Doubtless, as Sir John Davies observes of the soul (and his words may
with slight alteration be applied, and even more appropriately, to the
poetic imagination),--
Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns,
As we our food into our nature change.
From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates
Steal access through our senses to our minds.
Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery,
motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere, and in
each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.
In the application of these principles to purposes of practical
criticism as employed in the appraisal of works more or less imperfect,
I have endeavoured to discover what the qualities in a poem are, which
may be deemed promises and specific symptoms of poetic power, as
distinguished from general talent determined to poetic composition by
accidental motives, by an act of the will, rather than by the
inspiration of a genial and productive nature.
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