excitement by inequality and disproportion; the other is a
distributive faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate
good, by justice and proportion. The one is an aristocratical, the
other a republican faculty. The principle of poetry is a very anti-
levelling principle. It aims at effect, it exists by contrast. It
admits of no medium. It is everything by excess. It rises above the
ordinary standard of sufferings and crimes. It presents a dazzling
appearance. It shows its head turretted, crowned, and crested. Its
front is gilt and blood-stained. Before it 'it carries noise, and
behind it tears'. It has its altars and its victims, sacrifices,
human sacrifices. Kings, priests, nobles, are its train-bearers,
tyrants and slaves its executioners.--'Carnage is its daughter.'
Poetry is right-royal. It puts the individual for the species, the
one above the infinite many, might before right. A lion hunting a
flock of sheep or a herd of wild asses is a more poetical object
than they; and we even take part with the lordly beast, because our
vanity or some other feeling makes us disposed to place ourselves in
the situation of the strongest party. So we feel some concern for
the poor citizens of Rome when they meet together to compare their
wants and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in and with blows and
big words drives this set of 'poor rats', this rascal scum, to their
homes and beggary before him. There is nothing heroical in a
multitude of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or
complaining that they are like to be so: but when a single man comes
forward to brave their cries and to make them submit to the last
indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our admiration of his
prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their
pusillanimity. The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of
necessity. The tame submission to usurped authority or even the
natural resistance to it has nothing to excite or flatter the