Blest indeed is that state of society, in which the immediate purpose
would be baffled by the perversion of the proper ultimate end; in which
no charm of diction or imagery could exempt the Bathyllus even of an
Anacreon, or the Alexis of Virgil, from disgust and aversion!
But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a
work not metrically composed; and that object may have been in a high
degree attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere
superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the
name of poems? The answer is, that nothing can permanently please which
does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.
If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with
it. They must be such as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention
to each part, which an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and
sound are calculated to excite. The final definition then, so deduced,
may be thus worded. A poem is that species of composition which is
opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object
pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object
in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such
delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification
from each component part.
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