hom does he address himself?
And what language is to be expected from him?--He is a man speaking to
men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more
enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature,
and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among
mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who
rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him;
delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested
in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them
where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a
disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if
they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which
are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet
(especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing
and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real
events, than anything which, from the motions of their own minds merely,
other men are accustomed to feel in themselves:--whence, and from
practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing
what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings
which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise
in him without immediate external excitement.

But whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest
Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will
suggest to him, must often, in liveliness and truth, fall short of that
which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of those
passions, certain shadows of which the Poet thus produces, or feels to
be produced, in himself.

However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a
Poet, it is obvious, that while he describes and imitates passions, his
employment is in some degree mechanical, compared with the freedom and
power of real and substantial action and suffering. So that it will be
the wish of the Poet to bring his feelings near to those of the persons
whose feelings he describes, nay, for short spaces of time, perhaps, to
let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound and identify
his own feelings with theirs; modifying only the language which is thus
suggested to him by a consideration that he describes for a particular
purpose, that of giving pleasu