But he differs from Sidney and Wordsworth, and perhaps
from Carlyle also, in laying more stress upon the outward form, and
particularly the musical element, of poetry, and from Sidney in laying
less stress upon its directly moral associations. He thus attains to
a wider and truer view of his subject, and, while insisting as strongly
as Wordsworth insists upon the kinship between the matter of poetry
and that of truth or science, he also recognizes, as Wordsworth commonly
did not, that there is a harmony between the imaginative conception
of that matter and its outward expression, and that beautiful thought
must necessarily clothe itself in beauty of language and of sound.
There is not in our literature any clearer presentment of the
inseparable connection between the matter and form of poetry, nor of
the ideal element which, under different shapes, is the life and soul
of both. [See Shelley's letters to Peacock and Other of February 15
and 22, and of March 20 and 21, 1821]
According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action,
which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered
as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another,
however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts
so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as
from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the
principle of its own integrity.
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