The reader should be carried
forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity,
or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the
pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey
itself. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the
emblem of intellectual power; or like the path of sound through the
air, at every step he pauses and half recedes, and from the
retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him
onward. _Praecipitandus est liber spiritus_, says Petronius Arbiter
most happily. The epithet, _liber_, here balances the preceding verb,
and it is not easy to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer words.
But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem,
we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato
and Bishop Taylor, and the _Theoria Sacra_ of Burnet, furnish undeniable
proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and
even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem. The first
chapter of Isaiah (indeed a very large proportion of the whole book)
is poetry in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be not less
irrational than strange to assert that pleasure, and not truth, was
the immediate object of the prophet.
Pages:
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321