for the most familiar instances will show how the nerves of each
external sense are put in motion by the idea of the object, as if the real
object had been presented to it. The difference is only in the degree. The
senses are more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears. The
idea of a thing will make us shudder; and the bare imagination of it will
often produce a real pain. A curious consequence may be deduced from this
principle; MILTON, lingering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt
all the delights of those elements which he was creating; his nerves moved
with the images which excited them. The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the
abysses of his "Inferno," must often have been startled by its horrors,
and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on
the great criminal. The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius are a
reality, he sees, he hears, he feels, by each. How mysterious to us is the
operation of this faculty!

A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life
itself--embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of the mind has
even a reality in it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a
drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator,
who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have
been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and
existing scene.

[Footnote A: Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what
they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often
and as long as he wills--with such a personal unity, that an ingenious
lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any
court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.]

Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward
frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING
said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been
writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling
to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the
observation by facts which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the
ninth scene of the second act of his _Olympiad_, found himself suddenly
moved--shedding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and
they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his
surprise by an interesting sonnet, t