ng which would exclude "The Rape of the Lock"; and Murillo's
painting of "The Two Beggar Boys" is as much worth having "as almost any
picture in the world."[74] "Yet it is not true that execution is
everything, and the class or subject nothing. The highest subjects,
equally well-executed (which, however, rarely happens), are the best."[75]
Though each is perfect in its kind, there can be no difficulty in deciding
the question of greatness between "King Lear" and "The Comedy of Errors."
"The greatest strength of genius is shewn in describing the strongest
passions: for the power of imagination, in works of invention, must be in
proportion to the force of the natural impressions, which are the subject
of them."[76] One also finds a test of relative values in the measure of
fulness with which the work of art reflects the complex elements of life.
If we estimate a tragedy of Shakespeare above one of Lillo or Moore, it is
because "impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual
part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive--of the desire to know,
the will to act, and the power to feel; and ought to appeal to these
different parts of the constitution, in order to be perfect."[77]

In treating of the specific distinction of poetry Hazlitt does not escape
the usual difficulties. Taking his point of departure from Milton's
"thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers," he defines poetry in a
passage that satisfactorily anticipates the familiar one of Carlyle, as
"the music of language answering to the music of the mind.... Wherever any
object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and
brood over it, melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a
sentiment of enthusiasm;--wherever a movement of imagination or passion is
impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong or repeat the emotion,
to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same
movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, or gradually varied
according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it--this is poetry.
The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in
thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near connection
between music and deep-rooted passion."[78] In this mystical direction a
definition could go no further, but like nearly all writers and speakers
Hazlitt is inclined to use the word poetry in a variety of more or less
connected meanings,[79] ordinar