rtained within the
invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of
language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and
passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and
delicate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is more
plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the
creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and
has relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments,
and conditions of art, have relations among each other, which limit
and interpose between conception and expression. The former is as a
mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the
light of which both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of
sculptors, painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of
the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of
those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of their
thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of
the term; as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal
effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders
of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems to
exceed that of poets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a
question, whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of
the gross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with
that which belonged to them in their higher character of poets, any
excess will remain.

We have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the limits of that
art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of the
faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle still
narrower, and to determine the distinction between measured and
unmeasured language; for the popular division into prose and verse is
inadmissible in accurate philosophy.

Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and
towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of
those relations has always been found connected with a perception of
the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets
has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of
sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less
indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words
themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity