She has no
sympathy with the myrtles. All that is indispensable in song is all
with which she has nothing to do. To deck her in gay robes is to
render her a harlot. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to
wreathe her in gems and flowers. Even in stating this our present
proposition, we verify our own words- we feel the necessity, in
enforcing this truth, of descending from metaphor. Let us then be
simple and distinct. To convey "the true" we are required to dismiss
from the attention all inessentials. We must be perspicuous,
precise, terse. We need concentration rather than expansion of mind.
We must be calm, unimpassioned, unexcited- in a word, we must be in
that peculiar mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse
of the poetical. He must be blind indeed who cannot perceive the
radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical
modes of inculcation. He must be grossly wedded to conventionalisms
who, in spite of this difference, shall still attempt to reconcile the
obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
Dividing the world of mind into its most obvious and immediately
recognisable distinctions, we have the pure intellect, taste and the
moral sense. We place taste between the intellect and the moral sense,
because it is just this intermediate space which, in the mind, it
occupies.
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