POETRY, in the usual and proper signification of the word, is applied to any composition in metre. It designates the outward form, not the style or the subject-natter treated. As, however, there are certain subjects, certain feelings and language, which belong to good poetry, a prose composition, in which these characteristics are 'risible, is often termed " poetical " or " poetry," just as a bad poem is called " prosaic." In both instances we speak thus when we wish to express praise or blame, as the case may be, and we use the words metaphorically. (See Whately's ' Rhetoric,' page 278.) The art of poetry is an imitative art.. Its object, in common with all such arts, is to give pleasure by imitation. So far music, painting, sculpture, and poetry agree. They differ in the means which each employs to effect the imitation. Music works by harmony and melody, painting by colour, sculpture by form, and poetry by words arranged in metre. In no case, however, is it the proper province of art to produce illusion, that is to say, the person whose feelings are to be affected always remains conscious that his emotion is not the result of anything really passing, but is merely analogous to that emotion which the reality would produce.
The imitative power of art thus consists in producing results resembling, but not identical with, Those created by natural objects, or by human passion, character, and action. Hence the difference between a diorama and a picture, or between a waxwork figure and a statue; illusion is the aim of the one; imitation, properly so called, of the other. Hence, too, it is difficult to vindicate the mimicry of special sounds, such as hail or thunder, in music.
The metre in poetry answers a double purpose : in itself it affords pleasure by its rhythm, and acts as a powerful auxiliary to the sense which the mere words express; but, above all, it preserves the essence of art by-operating as a constant barrier against any approach to reality. In this way the poet avows the fact that his work is a work of art, and he makes the reader or hearer aware of the relation in which he and the author stand to each other. The imitative power may work in safety when hedged off from real life by the fence of metrical form, and thus it is that Wordsworth lad e down the " per ception of similitude in diasimilitude" am one of the principles on which verse gives pleasure.
The next question is, in what mode does poetry imitate ? Painting and sculpture copy outward forms themselves; poetry and music, being restricted to instruments of a different kind, aim at imitating the effect of those forma, that is to say, at producing the pleasurable emotion in the reader or the hearer, though in these cases they cannot imitate the means. On the other hand, the two former arts can only
represent one moment of action or expression, and must tell their story by selecting that moment properly ; music and poetry can supply a succession of Images and sentiments all going to make up a whole. There is one advantage which poetry possesses over all its sister arts, viz., that of being able to assert: as it is the only art which employs words for its instruments, it is the only one which can enounce a proposition and command this element of the moral sublime.
Poetry, :amen, or " making," seems to be so called because good poetry creates or re-embodies the impressions which the poet has imbibed into his own mind by observation. This faculty of pro ducing from such elements the impression of individual character, action, or scenery in the power which we generally term imagination. Without it, the attempt at imitation must necessarily fail. Words worth (Preface to' Lyrical Ballads') says, " Poetry is the Tont:moms overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recol lected in tranquillity. The emotion is contemplated until by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind." This we take to be a description of the mode in which imagination works. The poet, by close and habitual observation, stores Ina mind with the eircumatancea which have given rise to or attended the production of emotion in himself. The 'omit of this observation he works up so as to create in others an emotion kindred to that which lie has himself experienced ; kindred, but not Identical, for, as Wordsworth truly remarks, the excitement must co-exist with an overbalance of 'demure. many of the emotions which the poet exciten: are, when called forth by real events!, It in his business so to combine them with pleasing associations, so to soften their disgusting features and render prominent their more attractive ones, and above all .0 to giVe unity to the whole, that, taken with the consciousness of their existing in a work of art, and not in reality, they become a 'source of exquisite delight Such a work is reality, seen through the medium of the poet's mind, and clothed by him in a bodily form BO as to retain its vividness, but lose its deformity.