will greatly contribute to impart passion to
the words, and to effect the complex end which the Poet proposes to
himself.

If I had undertaken a SYSTEMATIC defence of the theory here maintained,
it would have been my duty to develop the various causes upon which the
pleasure received from metrical language depends. Among the chief of
these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to
those who have made any of the Arts the object of accurate reflection;
namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of
similitude in dissimilitude. This principle is the great spring of the
activity of our minds, and their chief feeder. From this principle the
direction of the sexual appetite, and all the passions connected with
it, take their origin: it is the life of our ordinary conversation; and
upon the accuracy with which similitude in dissimilitude, and
dissimilitude in similitude are perceived, depend our taste and our
moral feelings. It would not be a useless employment to apply this
principle to the consideration of metre, and to show that metre is hence
enabled to afford much pleasure, and to point out in what manner that
pleasure is produced. But my limits will not permit me to enter upon
this subject, and I must content myself with a general summary.

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity:
the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of re-action, the
tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which
was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does
itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition
generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but
the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various
causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any
passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will,
upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. If Nature be thus cautious
to preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet ought
to profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought especially to take
care, that, whatever passions he communicates to his Reader, those
passions, if his Reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be
accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of harmonious
metrical language, the sense of difficu