POTTRY. To produces. complete and satisfactory definition of poetry has been, hitherto, unsuccessfully attempted by writers on taste, and by poets themselves. A popular one, sufficiently adapted to general notions, is furnished by the dsgen of living critics, Lord Jeffrey: "The end of poetry is to please; and the mime, we think, is strictly applicable to every met rical composition from which we derive pleasure without any laborious exercise of the understanding." But, in the first place, it has been truly observed that " verse is the limit by which poetry is bounded: it is the adjunct of poetry, but not its living principle." " Poetry," says Coleridge, " is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is op posed to science, and prose to metre." "The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement or communi cation of truth ; the proper and immedi ate object of p^.etry is the communication of immediate pleasure." It isessentially a creative art : its operation is " making," not transcribing. "Imitation" it is, as Aristotle defines it ; not because it copies, but because it has its model in nature, and can never depart far from it without losing its character. Lord Bacon ex plains this by saying, that poetry "loth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desire of the mind" The imagination alters these "shows of things" by adding or subtract ing qualities, and poetry produces to view the forms which result from the operation.
1. Imagination is, emphatically, the great poetical faculty. It is " the first moving or creative principle of the mind, which fashions out of materials previous ly existing, new materials and original truths." It is " a complex power, in cluding those faculties which are called by metaphysicians conception, abstrac tion, and judgment :" the first enabling us to form a notion of objects of percep tion and knowledge ; the second "sepa rating the selected materials from the qualities and circumstances which are connected with them in nature ;" the third selecting the materials. Its opera tions arc most various, and it exhibits itself in poetry in very different degrees and forms. It may shine here and there, chiefly in comparison, or in hold and pleasing metaphor, breaking the chain of a narrative, as in _Homer and the earlier poetry of most nations; it may hurry image on image, connected only by those exquisite links of thought which are present in the mind of tlm poet, in daring, compressed. rapid language, its
if language were inadequate to its ex pression, as in the inspired prophets, in A-lschylus, and often in Shakspeare; it may predominate in entire sustained conceptions, grasping at general features, as in Milton ; it may cling more closely to the "shows of things," dwelling in particulars, reproducing with startling vividness images little altered, graphic, and minute, as in Dante.
2. No distinction has given critics more trouble, in the way of definition, than that between imagination and fancy. "Fancy," it has been said, "is given to beguile and quicken the temporal part of our nature; imagination to incite and support the eternal." "The distinction between fancy and imagination," says another, "is simply that the former alto gether changes and remodels the original idea, impregnating it with something ex traneous; the latter leaves it undisturbed, but associates it with things to which in some view or other it bears a resem blance." 3. Lord Jeffrey associates with the pleasure of imagination that derived from "the easy exercise of reason." This is produced chiefly by the faculties of thought, wit, and reflect'on. It may, in deed, he doubted whetlh. : the expression of thought, however energetic and acute, clad in current poetical diction, is really poetry. Certainly it. is so, if at all, in a very inferior degree to that of the ima givation.
4. The expression of passion, sentiment, or pathos, is the most common and uni versal of all sources of poetical pleasure. It is the very soul of all early and simple poetry ; it pervades no less that of the most civilized communities. Yet this class of poetry is less truly and emphati cally poetical than the imaginative, al though more popular. The pleasure oc casioned by it is of a mixed nature : it arises from the excitement of peculiar sympathies, not produced, hut heightened only, by the form in which that excite ment is conveyed.