Taking up the subject upon general grounds, I ask what is meant by the
word Poet? What is a poet? To whom does he address himself? And what
language is to be expected from him? He is a man speaking to men: a
man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm
and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a
more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind;
a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices
more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting
to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the
goings on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them
where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a
disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if
they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions,
which are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real
events, yet especially in those parts of the general sympathy which
are pleasing and delightful do more nearly resemble the passions
produced by real events than anything which, from the motions of their
own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves;
whence, and from practise, he has acquired a greater readiness and
power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those
thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure
of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.
But whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest
poet to possess, there can not be a doubt but that the language which
it will suggest to him must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short
of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual
pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus
produces, or feels to be produced, in himself.
However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of
the poet, it is obvious that, while he describes and imitates
passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared
with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and
suffering. So that it will be the wish of the poet to bring his
feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes,
nay, for short spaces of time, perhaps, to let himself slip into an
entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with
theirs; modifying only the language which is thus suggested to him by
a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that of
giving pleasure. Here, then, he will apply the principle on which I
have so much insisted, namely, that of selection; on this he will
depend for removing what would otherwise be painful or disgusting in
the passion; he will feel that there is no necessity to trick out or
elevate nature; and, the more industriously he applies this principle,
the deeper will be his faith that no words which his fancy or
imagination can suggest will bear to be compared with those which are
the emanations of reality and truth.
But it may be said by those who do not object to the general spirit of
these remarks, that, as it is impossible for the poet to produce upon
all occasions language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that
which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he should
consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who deems
himself justified when he substitutes excellences of another kind for
those which are unattainable by him; and endeavors occasionally to
surpass his original, in order to make some amends for the general
inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But this would be
to encourage idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language
of men who speak of what they do not understand; who talk of poetry as
of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us
as gravely about a taste for poetry, as they express it, as if it were
a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or Frontignac, or
Sherry. Aristotle, I have been told, hath said that poetry is the most
philosophic of all writing; it is so: its object is truth, not
individual and local, but general and operative; not standing upon
external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth
which is its own testimony, which gives strength and divinity to the
tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same
tribunal. Poetry is the image of man and nature. The obstacles which
stand in the way of the fidelity of the biographer and historian, and
of their consequent utility, are incalculably greater than those which
are to be encountered by the poet who has an adequate notion of the
dignity of his art. The poet writes under one restriction only,
namely, that of the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human
being possest of that information which may be expected from him, not
as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural
philosopher, but as a man. Except this one restriction, there is no
object standing between the poet and the image of things: between this
and the biographer and the historian there are a thousand.
Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered
as a degradation of the poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an
acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the
more sincere because it is not formal, but indirect; it is a task
light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love:
further, it is an homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man,
to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and
feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy but what is
propagated by pleasure. I would not be misunderstood, but wherever we
sympathize with pain it will be found that the sympathy is produced
and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure. We have no
knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation
of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and
exists in us by pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist, and
mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to
struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects
with which the anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his
knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no
knowledge. What then does the poet? He considers man and the objects
that surround him as acting and reacting upon each other, so as to
produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man
in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with
a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions,
intuitions, and deductions, which by habit become of the nature of
intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of
ideas and sensations, and finding everywhere objects that immediately
excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature,
are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment.
To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these
sympathies in which, without any other discipline than that of our
daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the poet principally
directs his attention. He considers man and nature as essentially
adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of
the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature. And thus the
poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure which accompanies him
through the whole course of his studies, converses with general nature
with affections akin to those which, through labor and length of time,
the man of science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those
parts of nature which are the objects of his studies. The knowledge
both of the poet and the man of science is pleasure; but the knowledge
of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our
natural and unalienable inheritance; the other is a personal and
individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and
direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow beings. The man of
science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes
and loves it in his solitude; the poet, singing a song in which all
human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our
visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer
spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in
the countenance of all science. Emphatically may be said of the poet,
as Shakespeare hath said of man, "that he looks before and after." He
is the rock of defense of human nature, an upholder and preserver,
carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of
difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and
customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things
violently destroyed, the poet binds together by passion and knowledge
the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth
and over all time. The objects of the poet's thoughts are everywhere;
tho the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides,
yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation
in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all
knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man.
If the labors of men of science should ever create any material
revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the
impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will sleep then no
more than at present, but he will be ready to follow the steps of the
man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he
will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the science
itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or
mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon
which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these
things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are
contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences shall be
manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering
beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science,
thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form
of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the
transfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear
and genuine inmate of the household of man. It is not, then, to be
supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion of poetry which I
have attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of
his pictures by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavor to
excite admiration of himself by arts, the necessity of which must
manifestly depend upon the assumed meanness of his subject.