Imagination is its soul.* With the passions of mankind- although
it may modify them greatly- although it may exalt, or inflame, or
purify, or control them- it would require little ingenuity to prove
that it has no inevitable, and indeed no necessary co-existence. We
have hitherto spoken of poetry in the abstract: we come now to speak
of it in its everyday acceptation- that is to say, of the practical
result arising from the sentiment we have considered.
* Imagination is, possibly in man, a lesser degree of the creative
power in God. What the Deity imagines, is, but was not before. What
man imagines, is, but was also. The mind of man cannot imagine what is
not. This latter point may be demonstrated.- See Les Premiers Traits
de L'Erudition Universelle, par M. Le Baron de Biefield, 1767.
And now it appears evident, that since Poetry, in this new sense, is
the practical result, expressed in language, of this Poetic
Sentiment in certain individuals, the only proper method of testing
the merits of a poem is by measuring its capabilities of exciting
the Poetic Sentiments in others. And to this end we have many aids- in
observation, in experience, in ethical analysis, and in the dictates
of common sense. Hence the Poeta nascitur, which is indisputably
true if we consider the Poetic Sentiment, becomes the merest of
absurdities when we regard it in reference to the practical result.
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