I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of
the principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods of
history--Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add, Ossian. In Homer,
the principle of action or life is predominant; in the Bible, the
principle of faith and the idea of Providence; Dante is a
personification of blind will; and in Ossian we see the decay of life,
and the lag end of the world. Homer's poetry is the heroic: it is full
of life and action: it is bright as the day, strong as a river. In the
vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects of nature, and
enters into all the relations of social life.

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[1] Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of
the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural,
but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the
one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the
understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the
reason: poetry produces its effect by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing is
a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general bad
prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not
to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry
wants the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic.
And some of our own poetry which has been most admired, is only poetry
in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic diction.
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He saw many countries, and the manners of many men; and he has brought
them all together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to battle
with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal