ng the
ear. The distinction between poetry and what is not poetry, whether
explained or not, is felt to be fundamental: and where every one feels
a difference, a difference there must be. All other appearances may be
fallacious, but the appearance of a difference is a real difference.
Appearances too, like other things, must have a cause, and that which
can cause anything, even an illusion, must be a reality. And hence,
while a half-philosophy disdains the classifications and distinctions
indicated by popular language, philosophy carried to its highest point
frames new ones, but rarely sets aside the old, content with
correcting and regularizing them. It cuts fresh channels for thought,
but does not fill up such as it finds ready-made; it traces, on the
contrary, more deeply, broadly, and distinctly, those into which the
current has spontaneously flowed.

Let us then attempt, in the way of modest inquiry, not to coerce and
confine nature within the bounds of an arbitrary definition, but
rather to find the boundaries which she herself has set, and erect a
barrier round them; not calling mankind to account for having
misapplied the word 'poetry', but attempting to clear up the
conception which they already attach to it, and to bring forward as a
distinct principle that which, as a vague feeling, has really guided
them in their employment of the term.

The object of poetry is confessedly to act upon the emotions; and
therein is poetry sufficiently distinguished from what Wordsworth
affirms to be its logical opposite, namely, not prose, but matter of
fact or science. The one addresses itself to the belief, the other to
the feelings. The one does its work by convincing or persuading, the
other by moving. The one acts by presenting a proposition to the
understanding, the other by offering interesting objects of
contemplation to the sensibilities.

This, however, leaves us very far from a definition of poetry. This
distinguishes it from one thing, but we are bound to distinguish it
from everything. To bring thoughts or images before the mind for the
purpose of acting upon the emotions, does not belong to poetry alone.
It is equally the province (for example) of the novelist: and yet the
faculty of the poet and that of the novelist are as distinct as any
other two faculties; as the faculties of the novelist and of the
orator, or of the poet and the metaphysician. The two characters may
be united, as characters the most disp