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pouring itself forth to other minds , courting their sympathy , or endeavouring to influence their belief , or more 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 upon the stage . But 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 with the intention of publishing it ; he . ft . J ft J ft . % *^ J '
may write it even for the express purpose of being paid for it ; that it should be poetry , being written under any such influences , is far 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 feelings exactly as he has felt them in solitude , or as he feels that he should feel them , though they were to remain for ever unuttered . 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 have 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 for their happiness 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 least poetical of all great and refined nations , are among the most eloquent : the French , also , being the most sociable , the vainest , and the least self-dependent . ft *
. .. _ . *• * If the above be , as we believe , the true theory of the distinction commonly admitted between eloquence and poetry ; or though it be not that yet if , as we cannot doubt , the distinction above stated be a real bona fide distinction , it will be found to
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What U Poetry ? 65
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No . 73 . *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 65, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/65/
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