Every man in the infancy of art observes an
order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this
highest delight results; but the diversity is not sufficiently marked,
as that its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances
where the predominance of this faculty of approximation to the beautiful
(for so we may be permitted to name the relation between this highest
pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it exists in
excess are poets, in the most universal sense of the word; and the
pleasure resulting from the manner in which they express the influence
of society or nature upon their own minds, communicates itself to
others, and gathers a sort of reduplication from that community. Their
language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before
unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension,
until the words which represent them, become, through time, signs for
portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral
thoughts; and then, if no new poets should arise to create afresh the
associations which have been thus disorganized, language will be dead
to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse.
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