nd, one of two things will happen: either, if the general character of
the poet-race is what prevails in him, he issues from the particular
class to which he belongs as a poet, and becomes sentimental to be at any
rate poetic; or, if his particular character as simple poet has the upper
hand, he leaves his species and becomes a common nature, in order to
remain at any rate natural. The former of these two alternatives might
represent the case of the principal poets of the sentimental kind in
Roman antiquity and in modern times. Born at another period of the
world, transplanted under another sky, these poets who stir us now by
ideas, would have charmed us by individual truth and simple beauty. The
other alternative is the almost unavoidable quicksand for a poet who,
thrown into a vulgar world, cannot resolve to lose sight of nature.

I mean, to lose sight of actual nature; but the greatest care must be
given to distinguish actual nature from true nature, which is the subject
of simple poetry. Actual nature exists everywhere; but true nature is so
much the more rare because it requires an internal necessity that
determines its existence. Every eruption of passion, however vulgar, is
real--it may be even true nature; but it is not true human nature, for
true human nature requires that the self-directing faculty in us should
have a share in the manifestation, and the expression of this faculty is
always dignified. All moral baseness is an actual human phenomenon, but
I hope not real human nature, which is always noble. All the faults of
taste cannot be surveyed that have been occasioned in criticism or the
practice of art by this--confusion between actual human nature and true
human nature. The greatest trivialities are tolerated and applauded
under the pretext that they are real nature. Caricatures not to be
tolerated in the real world are carefully preserved in the poetic world
and reproduced according to nature! The poet can certainly imitate a
lower nature; and it enters into the very definition of a satirical poet:
but then a beauty by its own nature must sustain and raise the object,
and the vulgarity of the subject must not lower the imitator too much.
If at the moment he paints he is true human nature himself, the object of
his paintings is indifferent; but it is only on this condition we can
tolerate a faithful reproduction of reality. Unhappy for us readers when
the rod of satire falls into hands that nature meant t