eloquence is _heard_, poetry is _over_heard. Eloquence supposes an
audience; the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet's
utter unconsciousness of a listener. Poetry is feeling confessing
itself to itself, in moments of solitude, and embodying itself in
symbols which are the nearest possible representations of the feeling
in the exact shape in which it exists in the poet's mind. Eloquence is
feeling pouring itself out to other minds, courting their sympathy, or
endeavouring to influence their belief or move them to passion or to
action.

All poetry is of the nature of soliloquy. It may be said that poetry
which is printed on hot-pressed paper and sold at a bookseller's shop,
is a soliloquy in full dress, and on the stage. It is so; but there is
nothing absurd in the idea of such a mode of soliloquizing. What we
have said to ourselves, we may tell to others afterwards; what we have
said or done in solitude, we may voluntarily reproduce when we know
that other eyes are upon us. But no trace of consciousness that any
eyes are upon us must be visible in the work itself. The actor knows
that there is an audience present; but if he act as though he knew it,
he acts ill. A poet may write poetry not only with the intention of
printing it, but for the express purpose of being paid for it; that it
should _be_ poetry, being written under such influences, is less
probable; not, however, impossible; but no otherwise possible than if
he can succeed in excluding from his work every vestige of such
lookings-forth into the outward and every-day world, and can express
his emotions exactly as he has felt them in solitude, or as he is
conscious that he should feel them though they were to remain for ever
unuttered, or (at the lowest) as he knows that others feel them in
similar circumstances of solitude. But when he turns round and
addresses himself to another person; when the act of utterance is not
itself the end, but a means to an end,--viz. by the feelings he
himself expresses, to work upon the feelings, or upon the belief, or
the will, of another,--when the expression of his emotions, or of his
thoughts tinged by his emotions, is tinged also by that purpose, by
that desire of making an impression upon another mind, then it ceases
to be poetry, and becomes eloquence.

Poetry, accordingly, is the natural fruit of solitude and meditation;
eloquence, of intercourse with the world. The persons who have most
feeling of th