, who does not perceive the radical and chasmal
differences between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation.
He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these
differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the
obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense.
I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in
the mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme,
but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that
Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the
virtues themselves. Nevertheless, we find the _offices_ of the trio
marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the intellect concerns
itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the
Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience
teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents
herself with displaying the charms:--waging war upon Vice solely on the
ground of her deformity--her disproportion--her animosity to the
fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious--in a word, to Beauty.

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly,
a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight
in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments, amid
which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the
eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written
repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and
sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is
not poetry. He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm,
or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and
sounds, and odors, and colors, and sentiments, which greet _him_ in
common with all mankind--he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine
title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been
unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which
he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the
immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of
his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star.
It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort
to reach the Beauty above