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CHAPTER XVII.
OF SOME OF THE SOURCES OF POETRY AMONGST DEMOCRATIC NATIONS.
Various different significations have been given to the word Poetry. It would weary my readers if I were to lead them into a discussion as to which of these definitions ought to be selected: I prefer telling them at once that which I have chosen. In my opinion, Poetry is the search and the delineation of the Ideal.
The Poet is he who, by suppressing a part of what exists, by adding some imaginary touches to the picture, and by combining certain real circumstances, but which do not in fact concurrently happen, completes and extends the work of nature. Thus the object of poetry is not to represent what is true, but to adorn it, and to present to the mind some loftier imagery. Verse, regarded as the ideal beauty of language, may be eminently poetical; but verse does not, of itself, constitute poetry.
I now proceed to inquire whether, amongst the actions, the
sentiments, and the opinions of democratic nations, there are
any which lead to a conception of ideal beauty, and which may
for this reason be considered as natural sourcaes of poetry.
It must, in the first place, be acknowledged that the taste for ideal beauty, and the pleasure derived from the expression of it, are never so intense or so diffused amongst a democratic as amongst an aristocratic people. In aristocratic nations it sometimes happens that the body goes on to act as it were spontaneously, whilst the higher faculties are bound and burthened by repose. Amongst these nations the peo-
