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which it directs its view. It is called imaginative or creative, from
the originality and independence of its modes of thinking, compared
with the common-place and matter-of-fact conceptions of ordinary
minds, which are fettered down to the particular and individual. At
the same time it feels a natural sympathy with everything great and
splendid in the physical and moral world; and selecting such from the
mass of common phenomena, incorporates them, as it were, into the
substance of its own creations. From living thus in a world of its
own, it speaks the language of dignity, emotion, and refinement.
Figure is its necessary medium of communication with man; for in the
feebleness of ordinary words to express its ideas, and in the absence
of terms of abstract perfection, the adoption of metaphorical language
is the only poor means allowed it for imparting to others its intense
feelings. A metrical garb has, in all languages, been appropriated to
poetry--it is but the outward development of the music and harmony
within. The verse, far from being a restraint on the true poet, is the
suitable index of his sense, and is adopted by his free and deliberate
choice.

We shall presently show the applicability of our doctrine to the
various departments of poetical composition; first, however, it will
be right to volunteer an explanation which may save it from much
misconception and objection. Let not our notion be thought arbitrarily
to limit the number of poets, generally considered such. It will be
found to lower particular works, or parts of works, rather than the
writers themselves; sometimes to condemn only the vehicle in which the
poetry is conveyed. There is an ambiguity in the word poetry, which is
taken to signify both the talent itself, and the written composition
which is the result of it. Thus there is an apparent, but no real
contradiction, in saying a poem may be but partially poetical; in some
passages more so than in others; and sometimes not poetical at all. We
only maintain--not that writers forfeit the name of poet who fail at
times to answer to our requisitions, but--that they are poets only so
far forth and inasmuch as they do answer to them. We may grant, for
instance, that the vulgarities of old Phoenix in the ninth _Iliad_, or
of the nurse of Orestes in the _Choephoroe_, or perhaps of the
grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, are in themselves unworthy of their
respective authors, and refer them to the wantonness of