re is something
pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless _un_true. And what
is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full
of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being
so.

Sec. 5. It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this
fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the
crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real
expectation that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused
by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or
less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to speak
presently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the
other error, that which the mind admits when affected strongly by
emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke--

They rowed her in across the rolling foam--
The cruel, crawling foam.

The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which
attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which
the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same
effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of
external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'Pathetic
Fallacy'.

Sec. 6. Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as eminently
a character of poetical description, and the temper of mind in which
we allow it as one eminently poetical, because passionate. But, I
believe, if we look well into the matter, that we shall find the
greatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness--that it is
only the second order of poets who much delight in it.[31]

[31] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these
two orders I mean the Creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante),
and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson).
But both of these must be _first_-rate in their range, though
their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in
_quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind.
There is quite enough of the best,--much more than we can
ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a
literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with
inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by
young pseudo-poets, 'that they believe there is _some_ good
in what they have written: that they hope to do better in
time,' &c. _Some_ good! If there is not _a