y is, like love, a passion; but,
for much the greater part of those who have been proud of its power
over their minds, a necessity soon arises of breaking the pleasing
bondage; or it relaxes of itself;--the thoughts being occupied in
domestic cares, or the time engrossed by business. Poetry then becomes
only an occasional recreation; while to those whose existence passes
away in a course of fashionable pleasure, it is a species of luxurious
amusement. In middle and declining age, a scattered number of serious
persons resort to poetry, as to religion, for a protection against
the pressure of trivial employments, and as a consolation for the
afflictions of life. And, lastly, there are many, who, having been
enamoured of this art in their youth, have found leisure, after
youth was spent, to cultivate general literature; in which poetry has
continued to be comprehended _as a study_.

Into the above classes the Readers of poetry may be divided; Critics
abound in them all; but from the last only can opinions be collected
of absolute value, and worthy to be depended upon, as prophetic of the
destiny of a new work. The young, who in nothing can escape delusion,
are especially subject to it in their intercourse with Poetry. The
cause, not so obvious as the fact is unquestionable, is the same as
that from which erroneous judgements in this art, in the minds of men
of all ages, chiefly proceed; but upon Youth it operates with peculiar
force. The appropriate business of poetry (which, nevertheless, if
genuine, is as permanent as pure science), her appropriate employment,
her privilege and her _duty_, is to treat of things not as they _are_,
but as they _appear_; not as they exist in themselves, but as they
_seem_ to exist to the _senses_, and to the _passions_. What a
world of delusion does this acknowledged obligation prepare for the
inexperienced! what temptations to go astray are here held forth for
them whose thoughts have been little disciplined by the understanding,
and whose feelings revolt from the sway of reason!--When a juvenile
Reader is in the height of his rapture with some vicious passage,
should experience throw in doubts, or common sense suggest suspicions,
a lurking consciousness that the realities of the Muse are but shows,
and that her liveliest excitements are raised by transient shocks
of conflicting feeling and successive assemblages of contradictory
thoughts--is ever at hand to justify extravagance, and to sa