can derive from the general power of numbers. In answer to those who
thus contend for the necessity of accompanying metre with certain
appropriate colours of style in order to the accomplishment of its
appropriate end, and who also, in my opinion, greatly under-rate the
power of metre in itself, it might perhaps be almost sufficient to
observe that poems are extant, written upon more humble subjects,
and in a more naked and simple style than what I have aimed at,
which poems have continued to give pleasure from generation to
generation. Now, if nakedness and simplicity be a defect, the fact
here mentioned affords a strong presumption that poems somewhat less
naked and simple are capable of affording pleasure at the present day;
and all that I am now attempting is to justify myself for having
written under the impression of this belief.

But I might point out various causes why, when the style is manly,
and the subject of some importance, words metrically arranged will
long continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who is
sensible of the extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart.
The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in coexistence with an
overbalance of pleasure. Now, by the supposition, excitement is an
unusual and irregular state of the mind; ideas and feelings do not
in that state succeed each other in accustomed order. But if the
words by which this excitement is produced are in themselves powerful,
or the images and feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected
with them, there is some danger that the excitement may be carried
beyond its proper bounds. Now the co-presence of something regular,
something to which the mind has been accustomed when in an unexcited
or a less excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering
and restraining the passion by an intertexture of ordinary feeling.
This may be illustrated by appealing to the Reader's own experience