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Untitled Article
But tha same effect may still be produced by other means , and with even ampler materials . If that minute and detailed representation of what acts immediately on the senses and feelings , which delights us in the free and vigorous sketches of the most ancient poets , be no longer practicable , yet the modern poet
may win a nobler praise by calling at once into the intensest action , with a few sli g ht hints and graphic touches , the rich train of feelings and associations which attach to the varied scenes and situations of reality . The most ancient Poetry of all nations is a simple reflection of the impressions of outward things on
vivid senses and strong feelings : but in the poetry of more refined and cultivated periods , the mind no longer appears as the passive recipient of external influences ; it throws itself out upon the visible universe , and clothes it with the hues of its own
association * . In these later developements of Poetry , the moral and intellectual prevails over the purely sensitive ; and the thousand shapes and colours of the world without , are made to furnish the materials of bodying forth into distinctness , and arresting in a permanent attitude , the dim and fugitive operations of the world within . Still the process , in both cases , is substantially the same : the feelings are wrought upon by a reference to individual nature ; a strong emotion is developed by the exhibition of images and sentiments , in which we recognise a past reality or familiar
assoeiations . The Fine Arts—Painting , Statuary and Music , which , with Poetry , have sometimes been called imitative—accomplish their end in the same manner ; they merely express , through a different medium , and embody in a different form , conceptions , which , conveyed in language , we should have called simplv Poetry .
Even those Arts , which , like Architecture , seem to belong at once to the fine and the useful arts ; so far as they excite emotions allied to the poetical—pursue the very same course ; they still tread in the steps of nature . Those properties of lightness , variety , and grace , of depth , vastness , massive strength , sharp contrast , and grotesque irregularity , which are found from observation to act powerfully on the human sympathies ; these arts combine in such
a manner , as to awaken through unfailing associations the train of emotions designed . Gofethe once expressed a wish , in his wild and fanciful way , that he could metamorphose himself at pleasure into the nature of external objects , and give utterance through a
medium less imperfect than language to the strong conceptions which he formed of their , individual peculiarities . The wish was essentially poetical ; for Poetry , however embodied , is the vivid expression of the forms and influences of things really existing , as they art conceived and felt by the re-producing mind . It may be objected to this statement , that it exohides the Poetry of simple passion and sentiment . But the objection , if
Untitled Article
Mt On the Application ofthe Temu
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 326, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/14/
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