Literary Remains, vol 2 | Page 3

the hardihood to assure you, that you
might as well ask me what my dreams were in the year 1814, as what
my course of lectures was at the Surrey Institution.
'Fuimus Troes.'

SHAKSPEARE,

WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA,
AND THE STAGE.
DEFINITION OF POETRY.
Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is
opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate
object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the
proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of
immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include
novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems,
there must be some additional character by which poetry is not only
divided from opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate,
though similar, modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected?
In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and the passions and
accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that natural language
which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure and
benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work a
poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include
all this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable
emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in
the poet himself in the act of composition;--and in order to understand
this, we must combine a more than ordinary sympathy with the objects,
emotions, or incidents contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more
than common sensibility, with a more than ordinary activity of the
mind in respect of the fancy and the imagination. Hence is produced a
more vivid reflection of the truths of nature and of the human heart,
united with a constant activity modifying and correcting these truths by
that sort of pleasurable emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties
gives in a certain degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under
the full play of those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather
than voluntary, and in which the effort required bears no proportion to
the activity enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a
highly pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate
for itself a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the
definition, which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a
poem, is a species of composition, opposed to science, as having

intellectual pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of
language natural to us in a state of excitement,--but distinguished from
other species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by
permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of
pleasure from the component parts;--and the perfection of which is, to
communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure
compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of
course, will vary with the different modes of poetry;--and that
splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in
an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish
and proof of vile taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.
It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has
implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension,
which at first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have
endeavoured to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition.
Speaking of poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, "which is simple,
sensuous, passionate." How awful is the power of words!--fearful often
in their consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful
when both felt and understood!--Had these three words only been
properly understood by, and present in the minds of, general readers,
not only almost a library of false poetry would have been either
precluded or still-born, but, what is of more consequence, works truly
excellent and capable of enlarging the understanding, warming and
purifying the heart, and placing in the centre of the whole being the
germs of noble and manlike actions, would have been the common diet
of the intellect instead. For the first condition, simplicity,--while, on the
one hand, it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science,
labouring towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and
finished road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with
streams murmuring by his side, and trees and flowers and human
dwellings to make his journey as delightful as the object of it is
desirable, instead of having to toil, with the pioneers and painfully
make the road on which others are to travel,--precludes, on the other
hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;--the