earing his name, by which he is enabled,
[Greek: athiktos hegeteros] ['without a guide'], to lead the
way to his place of death, in our judgement, produces more
poetical effect than all the skilful intricacy of the plot of
the _Tyrannus_. The latter excites an interest which scarcely
lasts beyond the first reading--the former _decies repetita
placebit_.

[20] In seeing the picture one is at the same time
learning,--gathering the meaning of things.

But as we have treated, rather unceremoniously, a deservedly high
authority, we will try to compensate for our rudeness, by illustrating
his general doctrine of the nature of poetry, which we hold to be most
true and philosophical.

Poetry, according to Aristotle, is a representation of the ideal.
Biography and history represent individual characters and actual
facts; poetry, on the contrary, generalizing from the phenomena of
nature and life, supplies us with pictures drawn not after an existing
pattern, but after a creation of the mind. _Fidelity_ is the primary
merit of biography and history; the essence of poetry is _fiction_.
_Poesis nihil aliud est_ (says Bacon) _quam historiae imitatio ad
placitum_. It delineates that perfection which the imagination
suggests, and to which as a limit the present system of divine
Providence actually tends. Moreover, by confining the attention to one
series of events and scene of action, it bounds and finishes off the
confused luxuriance of real nature; while, by a skilful adjustment of
circumstances, it brings into sight the connexion of cause and effect,
completes the dependence of the parts one on another, and harmonizes
the proportions of the whole. It is then but the type and model of
history or biography, if we may be allowed the comparison, bearing
some resemblance to the abstract mathematical formula of physics,
before it is modified by the contingencies of gravity and friction.
Hence, while it recreates the imagination by the superhuman loveliness
of its views, it provides a solace for the mind broken by the
disappointments and sufferings of actual life; and becomes, moreover,
the utterance of the inward emotions of a right moral feeling, seeking
a purity and a truth which this world will not give.

It follows that the poetical mind is one full of the eternal forms of
beauty and perfection; these are its material of thought, its
instrument and medium of observation--these colour each object t