asing and delightful do more nearly resemble the passions
produced by real events than anything which, from the motions of their
own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves;
whence, and from practise, he has acquired a greater readiness and
power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those
thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure
of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.

But whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest
poet to possess, there can not be a doubt but that the language which
it will suggest to him must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short
of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual
pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus
produces, or feels to be produced, in himself.

However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of
the poet, it is obvious that, while he describes and imitates
passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared
with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and
suffering. So that it will be the wish of the poet to bring his
feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes,
nay, for short spaces of time, perhaps, to let himself slip into an
entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with
theirs; modifying only the language which is thus suggested to him by
a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that of
giving pleasure. Here, then, he will apply the principle on which I
have so much insisted, namely, that of selection; on this he will
depend for removing what would otherwise be painful or disgusting in
the passion; he will feel that there is no necessity to trick out or
elevate nature; and, the more industriously he applies this principle,
the deeper will be his faith that no words which his fancy or
imagination can suggest will bear to be compared with those which are
the emanations of reality and truth.

But it may be said by those who do not object to the general spirit of
these remarks, that, as it is impossible for the poet to produce upon
all occasions language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that
which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he should
consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who deems
himself justified when he substitutes excellences of another kind for
those w