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Untitled Article
as a compensation for other kinds of merit , and to require them in the poetry which they most enjoy . Poetry , distinguished by this quality , is therefore peculiarly the poetry of the educated , who must also be the wealthier classes of the community . It is poetry which the poor , because they are also the uneducated , can neither produce nor enjoy .
Let it not be thought for an instant that poetry and poverty are words which can only be forced into combination . The poetry of the poor exists abundantly , in every sense of the expression . Poetry has taken them for its subjects ; has painted their rags and wretchedness , their crimes and sufferings ; and the world has gazed intently on the picture , and done homage to its truth and power . Even now its worth has received that melancholy increase
which Death , the usurer , bestows on works of art by his mighty power of accumulation * * The Borough' scenery of Crabbe takes its place amongst the productions of departed masters . He was the poet of the poor . But although he was their poet , he was not himself of them . He looked at them from without , and from above * He makes us sympathize , not in what they feel , but in
what he himself feels in the contemplation of their emotions . It is poetry concerning the poor , but neither by the poor , nor for the poor . It is made up of observation and sympathy . The poetry of the poor should be something more than this . It should be the language , not of the observant and pitying gentleman , but of humanity in poverty , pouring forth its own emotions for its own gratification .
That such poetry exists would , in the absence of all other evidence , be abundantly demonstrated by the volumes before us . The fact , indeed , that poetry has always arisen at an early stage of the progress of society towards civilization , shows that the appetite for it exists in uncultivated minds . Poetry is the first form of literature ; song is the sorrowing or joyous cry of intellect before it has yet attained the distinct articulation of science . And if the poor of populous communities are below the savage in
much that tends to develoo and delight the imagination : if . much that tends to develop and delight the imagination ; if , too often , they have scarcely more than he has of direct mental cultivation , there is the compensating advantage of the indirect influences upon them of all the soul which has been generated and exhibited in the progress of mankind towards the social condition in which they exist . The poor labourer , considering only his toil , his poverty , and his ignorance , is not so
poetical a being in himself , or to others , as the American Indian , or as the Greeks or the Goths were , when they were at a similar point in the scale of social advancement . But untaught though he be , he is one of the people to whom Chaucer , Spenser , Shakspeare , and Milton belonged ; and in some degree the power is over him of that which has raised the mind of the community , although he knows it not , and we may not be able to indicate
Untitled Article
The Poor and their P&etry * 191
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 191, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/47/
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