according to the conception entertained of the beings, by whose supposed nature they are called forth. To the Greek, these beings were incarnations of the greatest conceivable physical beauty, combined with supernatural power: and the Greek temples express this, their predominant character being graceful strength, in other words, solidity, which is power, and lightness which is also power, accomplishing with small means what seemed to require great, to combine all in one word, majesty. To the Catholic, again, the Deity was something far less clear and definite, a being of still more resistless power than the heathen divinities, greatly to be loved, still more greatly to be feared; and wrapped up in vagueness, mystery, and incomprehensibility. A certain solemnity, a feeling of doubting and trembling hope, like that of one lost in a boundless forest who thinks he knows his way but is not sure, mixes itself in all the genuine expressions of Catholic devotion. This is eminentlythe expression of the pure Gothic cathedral, conspicuous equally in the mingled majesty and gloom of its vaulted roofs and stately aisles, and in the “dim religious light” which steals through its painted windows. [Milton, “Il Penseroso,” in The Poetical Works (London Tonson, 1695), p. 6 (l. 160).]

There is no generic distinction between the imagery which is the expression of feeling and the imagery which is felt to harmonize with feeling. They are identical. The imagery in which feeling utters itself forth from within, is also that in which it delights when presented to it from without. All art, therefore, in proportion as it produces its effects by an appeal to the emotions partakes of poetry, unless it partakes of oratory, or of narrative. And the distinction which these three words indicate, runs through the whole field of the fine arts.

The above hints have no pretension to the character of a theory. They are merely thrown out for the consideration of thinkers, in the hope that if they do not contain the truth, they may do somewhat to suggest it. Nor would they, crude as they are, have been deemed worthy of publication, in any country but one in which the philosophy of art is so completely neglected, that whatever may serve to put any inquiring mind upon this kind of investigation, cannot well, however imperfect in itself, fail altogether to be of use. [signed.] Antiquus.

[t-t]33 Nascitur poëta

[[*] ]Biographia Literaria, Vol. I, p. 37, and Vol. II, p. 14 (Chaps. ii and xv).

[u-u]33, 59 become

[v]33 begin to

[[†] ]See p. 343 above.

[w-w]33 perfected

[x]33 one

[y-y]33, 59 is

[z-z]33 some . . . some . . . some

[a-a]33, 59 ought

[b]33 the table of contents of

[c-c]33 man

[d-d]33 book

[e]33 quite other

[f-f]33 one of the natural consequences

[g-g]+59, 67

[h-h]33, 59 universal

[i-i]33, 59 diversities

[j-j]33 casual

[k-k]33 rapidly

[l-l]33 are only there

[m-m]33 All the

[n]33 all

[o]33 all

[p-p]33, 59 feeling

[q-q]33, 59 thought

[r-r]33 poetical

[s-s]33 still

[t-t]33 utterance

[u-u]33, 59 writers!

[[*] ]Cf. Wordsworth, “Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads,” in Poetical Works (1827), Vol. IV, pp. 361-2 (paras. 6-7).

[v-v]33 media

[w-w]33 and

[x-x]33 a

[y-y]33 given up

[z-z]33 attempts

[a]33 All Wordsworth’s attempts in that strain, if we may venture to say so much of a man whom we so exceedingly admire, appear to us cold and spiritless

[b-b]33 far

[c-c]33 greatest

[d-d]33 intentional

[e-e]33 not

[f]33 almost

[g-g]33 bodily

[h-h]33 state

[i-i]33 ; like

[j]33 poetry

[k-k]33 the utterance

[l]33 even

[m-m]33 vice

[n-n]+59, 67

[o]33 The one, like a thrifty housewife, uses all his materials and wastes none: the other scatters them with a reckless prodigality of wealth of which there is perhaps no similar instance.

[p-p]33 any

[q-q]33 whatever

[r-r]33 kind

[s-s]33 degree

[t-t]33 in

[u-u]33 more

[v-v]33 substituting

[w-w]33 superadd, then there were

[x-x]33 greater

[y-y]33, 59 then

[z-z]33 seems to feel

[a-a]33 then

[b-b]33 as when (to take a simple example) the ideas or objects generally, of which the person has occasion to speak for the purposes of his discourse, are spoken of in words which

[c-c]33 and which prove

[* ]And this, we may remark by the way, seems to point to the true theory of poetic diction: and to suggest the true answer to as much as is erroneous ofd Wordsworth’s celebrated doctrine on that subject. [See “Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads,” in Poetical Works (1827), Vol. IV, pp. 360-1 and 365ff. (paras. 5, 9ff.).] For on the one hand, ealle language which is the natural expression of feeling, is really poetical, and willf be felt as such, apart from conventional associations; but on the other, whenever intellectual culture has afforded a choice between several modes of expressing the same emotion, the stronger the feeling is, the more naturally and certainly will it prefer gtheg language which is most peculiarly appropriated to itself, and kept sacred from the contact ofh more vulgari objects of contemplation.

[j-j]33 We believe that whenever

[k]33 which we have

[l-l]33 the mind

[m-m]33 cries

[n-n]33, 59 must

[[*] ]The Cenci, a Tragedy (London: Ollier, 1819).

[o-o]33 genius! . . . splendour! . . . thought!

[p-p]33 in one state

[q-q]33 that

[r-r]33 calmness, and

[s-s]33 confound the state of desire which unfortunately is possible to all, with the state of fruition which is granted only to the few

[t-t]33 always

[u-u]33 require

[v-v]33 Milton, or, to descend to our own times, in Coleridge

[w-w]33 logician-poet

[x-x]33 so much of education is made up of artificialities and conventionalisms, and the so-called training of the intellect

[y-y]+59, 67

[z-z]33 contemporary

[a]33 A text on which to dilate would lead us too far from the present subject [signed:] Antiquus * [footnote:] *This signature is only used to identify the authorship of the present article with that of a paper headed, “What is Poetry?” in a former number of the Repository. The writer had a reason for the title, when he first adopted it: but he has discarded it in his later articles, as giving a partial, and so far a false, notion of the spirit by which he would wish his thoughts and writings to be characterised. As Wordsworth says,

• Past and future are the wings
• On whose support, harmoniously conjoined,
• Moves the great spirit of human knowledge,

and though the present as often goes amiss for lack of what time and change have deprived us of, as of what they have yet to bring, a title which points only one way is unsuitable to a writer who attempts to look both ways. [Wordsworth, “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface,” in Poetical Works (1827). Vol. II, p. 390; later published in The Prelude, Bk. VI, ll. 448-50.] In future, when a signature is employed, it will be the single letter A

[* ]And this, we may remark by the way, seems to point to the true theory of poetic diction: and to suggest the true answer to as much as is erroneous ofd Wordsworth’s celebrated doctrine on that subject. [See “Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads,” in Poetical Works (1827), Vol. IV, pp. 360-1 and 365ff. (paras. 5, 9ff.).] For on the one hand, ealle language which is the natural expression of feeling, is really poetical, and willf be felt as such, apart from conventional associations; but on the other, whenever intellectual culture has afforded a choice between several modes of expressing the same emotion, the stronger the feeling is, the more naturally and certainly will it prefer gtheg language which is most peculiarly appropriated to itself, and kept sacred from the contact ofh more vulgari objects of contemplation.

[d]33 Mr

[ealle]33, 59 all

[f]33 always

[gtheg]33 that

[h]33 all

[i]33 and familiar