and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable
emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain
degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of
those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and in
which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity enjoyed.
This is the state which permits the production of a highly pleasurable
whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself a distinct and
conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which I trust is now
intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition,
opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as
attaining its end by the use of language natural to us in a state of
excitement,--but distinguished from other species of composition, not
excluded by the former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the whole
consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the component parts;--and
the perfection of which is, to communicate from each part the greatest
immediate pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the
whole. This, of course, will vary with the different modes of poetry;--and
that splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in
an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and
proof of vile taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.

It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has
implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which at
first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured to
develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of
poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, "which is simple, sensuous,
passionate." How awful is the power of words!--fearful often in their
consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both
felt and understood!--Had these three words only been properly understood
by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only almost a
library of false poetry would have been either precluded or still-born,
but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and capable of
enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, and placing
in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and manlike actions,
would have been the common diet of the intellect instead. For the first
condition, simplicity,--while, on the one hand, it