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are some peculiar difficulties. The architect places his foundation out of
sight, and the musician tunes his instrument before he makes his
appearance; but the lecturer has to try his chords in the presence of the
assembly; an operation not likely, indeed, to produce much pleasure, but
yet indispensably necessary to a right understanding of the subject to be
developed.

Poetry in essence is as familiar to barbarous as to civilized nations. The
Laplander and the savage Indian are cheered by it as well as the
inhabitants of London and Paris;--its spirit takes up and incorporates
surrounding materials, as a plant clothes itself with soil and climate,
whilst it exhibits the working of a vital principle within independent of
all accidental circumstances. And to judge with fairness of an author's
works, we ought to distinguish what is inward and essential from what is
outward and circumstantial. It is essential to poetry that it be simple,
and appeal to the elements and primary laws of our nature; that it be
sensuous, and by its imagery elicit truth at a flash; that it be
impassioned, and be able to move our feelings and awaken our affections.
In comparing different poets with each other, we should inquire which have
brought into the fullest play our imagination and our reason, or have
created the greatest excitement and produced the completest harmony. If we
consider great exquisiteness of language and sweetness of metre alone, it
is impossible to deny to Pope the character of a delightful writer; but
whether he be a poet, must depend upon our definition of the word; and,
doubtless, if everything that pleases be poetry, Pope's satires and
epistles must be poetry. This, I must say, that poetry, as distinguished
from other modes of composition, does not rest in metre, and that it is
not poetry, if it make no appeal to our passions or our imagination. One
character belongs to all true poets, that they write from a principle
within, not originating in any thing without; and that the true poet's
work in its form, its shapings, and its modifications, is distinguished
from all other works that assume to belong to the class of poetry, as a
natural from an artificial flower, or as the mimic garden of a child from
an enamelled meadow. In the former the flowers are broken from their stems
and stuck into the ground; they are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to
the sense, but their colours soon fade, and their odour is transient as
th