of this essay did not forbid citation. The creations of sculpture,
painting, and music, are illustrations still more decisive.

Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action,
are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called
poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a
synonym of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses
those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language,
which are created by that imperial faculty; whose throne is curtained
within the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature
itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the
actions and passions of our internal being, and is susceptible
of more various and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or
motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that
faculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily
produced by the imagination and has relation to thoughts alone;
but all other materials, instruments and conditions of art, have
relations among each other, which limit and interpose between
conception and expression The former is as a mirror which reflects,
the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of which both are
mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters,
and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters
of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have
employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never
equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term, as
two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a
guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions,
so long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of
poets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question,
whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the