The mathematician, in his investiga tion of truth, is confined to the narrow path of reason. The same may be said of the' philosopher: The slightest deviation into the fields of imagination frustrates their pursuit, and disappoints their hopes of fame. The historian must found his reputation upon a patient investigation of facts, and beware of giving the loosened rein to his inventive talents. The orator,. indeed, calls fancy to the aid of reason ; but she ought to be strictly an auxiliary. If his edifice be not founded on the solid basis of reason, it will fall, together with its embellishments, to the ground. In oratory, fancy embellishes the operations of judgment ; but so far as poetry is a creative art, imagination is its primary cause, and judgment a secondary agent, employed to prune the luxuriant shoots of fancy.
It is the grand source of the excellence of poetic imitation, that this imitation is effected by words. Aristotle has defined words as "sounds significant :" they are significant of ideas. Men that adopt the same language, by a tacit compact, agree that certain sounds shall be the repre sentatives of certain ideas. But ideas re present their archetypes. When, there fore, we use words, we revive in the minds of those who understand our lan guige the pictuies of the objects of which we speak. The poetic imitation then being carried on by means of words, evidently embraces all objects of which mankind have ever formed ideas. Its energies are not crippled. It expatiates in the universe, and even passes —" the flaming bounds of space and time." This circumstance is justly noted by the in genious Mr. Harris, as bestowing upon poetry a decisive superiority over the art of painting. The energies of painting are confined to those objects that can be re presented by colour and figure. Poetry can also express these objects, though, it must be confessed, with a far inferior de gree of exquisiteness ; but this deficiency is amply compensated by the extensive range of the poet's excursions. He dives into the human heart, developer the windings of the heart, pourtrays in all their circumstances the workings of the pas sions, gives form and body to the most abstract ideas, and by the language which he puts into the mouths of his characters he unlocks the secrets of their mind. There is another grand advantage which the poet possesses over the painter, namely, that the latter is confined to the transactions that happen in a moment of time ; while the former presents to Our view a long series of consecutive events. An interesting picture might no doubt be drawn of the pious agony with which /Eneas witnessed the obstinacy of his fa ther, in refusing to save himself from the sword of the Greeks by quitting his an cient and to gloved abode. But what a varied pleasure do we experience in reading of the circumstances that pre ceded and that followed this event, in tracing the steps of the duteous son from the palace of Priam to his father's man sion, and in beholding him at length bear ing his parent beyond the reach of the foe. Aristotle's doctrine, that a finished
composition should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, is founded on reason ; and the mind feels a superior degree of satisfaction, when the rise, the circum stances, and the consequences of events, are displayed before it in artful order.
But the poetic imitation or representa tion is effected, not merely by words, but by words metrically, or at least melo diously arranged.
Melody is naturally pleasing to the hu man ear ; and it is not surprizing, that the cultivators of an art, whose province it is to delight, should be careful in bring ing as nearly as possible to perfection the melody of their numbers. It is asto nishing with what accuracy the Greeks and Romans attended to this particular ; how minutely they weighed the value of almost every syllable ; how strictly their bards were obliged to conform to the es tablished standard. In modern times, and in our own language, greater lati tude is allowed; yet almost every reader of poetry is aware of the charms of me lodious composition. What a sensible difference do we perceive between the careless couplets of Churchill and the po lished numbers of Pope. How much more pleasing to the ear are the measur ed sentences of M'Pherson, than a host of lines which we sometimes find printed in the form of verses.
But though melodious and metrical ar rangement of words be one of the cha racteristics, and, as Dr. Blair denominates it, "the exterior distinction" of poetry, it is necessary to observe, that too many writers seem to assign to this characteris tic a place of eminence to which it is by no means entitled. In consequence of this error, vast multitudes of composi tions are obtruded upon the world under the name of poems, which possess no other merit than that of regularity of ver sification and smoothness of numbers. Against these wearisome productions Ho race has long ago protested, in his memo rable declaration, that the quality of me diocrity is denied to poets, and that poetry includes something more in its definition than the measuring of syllables and the tagging of a verse. If the:heart does not glow with the flame of genius, the mechanism of art will be of no avail. No one can excite strong feelings in ethers, who is not himself strongly excit ed ; no one can raise vivid images in the 'mind of his reader who is not himself il lumined by the sportive light of fancy. Verses strictly and legitimately measured out, with one attention to pause and ca dence, but devoid of the animating spirit which characterizes true poetry, are, like the human body when deprived of the principle of life, cold, cheerless, and of fensive.