forth his theory of his own art, but it also contains some of his finest
prose writing, of which the following passage, valuable alike for matter
and style, may be cited as a specimen:--

"The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates
new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it
engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according
to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the
good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at
periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle,
the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity
of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature.
The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it.

"Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and
circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science,
and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time
the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from
which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if
blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren
world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of
life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things;
it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the
elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty
to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love,
patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful universe
which we inhabit--what were our consolations on this side of the
grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend
to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged
faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning,
a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man
cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say
it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible
influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness;
this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades
and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our
natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could
this influence be durable in its or