dissimilitude in similitude are perceived, depend our taste and our
moral feelings. It would not have been a useless employment to have
applied this principle to the consideration of metre, and to have
shewn that metre is hence enabled to afford much pleasure, and to
have pointed out in what manner that pleasure is produced. But my
limits will not permit me to enter upon this subject, and I must
content myself with a general summary.

I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of
reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion,
similar to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is
gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In
this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood
similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind
and in whatever degree, from various causes is qualified by various
pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are
voluntarily described, the mind will upon the whole be in a state of
enjoyment. Now if Nature be thus cautious in preserving in a state
of enjoyment a being thus employed, the Poet ought to profit by the
lesson thus held forth to him, and ought especially to take care,
that whatever passions he communicates to his Reader, those passions,
if his Reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be
accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of
harmonious metrical language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and
the blind association of pleasure which has been previously received
from works of rhyme or metre of the same or similar construction,
all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight, which
is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling which