rmative, as if it had been an arithmetical sum, did yet borrow from
the scholars whatever they advantageously could, consistently with their
own peculiar means of pleasing.

And here let me pause for a moment's contemplation of this interesting
subject.

We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove both transcendantly
beautiful. As absurd as it would be to institute a comparison between
their separate claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to both,
without reference to the life and being of the animals themselves,--or as
if, having first seen the dove, we abstracted its outlines, gave them a
false generalization, called them the principles or ideal of bird-beauty,
and then proceeded to criticise the swan or the eagle;--not less absurd is
it to pass judgment on the works of a poet on the mere ground that they
have been called by the same class-name with the works of other poets in
other times and circumstances, or on any ground, indeed, save that of
their inappropriateness to their own end and being, their want of
significance, as symbols or physiognomy.

O! few have there been among critics, who have followed with the eye of
the imagination the imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry
through its various metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses;--or who
have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at beholding with each new
birth, with each rare _avatar_, the human race frame to itself a new body,
by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new circumstances, and
work for itself new organs of power appropriate to the new sphere of its
motion and activity!

I have before spoken of the Romance, or the language formed out of the
decayed Roman and the Northern tongues; and comparing it with the Latin,
we find it less perfect in simplicity and relation--the privileges of a
language formed by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts;--but yet more
rich, more expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure
affinities out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more than
a metaphor,--as an analogy of this, I have named the true genuine modern
poetry the romantic; and the works of Shakespeare are romantic poetry,
revealing itself in the drama. If the tragedies of Sophocles are in the
strict sense of the word tragedies, and the comedies of Aristophanes
comedies, we must emancipate ourselves from a false association arising
from misapplied names, and find a new word for the pl