palpable and least ambiguous character
of a true inspiration. Cold minds, ever tranquil and ever in possession
of themselves, are incapable of producing exalted poetry; their verses
must always be feeble, diffusive, and leave no impression; the verses of
those who are endowed with a strong and lively imagination, and who,
like Homer's personification of Discord, have their heads incessantly in
the skies, and their feet on the earth, will agitate you, burn in your
heart, and drag you along with them; breaking like an impetuous torrent,
and swelling your breast with that enthusiasm with which they are
themselves possessed.

Such is the character of a _poet_ in a _poetical age_!--The tuneful race
have many corporate bodies of mechanics; Pontypool manufacturers,
inlayers, burnishers, gilders, and filers!

Men of taste are sometimes disgusted in turning over the works of the
anti-poetical, by meeting with gross railleries and false judgments
concerning poetry and poets. Locke has expressed a marked contempt of
poets; but we see what ideas he formed of poetry by his warm panegyric
of one of Blackmore's epics! and besides he was himself a most unhappy
poet! Selden, a scholar of profound erudition, has given us _his_
opinion concerning poets. "It is ridiculous for a _lord_ to print
verses; he may make them to please himself. If a man in a private
chamber twirls his band-strings, or plays with a rush to please himself,
it is well enough; but if he should go into Fleet-street, and sit upon a
stall and twirl a band-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in
the street would laugh at him."--As if "the sublime and the beautiful"
can endure a comparison with the twirling of a band-string or playing
with a rush!--A poet, related to an illustrious family, and who did not
write unpoetically, entertained a far different notion concerning poets.
So persuaded was he that to be a true poet required an elevated mind,
that it was a maxim with him that no writer could be an excellent poet
who was not descended from a noble family. This opinion is as absurd as
that of Selden:--but when one party will not grant enough, the other
always assumes too much. The great Pascal, whose extraordinary genius
was discovered in the sciences, knew little of the nature of poetical
beauty. He said "Poetry has no settled object." This was the decision of
a geometrician, not of a poet. "Why should he speak of what he did not
understand?" asked the lively