ation of the
inspired moments, and an artificial connection of the space between
their suggestions by the intermixture of conventional expression: a
necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty
itself; for Milton conceived the "Paradise Lost" as a whole before he
executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the muse
having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song." And let this be an
answer to those who allege the fifty-six various readings of the first
line of the "Orlando Furioso." Compositions so produced are to poetry
what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the
poetical faculty is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial
arts; a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as
a child in the mother's womb; and the very mind which directs the
hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the
origin, the gradations or the media of the process.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest
and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and
feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding
our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing
unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that
even in the desire and the regret they leave, there can not but be
pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is
as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own;
but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea which the
coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled
sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are
experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and
the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them
is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love,
patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions;
and while they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a
universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits
of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they
combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a
trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the
enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced
these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past.
Poetry t