rely
it is a very natural one; and I never recollect hearing it answered,
or even attempted to be answered. In general, people shelter
themselves under metaphors, and while we hear poetry described as an
utterance of the soul, an effusion of Divinity, or voice of nature, or
in other terms equally elevated and obscure, we never attain anything
like a definite explanation of the character which actually
distinguishes it from prose.

I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry is
"the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble
emotions."[39] I mean, by the noble emotions, those four principal
sacred passions--Love, Veneration, Admiration, and Joy (this latter
especially, if unselfish); and their opposites--Hatred, Indignation
(or Scorn), Horror, and Grief,--this last, when unselfish, becoming
Compassion. These passions in their various combinations constitute
what is called "poetical feeling," when they are felt on noble
grounds, that is, on great and true grounds. Indignation, for
instance, is a poetical feeling, if excited by serious injury; but it
is not a poetical feeling if entertained on being cheated out of a
small sum of money. It is very possible the manner of the cheat may
have been such as to justify considerable indignation; but the feeling
is nevertheless not poetical unless the grounds of it be large as well
as just. In like manner, energetic admiration may be excited in
certain minds by a display of fireworks, or a street of handsome
shops; but the feeling is not poetical, because the grounds of it are
false, and therefore ignoble. There is in reality nothing to deserve
admiration either in the firing of packets of gunpowder, or in the
display of the stocks of warehouses. But admiration excited by the
budding of a flower is a poetical feeling, because it is impossible
that this manifestation of spiritual power and vital beauty can ever
be enough admired.

Farther, it is necessary to the existence of poetry that the grounds
of these feelings should be _furnished by the imagination_. Poetical
feeling, that is to say, mere noble emotion, is not poetry. It is
happily inherent in all human nature deserving the name, and is found
often to be purest in the least sophisticated. But the power of
assembling, by _the help of the imagination_, such images as will
excite these feelings, is the power of the poet or literally of the
"Maker."[40]

Now this power of exciting the