A PROSING UPON POETRY.
If poetry has been justly described as an intellectual luxury, it ought to be added—following out the analogy implied in the expression—that it is a luxury very intimately connected with intellectual industry, and with moral as well as mental advancement. The excitement of mind which a great poet affords, is no bad introduction, and no bad accompaniment, to habits of reflection. That contemplation he induces in us of whatever is beautiful and magnificent, of whatever is tender, passionate, and elating, in this wide spectacle of nature and of man, intrinsically delightful as it is, cannot end in itself, but must needs conduct to lofty subjects, and stimulate to intense and gravest efforts of meditation. The better order of poetry not only requires a thoughtfulness in the reader, as a prior condition of its enjoyment, but incites him also, by the hue it casts on all things, to still further thinking: it ascends with him from height to height, teaching him at each point gained upon the landscape, to see with the heart also as well as with the eye—to see the prospect before him not only in that truth of form and outline which the dry light of reason reveals, but also in that charm and allurement of colour which it is the office of imagination and the passions to supply.
We purpose to discourse, for a brief space, not very learnedly or profoundly, but yet not altogether idly or unprofitably, on the nature and scope of poetic literature, and on the part which may be assigned to it in the great work of mental cultivation. And first, in what does poetry consist? That it is distinguished not only by the peculiarity of verse or metre, but also by a peculiarity in the cast of thought, in the very substance of the composition, is universally acknowledged. As we certainly cannot, in the utmost generosity of our criticism, allow that verse is always the vehicle of poetry, so, on the other hand, we must frequently confess that there is much of poetry in compositions where no traces are to be found of rhyme or metre. Some of our earlier writers, it is manifest, used the form of verse quite indiscriminately, and applied it to matter that we do not recognise as at all poetical; while in these later times we more frequently observe a style of thought highly poetic brought down into the prosaic form. What, then, beside the accession of verse distinguishes poetry from prose? We answer, that poetry has pleasure, excitement, passion, for a distinct, acknowledged, ultimate end; and that, from this peculiarity in its aim, arises whatever is characteristic in its thought or expression. In the poem objects are portrayed, reflections are put forth, for their very beauty and tenderness, for the elevation or even the shock and tumult of mind which they occasion; for we all know that our nature delights in being roused—delights in excitement—though the feeling kindled be not exactly of that class called pleasurable. Other writers, indeed, share this object with the poet, but with them it is subordinate, or is a means to some further end; with him it is an end in itself—it may be his sole end—it is always an avowed and admitted purpose. He who, for instance, narrates the incidents of a war to deliver a faithful account of it to posterity, is the historian; he who speculates on the causes and remote consequences of the war to frame his science of politics, is the philosopher; he who appeals to the success of that war to stimulate his fellow-citizens to similar enterprises, is the orator; if any one should depict the battle for the sake of the battle itself—for the wonder and the passion of the scene—he is the poet. The historian seeks preeminently for truth of statement; the philosopher generalizes on the operation of causes; the orator, practical in his object, aims at impelling men along a given line of action or of conduct; the poet deals with his materials for the very animation and delight which the contemplation of them affords. It is not impossible that one and the same person may, to a certain extent, combine the aims and qualities of all these writers, and be at once historian and philosopher, orator and poet; and indeed it rarely happens that any literary composition has, strictly speaking, but one end in view,
