But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken
the fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers' ends,
besides the contents of the almanac.--Pope's versification is tiresome,
from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's blank verse is
the perfection of dramatic dialogue.

All is not poetry that passes for such: nor does verse make the whole
difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease to be
poetry in a literal translation; and Addison's Campaign has been very
properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from
poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar,
and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the
imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the
understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements
either of the imagination or the passions.

I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as possible
without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson
Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated
some of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the power of
poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit above the earth,
which draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is
poetry in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being
"married to immortal verse." If it is of the essence of poetry to strike
and fix the imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye of
childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never thought of
afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe may be
permitted to pass for poets in their way. The mixture of fancy and
reality in the Pilgrim's Progress was never equalled in any allegory.
His pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet are on it. What zeal, what