which
would in a grave writer of prose be frivolous, be sonorous trifles, crowns
his muse with praise. Consequences follow, deeply penetrating into the
substance of the whole composition, which is thus delivered up, in a
manner unknown to prose, to the wonder-working power of a delighted
inspiration.

We know if any one begins to recite a passage of Milton, that we expect to
hear a charm of sound which we never for a moment dream of hearing in
prose--a new and a more beautiful speech. For having made one mode of
speech more musical than another, we have placed it more immediately under
the dominion of the faculty by which we are cognizant of beauty.
Accordingly we feel, and know, and universally admit, although Eloquence
is musical, that Poetry far excels Eloquence in its alliance with the
beautiful. Music is beauty, addressing itself to the sense of hearing, and
therefore the beautiful is showered upon poetry, and therein everlastingly
enshrined. Verse, then, is a language seized upon by the soul gratifying
itself in the indulgence of its own emotions, under a law of beauty. Thus
we have seen a power introduced into human discourse, by a cause that
hardly promised such wonderful effects. A modulation of sounds, a musical
rising, and falling, and flowing, fitted for expressing a fervour, a
boldness, an enthusiasm in the thinking, suddenly transforms the whole
character of composition, creates or infuses a new spirit of thought. A
kind of literature is produced, of a peculiar, and that the highest
order--Poetry. We have seen this take many beautiful, august, and imposing
forms--the majesty of the Epopeia--the pathetic energy of the Tragic
Drama--the rapturous exaltation and prodigal splendour of the Lyrical Ode.
The names of the species recal the names of the great works belonging to
each, and of the great masters whose memory the works have made immortal.
Those masters of the divine art thus breathing delight, are numbered among
the loftiest and most powerful spirits. Nations, illustrious in peace and
war, heroic in character and action, founders of stable and flourishing
republics and empires, have set on the front of their renown the fame of
having produced this or that other glorious poem. What wonder, since the
poet, in forms given by imagination, embodies the profoundest, the
loftiest, the tenderest, the innermost acts and movements of that soul
which lives in every human bosom? What wonder if each of us loves the