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every thing that is really good and true. Happy those practical students
of its beauties who have learned to track the ore beneath the most
unpromising surfaces! Poetry, I look upon, in fact, as the most
essential, the most vital part of the cultivation of your mind, as from
its spirit your character will receive the most beneficial influence:
you must learn the double lesson of extracting it from every thing, and
of throwing it around every thing; and, for the better attainment of
this object, you must study it in itself, that you may become deeply
imbued with its spirit.

Along with the poetry of every age and of every nation, I would have you
diligently study the criticisms of the masters of the art. It is true
that the intimate knowledge of all that has been written on this
hackneyed subject will never supply the want of natural poetic taste, of
that union of mental and moral refinement which produces the only
infallible touchstone of the beautiful; still such criticisms will tend
to refine and sharpen a natural taste, where it does exist; and without
bringing its technical rules practically to bear upon the objects of
your delighted admiration,[82] they will insensibly improve, refine, and
subtilize the natural delicacy of your perceptions.

No criticisms can perhaps equal the masterly ones of Frederick Schlegel,
or those of the less powerful but not less rich mind of Augustus William
Schlegel,"--those two wonderful brothers," as a modern litterateur has
justly called them. Leigh Hunt, with perhaps more poetic originality,
but with less accuracy of aesthetical perception, will be a useful guide
to you in English poetry. Burke's "Treatise on the Sublime and
Beautiful" will give you the most correct general ideas on the subject
of taste. These are always best and most influential after they have
been for some time assimilated with the forms of the mind. It is a far
more useful exercise to apply them yourself to individual cases than
merely to lend your attention, though carefully and fixedly, to the
applications made for you by the writer. Alison's "Essay on Taste,"
though interesting and improving, saves too much trouble to the reader
in this way.

Your enjoyment and appreciation of poetry will be much heightened by
having it read aloud,--by yourself to yourself, if you should have no
other sympathizing reader or listener.

The sound of the metre is essential to the full _sense_ of the meaning
and of the beau