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gloom. The effects which the paffions produce upon the body, would also prove a happy fource of the defcription of emotions. Thus, the fluttering pulfe, the changing colour, the feverish glow, the failing heart and the confufed fenfes, being natural and invariable fymptoms of the paffion of love, would foon be obfervby the poet, and fuccefsfully used to heighten his description. Hitherto all is fimple and natural, and poetry fo far from being the art of fiction, is the faithful copyift of external objects and real emotions. But the mind of man cannot long be confined within prescribed limits; there is an internal eye constantly stretching its view beyond the bounds of natural vifion, and fomething new, fomething greater, more beautiful, more excellent, is required to gratify its noble longing. This eye of the mind is the imagination-it peoples the world with new beings, it embodies

abstract

abftract ideas, it fuggefts unexpected refemblances, it creates first, and then prefides over its creation with absolute sway. Not lefs accurately and philofophically, than poetically, has our great Shakespeare defcribed this faculty in the following lines.

The Poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the Poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to aery nothing
A local habitation and a name.

THE most effential differences in poetical compofition may be referred to the circumftance of its turning upon nature or fiction, and on this will depend its fitness or unfitness to produce peculiar effects. In general, whatever is defigned to move the paffions cannot be too natural and fimple. It is also evident that when

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the profeffed design of the poet is to paint the beauties of nature and the rural landfcape of paftoral life, he must give as great an air of reality as poffible to his piece, fince a bad imitation neceffarily produces difguft. On the other hand, when the aim is to elevate and furprize, to gratify a love of novelty and the pleafing luxury of indulging the fancy, all the powers of fiction must be fet at work, and the imagination employed without controul to create new images and discover uncommon resemblances and connexions. To pursue our instance taken from the paffion of love; the poet who wishes rather to please and furprize than to move, will ranfack heaven and earth for objects of brilliant and unufual comparison with every circumftance relating to the paffion itself or its object. He will not value sentiment as the real offspring of an emotion, but as fufceptible of ingenious turns,

ftriking

ftriking contrafts and pleafing allufions. He will not compose from the heart but the head, and will confult his imagination rather than his fenfations. This quality is peculiarly termed wit, and a just taste for it is never acquired without a confiderable degree of national refinement. Pieces of wit are therefore later in their date than any others.

THIS brief account of the progrefs of poetry in general being premised, let us proceed to a nearer infpection of our fubject.

In attempting to fix a meaning to the word fong, the firft idea which strikes us arifes from its name, fignifying fomething to be fung. We fhall difcufs this a little at large.

THE union of mufic with poetry must

appear

appear extremely natural. We find it to have taken place univerfally in the uncultivated state of all nations, and to have continued partially in the moft refined. In all languages the words expreffing vocal mufic have been alfo used indifcriminately to fignify poetry; and though we at present confider such expreffions as figurative, there is no doubt but they were originally natural. The facred name of song was not then prostituted to a fucceffion of unmeaning founds tortured into mufic through the odious pipe of an equivocal mutilated animal; it was a general term to express all that the fifter Mufes of poetry and melody could combine to delight the ear and ravifh the heart. This enchanting union is now in great measure diffolved, yet I will venture to affert that it was not poetry but her lefs fentimental companion mufic who began the feparation. The luxury of artificial harmony,

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