not an informing principle within them. In their faultless excellence
they appear sufficient to themselves. By their beauty they are raised
above the frailties of passion or suffering. By their beauty they are
deified. But they are not objects of religious faith to us, and their
forms are a reproach to common humanity. They seem to have no sympathy
with us, and not to want our admiration.

Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feeling, combined with
passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the ordinary use
of language, with musical expression. There is a question of long standing
in what the essence of poetry consists; or what it is that determines why
one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, another in verse. Milton
has told us his idea of poetry in a single line--

"Thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers."

As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song
and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that lead
to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, and change "the words
of Mercury into the songs of Apollo." There is a striking instance of this
adaptation of the movement of sound and rhythm to the subject, in
Spenser's description of the Satyrs accompanying Una to the cave of
Sylvanus.

"So from the ground she fearless doth arise
And walketh forth without suspect of crime.
They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime,
Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round,
Shouting and singing all a shepherd's rhyme:
And with green branches strewing all the ground,
Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd.

And all the way their merry pipes they sound,
That all the woods with doubled echo ring;
And with their horned feet do wear the ground,
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring;
So towards old Sylvanus they her bring,
Who with the noise awaked, cometh out."

_Faery Queen_, b. i. c. vi.

On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural in the
ordinary construction of language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary and
conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, which are the voluntary
signs of certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrangements in common
speech, is there any principle of natural imitation, or correspondence to
the individual ideas, or to the tone of feeling with which they are
conveyed to others. The