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Untitled Article
composite taste . 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 ia 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 glorious * Torquato Tasso ;* or ag ain , 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 exhibited falsely ., or in a manner absolutely common-place . The combination of the two excellencies is what
renders Shakspeare 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 found , but made a definition , in opposition to the usage of the English language , since it is established by common " " consent that there is a poetry called descriptive . 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 ; no more , we might almost say » than
Greek or Latin is poetry because there are Greek and Latin poems * But an object which admits of being described , or a truth which may fill a place in a scientific treatise , may also 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 are ; and it paints them not in their bare and natural lineaments , but arranged in the colours and seen through
the medium of the imagination set in action by the feelings . If a poet is to describe a lion , he will not set about describing 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 will describe him by imagery , 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 . Tne lion may be described falsely or in exaggerated colours , and the poetry be all the bettor ;
Untitled Article
What i * Poetry ? 63
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 63, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/63/
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