in Shakespeare, who becomes so sensitive,
sometimes, to the thought, the feeling, nay, the mere whim or habit of
body of his characters, that we feel, to use his own words, as if "the
dull substance of his flesh were thought." It is not in mere intensity
of phrase, but in the fitness of it to the feeling, the character, or
the situation, that this phase of the imaginative faculty gives witness
of itself in expression. I know nothing more profoundly imaginative
therefore in its bald simplicity than a line in Webster's "Duchess of
Malfy." Ferdinand has procured the murder of his sister the duchess.
When her dead body is shown to him he stammers out:

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.

The difference between subjective and objective in poetry would seem to
be that the aim of the former is to express a mood of the mind, often
something in itself accidental and transitory, while that of the latter
is to convey the impression made upon the mind by something outside of
it, but taken up into the mind and idealized (that is, stripped of all
unessential particulars) by it. The one would fain set forth your view
of the thing (modified, perhaps, by your breakfast), the other would set
forth the very thing itself in its most concise individuality.
Subjective poetry may be profound and imaginative if it deal with the
primary emotions of our nature, with the soul's inquiries into its own
being and doing, as was true of Wordsworth; but in the very proportion
that it is profound, its range is limited. Great poetry should have
breadth as well as height and depth; it should meet men everywhere on
the open levels of their common humanity, and not merely on their
occasional excursions to the heights of speculation or their exploring
expeditions among the crypts of metaphysics.

But however we divide poetry, the office of imagination is to disengage
what is essential from the crowd of accessories which is apt to confuse
the vision of ordinary minds. For our perceptions of things are
gregarious, and are wont to huddle together and jostle one another. It
is only those who have been long trained to shepherd their thoughts that
can at once single out each member of the flock by something peculiar to
itself. That the power of abstraction has something to do with the
imagination is clear, I think, from the fact that everybody is a
dramatic poet (so far as the conception of character goes) in his sleep.
His acquaintances walk a