a rational being like man cast a complacent retrospect even over the visions of his fancy, if these, in departing from the literal form, retained no affinity to the spirit of truth. The term imagination, therefore, when spoken of as the organ of poetry, ought not to be taken in the narrow meaning of mere fanciful association, to which it is sometimes limited, from the unsettled usage of language; but should be understood as a complex power of the mind-including fancy to associate ideas, and taste and judgment to combine them.* Admitting that, among the powers of the imagination, fancy is that which most strikingly distinguishes the man of genius from other men, let us glance at a few of the circumstances which betoken the connexion of intellect both with the enjoyment and the production of poetry. As to the understanding of the reader, it must be confessed, indeed, that it is submitted to the poet with no very striking symptoms of being likely to be treated with severity; for he addresses himself mainly to our sympathies and affections, and he professes to tell us no more of the truth than he can instantly render intelligible and agreeable. Moreover, he leads us into an ideal world, where the empire of literal truth is at an end, and where the laws of congruity that are to bind the new objects which he describes, appear to us to be, more than they really are, at the poet's own disposal. But though the needle varies in the compåss when we are at first launched upon the ocean of fiction, we soon find that there are limits to its variation. In other words, the liberties which he takes with our belief, cannot please us without a general deference to our moral judgments. And if the poet neither tasks nor fatigues our understandings, it is not because he has unimportant truths to communicate, but because he is bound to reveal them with an easy and beguiling perspicuity. It is true that he conducts no abstracted chain of reasoning on the connexion of men's actions and passions, nor on their social interests, nor on their manners, religion, nor morals. Yet he throws light upon them all. He shews the landscape of life, the customs of ages, and the contrasts of individual character, with a power so full and illustrative, as sometimes to invite the historian and the philosopher themselves to consult him. It need not be denied, that the romance of poetry, if improperly studied, and imitated as a principle of con Dugald Stewart calls the imagination "a complex power. It includes, conception or simple apprehension, which enables us to form a notion of those former objects of perception or of knowledge, out of which we are to make a selection (in the fine arts); abstraction, which separates the selected materials from the qualities and circumstances which are connected with them in nature; and judgment, or taste, which selects the materials, and directs their combination. To these powers we may add, that particular habit of association to which I formerly gave the name of fancy."-Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind, p. 477. duct in real life, would produce absurd and fantastic actions ; but so would the abstract truths of philosophy, if applied as rules of practice without accommodation to circumstances. It is enough to say of poetry, that a recognizance of general truth is indispensable to our enjoyment of it. For the wildest fiction is bound to be consistent with itself; and its shapes, which are but magnified types of the natural world, must still exhibit, amidst their marvellous attributes, a harmony of parts that shall remind us of Nature. But the main business of the poet lies in the sphere of humanity; and there, though he may feign events and characters out of nothing, yet he can no more misrepresent the passions of our moral fabric with impunity, than the artist in visible forms can trespass against the laws of anatomy or perspective. Even in forsaking minute probabilities, fiction has in view to make us acquainted with those which more importantly interest us; and she rises above the literal ground of truth only to take a wider and more commanding prospect of its horizon. Thus when the dramatist brings together events and characters with a happiness and swiftness of succession that could hardly, if ever, exist in reality, his representation, though containing improbabilities, may, nevertheless, be more instructive, and put us in possession of more truth in the aggregate, than if he had guaged the likelihood of all his events by the doctrine of chances, or chained their time to the hour and moment of chronology. For he can thus illustrate human nature in situations which he could not otherwise conceive, or which he could not, at least, pourtray with spirit and passion. And it is only in impassioned situations that the inmost traits of human character can be consistently described as disclosing themselves: for "As perilous rocks lie in the sleeping seas Unknown, and make no discord with the waves In the hour of peace, as if they had no being, And but speak out when passions rise in tempests." The importance of the intellectual faculty to the poet himself can be hid from us only by deceptive appearances. He may often seem to be happiest in composition when he abandons himself most carelessly to the accidental impulses of his fancy; but his acquaintance with truth must have come to him through much observation and reflection, though it seems to be intuitive amidst the burst of his inspiration. Indeed, when a writer conducts a great design of imaginary story; when he makes its characters congenial with the moral experience of mankind; and when he gives their complicated situations a perspicuity that supports our attention unfatigued-can we doubt that such a writer has exerted his own judgment in proportion to the trouble which he saves to our own? He must understand the human heart who describes it well; and his knowledge is not the less intellectual that it shews itself in no formal process of reasoning, but operates like a spirit rather felt than seen, in giving congruity to the shapes of his fancy. Owing to the subtle manner in which Poetry teaches us truth through our sympathies, while she abandons literal veracity, her art, though it appeals to the very simplicity of the heart, always yields a heightened enjoyment to the retrospect of judicious Taste. That power at least increases "our sober certainty of waking bliss." It may not be compared to the mine that yields us treasure, but it supplies a touchstone for appreciating its purity. The beauties of poetry shine on inconsiderate judgments, like the sun on objects fortuitously placed, the shadows of which but imperfectly enable us to guess at the hour of the day. Experienced sensibility is like the gnomon. It measures the altitude and dials the light of inspiration. I have repeated the words by which Lord Bacon so well characterizes poetry, namely, that it accommodates the shews of things to the desires of the mind," oftener than I should have quoted any expression of less weight and authority. When the truth of the expression is admitted however, it still leaves room for speculation on the fact of things painful in themselves being made subservient by the poet's art to the enjoyment of the imagination. This apparent paradox has been explained by some writers in a way that would make it still more paradoxical, namely, that painful emotions possess inherent sublimity. Human experience certainly contradicts this supposition. Pain and fear are, in themselves, humiliating sensations; and when a poet fills our imaginations with the conception of a battle or a storm, it is not the sufferings of humanity that constitute the sublime, but our associated ideas of the human energy and intrepidity which we suppose to encounter them. In like manner, when we are touched in fiction by the distress of venerable age or innocent sensibility, our reverence, enthusiasm, and love of beauty, not the thoughts of distress, occasion our enjoyment. Our predominant emotions in sublimity and pathos are the very antidotes to pain and danger, namely, glorying zeal and tender affection; and it is because they are antidotes that the poet employs them. The idea of happiness is, therefore, still the sovereign feeling of poetry. It lurks even in poetic misanthropy, when she tries to shape an infernal paradise out of her own pride and independence.* This subject has been ably treated by Mr. Knight in his Work on Taste. His illustrations, which refute Burke's theory of the Sublime and Beautiful, are too extensive As language, the medium of the poet's communication, is judged of by the ear, or at all events by the memory of the ear, even in tacit perusal, the poet studies to make it agreeable to us by harmony. In prose itself we are not denied some degree of the same gratification; nor is it always an arbitrary association which we form between a writer's mind and the modulation of his style, when we infer slovenly habits of thought from his uncouth periods, and a graceful spirit from his power of making expression attractive even in its outward form. But the utmost harmony which we can enjoy in prose is loose and desultory, and the grace of a prose style is not improved, but deteriorated, by any doubtful approximation to the harmony of numbers. In verse we not only enjoy the recollection of cadences that are past, but agreeably anticipate those which are coming. In prose we enjoy the harmony of periods only as they pass; and we should not be able to make any calculation by the ear of the pauses or flow of clauses that are to follow. No doubt, we experience in a prose sentence that the use of a spondee or an anapæst may have made a particular clause more graceful; but the moment we detect the writer's assignation for the use of any particular foot or rhythm, we are displeased. A sentence may be appropriately long or short, but we must have no precognition of its length or brevity. Alternations of common and triple time, which displease us in verse, are agreeable in prose. The harmony of a prose style, if it should not be, ought at least to appear, unpremeditated; and the best improvement which a writer can give to it by revision is, not to smooth or balance his periods, but to break up and vary their cadence from the monotony which carelessness is apt to produce. In prose, the ear follows the writer; in verse, it goes before him: a compromise between the variety of the one and the regularity of the other gives us the grace of neither. It is true, that in our translation of the Bible, measured prose is not without solemnity to our peculiar associations; but this dead march of language has never been permanently admired in any other than sacred compositions.* for me to quote; and good illustrations are not safely abridged. But the book is almost in every one's hands. It confirmed me in several opinions which I endeavoured to convey in the first lecture I ever gave at the Royal Institution, at a time when I had not read Mr. Knight's Work, long celebrated as it had been, and was not aware that he not only anticipated, but explained those opinions in a clearer manner than that in which I had treated them, and with a minuteness into which my limits would not allow me to enter. The strictest anticipation of harmony which the ear can enjoy in verse, may be produced by two circumstances. The first is that of lines being equal in length from It is true, that the fulfilment of what the ear anticipates in harmonious verse, though generally distinct, does not extend to the minutest inflections of harmony. These often give a grace to modulation from their very variety. But, upon the whole, the beauty of verse is supported by coinciding with our expectation, and there is much more chance of our being startled by strange turns of versification, than palled with those that are familiar. Hence nations have the highest relish for their own forms of metre, with the flow of which habit has made them best acquainted. Though the delight which we experience in verse comes to us through organic impression, we must never lose sight of the intimate dependance of our pleasure on the associating faculty. It has been said, that harmonious words of unknown meaning would yield not the slightest pleasure to the ear.* I am not quite persuaded that this is the fact, for we are naturally fond of rhythm and time, both in articulate and inarticulate sounds. That pleasure, no one will doubt, is intrinsically feeble. But be it ever so slight, it may affect the association; for we must not judge mechanically of the influences that act on that subtle power. Slight impressions will often awaken all her activity; while strong luxuries of the sense absorb us in sensation. In reality, however, to abstract the consideration of harmony from its union with meaning, is to dismember the conception of our enjoyment beginning to end, i. e. including the same number of syllables, or so proportioned that their inequalities and length have a regular return. The second is a similarity in the internal modulation of lines. There is, no doubt, agreeable variety in the harmony of verse without exactly fulfilling both of those circumstances; but they cannot be both absent from language at once, and leave it the character of verse. The length and shortness of lines may be varied, so as to present themselves fortuitously long or short. Much beautiful poetry has been written in this manner, and many persons enjoy its variety. Those who are lost to its magic irregularity may fairly allege that the four corner-pillars of Epic Poetry, the Iliad, the Æneid, Jerusalem, and Paradise Lost, have been constructed on a different principle; but still there is a charm in variety, and this is still versification. But if the writer, besides using long or short measure at will, in the same poem, were also to pass at random from common time in one line, to triple time in the next line, or vice versa, he would certainly cease to write verse altogether. Even with lines of equal length, this vicissitude of time would be discordant. If a strain, for instance, were to commence thus, in triple time At the close of the day, when the hamlet was still, and to continue in the second line, And save the torrent, nought was heard upon the hill: the last twelve syllables, though as strictly rhythmical as the former, would disappoint us, by change of time, and we should much rather expect him to write And nought but the torrent was heard from the hill. The vicissitude of time within the same strain, is therefore an anomaly in verse; and if it can have a place, it can come only like a discord in music, the more rarely, I apprehend, the better. Mr. Knight on Taste. |