"But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit"

that his whole function would suit with expressions to his conceit.
He then withdrew his judgment from within, and cheated his fancy into
supposing he had given her the rein, letting the feigned state be as
real to him as it could, and writing from that primarily,--humoring
Nature by his art in leaving her to do what she alone could do. So that
the very gems we admire as natural are the offspring of Nature creating
under Art. To make streaked gillyflowers, we marry a gentler scion to
the wildest stock, and Nature does the rest. So in poetry, we cannot
get at the finest excellences by seeking for them directly, but we put
Nature in the way to suggest them. We do not strive to think whether
"the mobled queen" is good; we do not let our vanity keep such a
strict look-out upon Nature; she will not desert us, if we follow her
modes,--which we must do with all the art and fine tact we can acquire
and command, not only in order to gain the minute beauties, but to
compass the great whole.

The analogies that might be drawn from music would much assist in making
all this clear, if they could be used with a chance of being understood.
But, unfortunately, the ability to comprehend a great work, as a whole,
is even rarer in music than in poetry. The little taking bits of melody
are all that is thought of or perceived; the great _epos_ or rhapsody,
the form and meaning of the entire composition,--which is a work of Art
in no other sense than a poem is one, except that it uses, instead of
speech, musical forms, of greater variety and symmetry,--are not at all
understood. Nor is the subtile and irresistible coherence in successions
of clear sunny melody, in which Mozart so abounds, in any great degree
understood, even by some who call themselves artists. They think only
of the sudden flashes, the happinesses, and, if such a word may be used
once only, the smartnesses,--like children who care for nothing in their
cake but the frosting and the plums. But in continuing the study of the
art with such notions of its expression, the relish for it soon cloys,
the mind ceases to advance, the enthusiasm deadens, progress becomes
hopeless, and the little gained is soon lost; whereas, if the student is
familiarized with the most perfect forms of the art, and led on by them,
both by committing a few of them to memory, and by fully understanding
their struc