et on his Blindness_; or Bernard Barton's
_Dream_. As picturesque specimens, we may name Campbell's _Battle of
the Baltic_; or Joanna Baillie's _Chough and Crow_; and for the more
exalted and splendid style, Gray's _Bard_; or Milton's _Hymn on the
Nativity_; in which facts, with which every one is familiar, are made
new by the colouring of a poetical imagination. It must all along be
observed, that we are not adducing instances for their own sake; but
in order to illustrate our general doctrine, and to show its
applicability to those compositions which are, by universal consent,
acknowledged to be poetical.

The department of poetry we are now speaking of, is of much wider
extent than might at first sight appear. It will include such
moralizing and philosophical poems as Young's _Night Thoughts_, and
Byron's _Childe Harold_.[22] There is much bad taste, at present, in
the judgement passed on compositions of this kind. It is the fault of
the day to mistake mere eloquence for poetry; whereas, in direct
opposition to the conciseness and simplicity of the poet, the talent
of the orator consists in making much of a single idea. '_Sic dicet
ille ut verset saepe multis modis eandem et unam rem, ut haereat in
eadem commoreturque sententia._' This is the great art of Cicero
himself, who, whether he is engaged in statement, argument, or
raillery, never ceases till he has exhausted the subject; going round
about it, and placing it in every different light, yet without
repetition to offend or weary the reader. This faculty seems to
consist in the power of throwing off harmonious sentences, which,
while they have a respectable proportion of meaning, yet are
especially intended to charm the ear. In popular poems, common ideas
are unfolded with copiousness, and set off in polished verse--and this
is called poetry. In the _Pleasures of Hope_ we find this done with
exquisite taste; but it is in his minor poems that the author's
powerful and free poetical genius rises to its natural elevation. In
_Childe Harold_, too, the writer is carried through his Spenserian
stanza with the unweariness and equable fullness of accomplished
eloquence; opening, illustrating, and heightening one idea, before he
passes on to another. His composition is an extended funeral oration
over buried joys and pleasures. His laments over Greece, Rome, and the
fallen in various engagements, have quite the character of panegyrical
orations; while by the very attempt