with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy
and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection of the
truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant activity
modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable
emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain
degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of
those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and
in which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity
enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly
pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself
a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition,
which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a
species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual
pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language
natural to us in a state of excitement,--but distinguished from other
species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by
permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of
pleasure from the component parts;--and the perfection of which is, to
communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible
with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will
vary with the different modes of poetry;--and that splendour of
particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned
elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile
taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.

It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has
implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which
at first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured
to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of
poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, "which is simple, sensuous,