re. Here, then, he will apply the
principle of selection which has been already insisted upon. He will
depend upon this for removing what would otherwise be painful or
disgusting in the passion; he will feel that there is no necessity to
trick out or to elevate nature: and, the more industriously he applies
this principle, the deeper will be his faith that no words, which _his_
fancy or imagination can suggest, will be to be compared with those
which are the emanations of reality and truth.

But it may be said by those who do not object to the general spirit of
these remarks, that, as it is impossible for the Poet to produce upon
all occasions language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that
which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he should
consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who does not
scruple to substitute excellencies of another kind for those which are
unattainable by him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his
original, in order to make some amends for the general inferiority to
which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to encourage
idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who
speak of what they do not understand; who talk of Poetry as of a matter
of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely
about a _taste_ for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as
indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry.
Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is the most
philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is truth, not
individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon
external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth
which is its own testimony, which gives competence and confidence to the
tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal.
Poetry is the image of man and nature. The obstacles which stand in the
way of the fidelity of the Biographer and Historian, and of their
consequent utility, are incalculably greater than those which are to be
encountered by the Poet who comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet
writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving
immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that information which
may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an
astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. Except this one
restriction, there is no objec