Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with
Duty or with Truth.
A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at once
the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I
maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the
contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that
pleasurable elevation, or excitement of the soul, which we recognise
as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from
Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which
is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore- using the
word as inclusive of the sublime- I make Beauty the province of the
poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects
should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes:-
no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar
elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem.
It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or
the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be
introduced into a poem, and with advantage, for they may subserve
incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: but
the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper
subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence
of the poem.
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