to you in English poetry. Burke's "Treatise on the Sublime and
Beautiful" will give you the most correct general ideas on the subject
of taste. These are always best and most influential after they have
been for some time assimilated with the forms of the mind. It is a far
more useful exercise to apply them yourself to individual cases than
merely to lend your attention, though carefully and fixedly, to the
applications made for you by the writer. Alison's "Essay on Taste,"
though interesting and improving, saves too much trouble to the reader
in this way.

Your enjoyment and appreciation of poetry will be much heightened by
having it read aloud,--by yourself to yourself, if you should have no
other sympathizing reader or listener.

The sound of the metre is essential to the full _sense_ of the meaning
and of the beauty of all poetry. Even the rhymeless flow of blank verse
is absolutely necessary to an accurate and entire perception of the
effect the author intends to produce: it is in both cases as the
colouring to a picture. It may be, indeed, that part of the composition
which appeals most directly to the senses; but all the works of art must
be imperfect which do not make this appeal; for, as I said before, all
works of art are intended to affect our _human_ nature.

A well-practised _eye_ will, it is true, detect in a moment either the
faults or the excellence of the rhyme or the flow; but the effect on the
mind cannot be the same as when the impression is received through the
_ear_.

Nor is the fuller appreciation of the poetry you read aloud the only
advantage to be derived from the practice I recommend. Few