Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination
by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the
power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other
thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for
ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the
organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise
strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to embody his own
conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his place
and time, in his poetical creations, which participate in neither. By
this assumption of the inferior office of interpreting the effect, in
which perhaps after all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he
would resign a glory in a participation in the cause. There was little
danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets, should have so far
misunderstood themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their
widest dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is
less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently
affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in
exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to
this purpose.
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