ng, enters far more largely into this than into the poetry
of culture. Not only because the natures which we have called
poetical, really feel more, and consequently have more feeling to
express; but because, the capacity of feeling being so great, feeling,
when excited and not voluntarily resisted, seizes the helm of their
thoughts, and the succession of ideas and images becomes the mere
utterance of an emotion; not, as in other natures, the emotion a mere
ornamental colouring of the thought.

Ordinary education and the ordinary course of life are constantly at
work counteracting this quality of mind, and substituting habits more
suitable to their own ends: if instead of substituting they were
content to superadd, there would be nothing to complain of. But when
will education consist, not in repressing any mental faculty or power,
from the uncontrolled action of which danger is apprehended, but in
training up to its proper strength the corrective and antagonist
power?

In whomsoever the quality which we have described exists, and is not
stifled, that person is a poet. Doubtless he is a greater poet in
proportion as the fineness of his perceptions, whether of sense or of
internal consciousness, furnishes him with an ampler supply of lovely
images--the vigour and richness of his intellect, with a greater
abundance of moving thoughts. For it is through these thoughts and
images that the feeling speaks, and through their impressiveness that
it impresses itself, and finds response in other hearts; and from
these media of transmitting it (contrary to the laws of physical
nature) increase of intensity is reflected back upon the feeling
itself. But all these it is possible to have, and not be a poet; they
are mere materials, which the poet shares in common with other people.
What constitutes the poet is not the imagery nor the thoughts, nor
even the feelings, but the law according to which they are called up.
He is a poet, not because he has ideas of any particular kind, but
because the succession of big ideas is subordinate to the course of
his emotions.

Many who have never acknowledged this in theory, bear testimony to it
in their particular judgements. In listening to an oration, or reading
a written discourse not professedly poetical, when do we begin to feel
that the speaker or author is putting off the character of the orator
or the prose writer, and is passing into the poet? Not when he begins
to show strong feelin