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Untitled Article
stantly at work counteracting this quality of mind , and substituting habits more suitable to their own ends : if instead of substituting they were content to superadd , then there were 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 novver ?
CJ I In whomsoever the quality which we have described exists , and is not stifled , that person is a poet . Doubtless he is a greater 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 .
M . «_^ ^ ¥ arid 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 ; then we merely say , he seems to feel what he says ; still less when he expresses himself in imagery ; then , unless illustration be manifestl y 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 ; 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 we spontaneously use only when in a state of excitement , and which prove 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 . * * And this , we may remark by the way , stems to point to the true theory of poetic diction ; and to suggest the true answer to as much as is erroneous of Mr . Wordsworth ' s celebrated doctrine on that subject . For on the one hand , ail language which ia tho natural expression of feeling , it really poetical , and will always be felt at such ,
Untitled Article
the Two Kinds of Poetry . " ] 121
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 721, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/61/
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