oth sexes, Poetry is, like love, a passion; but, for
much the greater part of those who have been proud of its power over
their minds, a necessity soon arises of breaking the pleasing bondage;
or it relaxes of itself;--the thoughts being occupied in domestic cares,
or the time engrossed by business. Poetry then becomes only an
occasional recreation; while to those whose existence passes away in a
course of fashionable pleasure, it is a species of luxurious amusement.
In middle and declining age, a scattered number of serious persons
resort to poetry, as to religion, for a protection against the pressure
of trivial employments, and as a consolation for the afflictions of
life. And, lastly, there are many, who, having been enamoured of this
art in their youth, have found leisure, after youth was spent, to
cultivate general literature; in which poetry has continued to be
comprehended _as a study_.

Into the above classes the Readers of poetry may be divided; Critics
abound in them all; but from the last only can opinions be collected of
absolute value, and worthy to be depended upon, as prophetic of the
destiny of a new work. The young, who in nothing can escape delusion,
are especially subject to it in their intercourse with Poetry. The
cause, not so obvious as the fact is unquestionable, is the same as that
from which erroneous judgments in this art, in the minds of men of all
ages, chiefly proceed; but upon Youth it operates with peculiar force.
The appropriate business of poetry, (which, nevertheless, if genuine, is
as permanent as pure science,) her appropriate employment, her privilege
and her _duty_, is to treat of things not as they _are_, but as they
_appear_; not as they exist in themselves, but as they _seem_ to exist
to the _senses_, and to the _passions_. What a world of delusion does
this acknowledged obligation prepare for the inexperienced! what
temptations to go astray are here held forth for them whose thoughts
have been little disciplined by the understanding, and whose feelings
revolt from the sway of reason!--When a juvenile Reader is in the height
of his rapture with some vicious passage, should experience throw in
doubts, or common-sense suggest suspicions, a lurking consciousness
that the realities of the Muse are but shows, and that her liveliest
excitements are raised by transient shocks of conflicting feeling and
successive assemblages of contradictory thoughts--is ever at hand to
justify extrava