In a world where evil is a mere consequence of good, and good a mere
consequence of evil- in short where all of which we have any
conception is good or bad only by comparison- we have never yet been
fully able to appreciate the validity of that decision which would
debar the critic from enforcing upon his readers the merits or
demerits of a work with another. It seems to us that an adage has
had more to do with this popular feeling than any just reason
founded upon common sense. Thinking thus, we shall have no scruple
in illustrating our opinion in regard to what is not Ideality or the
Poetic Power, by an example of what is.*
* As examples of entire poems of the purest ideality, we would
cite the Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus, the Inferno of Dante,
Cervantes' Destruction of Numantia, the Comus of Milton, Pope's Rape
of the Lock, Burns' Tam O'Shanter, the Auncient Mariner, the
Christabel, and the Kubla Khan of Coleridge, and most especially the
Sensitive Plant of Shelley, and the Nightingale of Keats. We have seen
American poems evincing the faculty in the highest degree.
We have already given the description of the Sylphid Queen in the
Culprit Fay. In the Queen Mab of Shelley a Fairy is thus introduced-
Those who had looked upon the sight
Passing all human glory,
Saw not the yellow moon,
Saw not the mortal scene,
Heard not the night wind's rush,
Heard not an earthly sound,
Saw but the fairy pageant,
Heard but the heavenly strains
That filled the lonely dwelling-
and thus described-
The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud
That catches but the faintest tinge of even,
And which the straining eye can hardly seize
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,
Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star
That gems the glittering coronet of morn,
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,
Yet with an undulating motion,
Swayed to her outline gracefully.
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