therefore, exhibits the credibilities of existence without the aid of invented characters or of fable, he still selects and concentrates' only those traits of truth which attach our sensibility, and he rejects others that would disturb the harmony of his picture, or repel our sympathy. This makes Truth herself appear more beautiful in the Muses' mirror than in her casual reality. I am far from saying, that fiction is of slight utility to poetry: I only mean, that the true circumstances of nature, when exquisitely chosen and combined, will constitute that high beauty of art which we call the ideal, without the necessary intervention of fiction. Nor do I mean that language can produce this effect, unless it also possess the power of exciting fanciful associations. The passions that give life to poetry are indissolubly connected with the liveliness of the associating faculty. No doubt, the language of real passion is not, in general, prone to remote and surprising combinations of thought. The wit of the fancy is a doubtful indication of passion. Nevertheless, when we read a strain of deep feeling, we naturally imagine it to come from a mind of rich associations, and it excites a reverie of luxuriant images in our own. But remote fancies, whether they are congenial or not with the language of passion, may have their place in the poet's survey of existence, and yet may be far from amounting to fiction, in the fair and general sense of the word. It is only in that acceptation, namely, the feigning of events and characters, that I deny fiction to be perpetually and essentially necessary to the poet. If all the imagery of language is to be so called, prose itself will be found to teem with fiction. But, however necessary fanciful associations may be to Poetry, she may portray the realities of Nature without absolute fiction, so as to touch the inmost recesses of our sympathy. The famous Love Ode of Sappho, for instance, affects us by the simple vehemence of its passion-and yet it is not fiction. If it were asked, how such a poem can be said "to accommodate the shews of things to the desires of the mind," I should answer, that it conveys the conception of amatory transport as completely by selecting and concentrating the traits of truth, as if the finest artists had embodied it to the eye with ideal beauty. It is all nature, but it is perfect nature-there is no part of the outline weak, though it seems as if every one could trace it. And yet, though every one feels the passion, it has been seldom so well described in the course of two thousand years.

The spirited selection and concentration of truth is one means, and fiction is another, by which the poet maintains his empire. The one founds it, and the other extends it. If truth can thus be found, of itself, to constitute the soul of entire and inspired poetical effusions, fiction cannot well be denominated the soul of poetry; and I should rather be inclined to call it her highest

prerogative. It is a privilege too, of which the poet can avail himself more than any other imitative artist. For though painting and sculpture may surpass the power of verse in immediate impression, yet from being mute and chained to the moment, they are sensibly limited in the means of explaining more of their subjects than meets the eye, and they can with difficulty embody any fiction which tradition or poetry has not in some degree prepared, and placed in their hands; whereas poetry, by her "winged words," to use the noble Homeric phrase, can widen the circuit of human thoughts undefinedly into the past and the future, and may feign what has not even been surmised by tradition. To return to the words of Lord Bacon, they apply, though I conceive not more truly, yet with easier and more extensive illustration, to imaginary history than to any other class of poetry. And his observation, that the art shows itself to be something divine, as it raises the mind by accommodating "the shews of things to its desires," bespeaks a sensibility in the sage as deep as his intellect. For poetry, in its highest sense, is scarcely any thing else than a synonyme for the religion of nature. It is true that we have a pleasure in the poet's representations of life, from our attachment to life itself. All imitations of objects have a certain value to the mind, as the resemblances and records of a perishable existence. They surprise us with traits of nature that have escaped our observation or faded from our memories, and affect us as if they restored to us a lost or absent friend, with all the tender illusion, though without the indistinctness, of a dream. But the poet does not establish his influence always merely on graphic fidelity to nature; he knows that there is a disposition within us to go beyond hope itself, and to shape reveries of things, not as they are, but as we would wish them to be. There is no imagination which has not, at some time or other, dreamt in a paradise of its own creation. It is true that this optimism of the fancy, when it vents itself in the castle-buildings of a weak mind, or is masked under the gravity of a false and Utopian philosophy, becomes pernicious and ridiculous. The love of ideal happiness, when thus drivelling and disfigured, appears a bastard species of the fancy, to which poetical feeling disdains acknowledging its resemblance or affinity. But when we look to the day-dreams of inspired fiction, and when we feel the superhuman force and excellence of its characters, it is then that we acknowledge the beatific idealism of our nature to be a feature of divine expression in the moral aspect of man. To compare the conceptions of so frail a being with his actual attainments of happiness, would be sufficient to persuade us, without a hint from revelation, that our natures are either the wreck of some superior past intelligence, or the germ and promise of a new one.

The object of poetry being to delight the imagination, divides it from every other pursuit of language. But it is necessary to recollect that this is its primary and distinguishing object; because the fancy and passions are often addressed in other provinces of animated composition, and though the poet may have more imaginative powers than other men, he is not the only composer in language who employs them. In prose itself, zeal will warm the associations, and mould them into imagery; and metaphors, similes, and comparisons, will be found more or less scat tered over every style that is not devoted to pure science and abstraction. Hence, while poetry claims her rank among intellectual studies, those other pursuits, which have truth more severely and immediately for their object, also make their occasional excursions into the field of fancy. So that, distinct as the ends of the poet and the moral reasoner may be, the one being pleasure and the other instruction, we shall find Shakspeare furnishing texts for philosophy, and the apothegms of Bacon adorned with figurative illustrations*. In pure metaphysics it is, no doubt, agreed, that fanciful analogies between mind and matter are apt to be dangerous and delusive lights to the inquirer, and that the language of philosophy should be shaded as much as possible by abstraction, like the glass that is darkened in order to enable us to look at the sun. Yet, in spite of this acknowledgment, we shall often find logicians amusing themselves very contentedly with ingenious images. Locke has given a descrip tion of the process of memory that is absolutely poetical. And if the flowers of Parnassus may thus be found starting up so far from their native soil as among the dust and thorns of metaphysics, how much more naturally may we expect to meet with them in the more genial regions of moral sentiment. In fact, there is a poetry in the human mind which partially diffuses itself over all its moral pursuits; and few men who have ever strongly influenced society, have been possessed of cold or weak imaginations. The orator must, on many occasions, appeal to the passions as well as the understanding; and the historian, even whilst adhering to facts, gives a natural prominence to spirit-stirring events and heroic characters, which lays a frequent and just hold on our enthusiasm.

*I allude to the felicity of Lord Bacon's figurative expressions, and not to their frequent occurrence; for as a writer he is (as we might naturally expect) no pursuer of such ornaments. But when he does indulge in them, there is a charm indescribably striking in the contrast,-I should say in the harmony between his deep thought and elastic fancy. And his beauties of this description may be treasured in the memory with as much safety as admiration. For though he may be said to blend figures with his philosophy, he mixes them not with abstract metaphysics, but with maxims that come home to our bosoms and business. And, unlike many philosophers, he uses them as mere illustrations of argument, and not as their subject.

But still there are plain limits which divide poetry from history, philosophy, and oratory, although the poet may often impart philosophical truths, though the orator may move our affections, and the historian spread agreeable pictures before the fancy. We may again consider the poet as either exhibiting a true representation of Nature, or, "Truth severe in fairy fiction dressed." Viewed in the former light, he may seem to approach more nearly to the character of the historian than when he deals in fable; but he is still as essentially distinct from him in his main scope. For we must interpret the character of history by a collective view of its intended effect, not by appealing to the impression of insulated chapters and sentences, which, though they may rise to poetical eloquence, give the pursuit no generic identity with an art devoted to the imagination. Poetry affects us by views of the good and evil of existence thrown into large masses of light and shade. But History cannot give the chequered aspect of human affairs this supported contrast and strength of colouring without betraying anxiety for effect, and diminishing our confidence in her value as a science. The poet feels and inspires unbroken and determinate tones of emotion, whether they be gay, plaintive, or impetuous. They may change and succeed in rapid vicissitude, but they swell and fall in harmony, and even their fluctuation, with skilful management, need not make them check and neutralize each other. But the records of life, like life itself, teem with the elements not only of mutable, but of abrupt and jarring sensations. The historian may often excite our enthusiasm in this discordant spectacle, but he cannot prevent it from being often mortified. His great end is to make us impartial judges of events, and he must withhold no consequential fact, be it ever so unromantic, from the balance of impartiality. Into that balance he must throw all prosaic considerations and proofs of truth that enable us to weigh it dispassionately. If he does this, he must necessarily make our zeal circumspect and patient of drawbacks. But the moment that our sensibilities are thus modified by special exceptions and abatements, they cease to be the living fountains of poetry. Argumentative scruples and caution have no place there: for the very error of feeling is more poetical than its equilibrium. Hence we never smile so much even at an outrageous hyperbole, as when a dull good man betrays the lack of his would-be enthusiasm by some candid and qualifying expression in verse that escapes from the prose of his conscience.

We bring to history a philosophical interest, a curiosity to trace the chain of human events as causes and consequences of each other. Not that history is destitute of a harmony peculiar to herself. She proportions the space which facts occupy in narration to their magnitude, and gives them an agreeable

order by tracing their springs and results. But that is far from a poetical harmony, even in the picture of truth; and in the interval between her most interesting scenes, she must follow the links of their connexion over grounds of detail which no good taste would attempt to make picturesque to the fancy.

As to fiction, it may seem superfluous to say that it belongs to poetry and to no other province of composition. It must be recollected at the same time, that the poet's fiction would not be a discriminating feature of his art unless it were open and avowed. Falsehoods in ethics and rhetoric often please us, but we are not conscious of their deception, and the moment the spell is broken we are displeased that it has been thrown over us. Imaginary systems of philosophy may last for ages after their founders are dead, but not a day after their foundation is detected. The orator has certainly to deal with our passions and imagination, but his object is through these to effect persuasion; and when he attains his end, of what do we imagine that he persuades us? Unquestionably, of the literal truth, whether it regards our own selfish interests, or abstract justice with regard to others. There is no doubt that the orator may often covenant with himself to gain us over by arguments, whether true or false; but he makes no such bargain with any intelligent part of his hearers; and if he succeeds in the latter way, it is only by fraud. In poetry, and there alone, the illusion of language is not deception. When either the pleader misleads us into false sympathies, or the sophist into fanciful theories, there is no convention of the mind with their falsifications; nor would the wildest zealot of the most Utopian school of philosophy so far compromise the dignity of his own understanding, as to acknowledge to himself that, for the sake of pleasure, he was voluntarily embracing an error. But in poetry, we are transported to enthusiasm with what, as to literal occurrence, we know on the slightest reflection to be a dream. Nor does the retrospect of the judgment at all prevent us from rebuilding, with fresh delight, the airy edifice which has been thus dis

enchanted.

At the same time that we discriminate the end of severer pursuits from that of poetry, we must not lose sight of the intellectual character of the art. All harmony of effect must proceed from principles observed by intelligence; and although those truths which the poet selects and concentrates for the purpose of delighting us, are grouped together on principles very different from those of demonstration or historical transcriptalthough he blends them with illusion, and addresses them to the imagination—it does not follow that the understanding is unconcerned with his works. The very illusion of the mind, unaccompanied with deception, of itself bespeaks that something