ch he can
derive from the general power of numbers. In answer to those who
still contend for the necessity of accompanying metre with certain
appropriate colours of style in order to the accomplishment of its
appropriate end, and who also, in my opinion, greatly underrate the
power of metre in itself, it might, perhaps, as far as relates to
these Volumes, have been almost sufficient to observe, that poems are
extant, written upon more humble subjects, and in a still more
naked and simple style, which have continued to give pleasure from
generation to generation. Now, if nakedness and simplicity be a
defect, the fact here mentioned affords a strong presumption that
poems somewhat less naked and simple are capable of affording pleasure
at the present day; and, what I wish _chiefly_ to attempt, at present,
was to justify myself for having written under the impression of this
belief.

But various causes might be pointed out why, when the style is manly,
and the subject of some importance, words metrically arranged will
long continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who proves
the extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart. The end of
Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance
of pleasure; but, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and
irregular state of the mind; ideas and feelings do not, in that state,
succeed each other in accustomed order. If the words, however, by
which this excitement is produced be in themselves powerful, or the
images and feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with
them, there is some danger that the excitement may be carried beyond
its proper bounds. Now the co-presence of something regular, something
to which the mind has been accustomed in various moods and in a
less excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering and
restraining the passion by an inter-texture of ordinary feeling, and
of feeling not strictly and necessarily connected with the passion.
This is unquestionably true; and hence, though the opinion will
at first appear paradoxical, from the tendency of metre to divest
language, in a certain degree, of its reality, and thus to throw a
sort of half-consciousness of unsubstantial existence over the
whole composition, there can be little doubt but that more pathetic
situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater
proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical
composition, especia