Poetry is only the highest
eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be
given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful,
mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect
coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and
of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant
"satisfaction to the thought". This is equally the origin of wit and
fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When Pope
says of the Lord Mayor's show--
Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er,
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more!
when Collins makes Danger, "with limbs of giant mould".
----Throw him on the steep
Of some loose hanging rock asleep:
when Lear calls out in extreme anguish--
Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou shew'st thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster!
the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the other, and
of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing
ourselves, and show it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in
spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it.
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