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Untitled Article
the making of the national ballads , and let who will take the making of the laws / At first , this may sound somewhat fantastic ; yet it is founded upon the truth of ages . Poetry does exert a strong influence upon the minds of nations ; and it is
confessedly of the first and last importance , that the character of the floating poetry of a nation should be elevating and ennobling , But with this part of its effects , reason and volition have nothing to do . Nations take the impression of the poetry that passes over them , as the waters flow in the direction of the trade-winds . Be
it good , or be it evil , it is an involuntary thing ; and the mind is passive under the agency which stirs and forms it . Now we say , that , since the influence of poetry is thus deep and powerful even where it is wholly involuntary , it may well be worth our while to examine whether it may not exert a strong and certain good influence , under the direction of the will and the reason . We fairly
believe that it is susceptible of such an use . We believe that the wind , which produces such sweet effects in passing over the strings of its own wild harp , may be breathed into an instrument , in which it shall be subjected to the governing touch of the musician , and yield forth tones , which , though spontaneous no longer , shall gain by their loss a hundredfold . We maintain that poetry may be studied , by a virtuous mind desirous of
self-improvement , so as to make it materially instrumental in promoting the great end for which we came into being . It is to state this position , that we have thrown these desultory remarks together ; and it will be to avail ourselves of it , that we shall attempt , in some subsequent papers , to illustrate it by many and beautiful examples .
One observation more . We would not have it imagined , that "we claim for poetry any peculiar pre-eminence above the other departments of human genius and knowledge . We simply take it as an existing thing—as a thing that will exist as long as our race and world . We say , that it may be viewed and used , as a
vitiating , an amusing , or an improving study ; and that we believe the two last may * work together for good , ' to the almost entire exclusion of the first . If so , we could wish that we had written a better paper , in maintenance of a truth of such magnitude and importance ; but what we have written , we have written ;* and we must trust to the opportunities with which the future may supply us , for the fuller development of what we now ' leave half untold /
Untitled Article
On the Connexion between Poetry and Religion . 491
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1832, page 491, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1816/page/59/
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