made to come together, notwithstanding the rarity of the combinations in the actual.

The grace of the feminine character united to the force of the man—the manly, and not the masculine, woman—has been a favorite ideal in all ages; it was embodied in Pallas Athenê (Minerva) and in Artemis (Diana), and is reproduced abundantly in our poetry and romance.

Seeing that human society labors under a chronic want of disinterestedness and mutual consideration on the part of its members, there is a demand for select or heightened pictures of love, devotedness, and sympathy, as an ideal compensation.

The Ideal of story consists in assigning the fortunes and destinies of individuals with greater liberality and stricter equity than under the real or actual. The miseries as well as the flatness of life are passed over, or redeemed; the moments of felicity are represented as if they were the rule; Poetic Justice is supreme, and measures out to each man his deserts; mixed and bad characters are admitted along with the good, but all are dealt with as the poet's, which is also the reader's, sense of justice demands.

The severe and difficult virtues of prudence, judgment, and calculation, are slighted; and success is made to follow the generous and uncalculating impulses of the heart.

Love, beauty, and innocence, are made triumphant over brute force and savage ferocity; as in the "Una and the Lion" of the Faerie Queen.

Poetic representations may be utterly and avowedly removed from truth, as in the tales of fairy land, and the romances of chivalry, in which case the pleasure is purely ideal; or they may color so lightly as to be taken for truth and reality, and then they inspire belief and intoxicate with hope. Dreams of future bliss, for the individual, or for the race, founded on sanguine feeling and plausible anticipation, exhibit the Ideal at the summit of its power. "The good time coming," poetically illustrated and melodiously sung, will exhilarate the mind in the depths of depression. See Tennyson's Locksley Hall.

Putting together the three features, Concreteness and Com

POETRY, AN IMITATIVE ART.

269

bination (III.), Harmony (IV.), and Ideality (V.), we can understand what is signified by Imagination in the correct meaning of the word. A poetically imagined scene, character, or event, is concrete, as opposed to abstractions, harmonious in its parts, and, if need be, idealized to satisfy the sentiments and feelings touched by works of Fine Art.

126. VI. Poetry has certain limitations, as being an imitative art, that is, as deriving its subjects from external nature and from human life.

Music, dancing, architecture, and fanciful decoration, can hardly be said to imitate anything, or to refer the mind to any natural object. But in painting, in sculpture, and, most of all, in Poetry, the subjects are derived from realities, and we cannot avoid considering, among other merits, the agreement or disagreement with the originals. If artistic effects are purchased at the expense of a great deviation from natural possibility or probability, although these effects are not less genuine in themselves, yet the work as a whole is marred by the offence given to our sense of truth. And, on the other hand, the skill shown by an artist in imitating or representing objects of nature, on canvas, in marble, or in language, is a new and distinct effect that excites pleasure and admiration; truth in Art is then a name for minute observation, and the adapting of a foreign material to reproduce some original. This makes the Realistic school of Art; Hogarth and Wilkie are examples in Painting; in Poetry, Crabbe is the most notable instance; while in Romance, the modern tendency is all in this direction.

When Shakespeare is called the poet of nature, the meaning s that he abides more than some other poets (Spenser, for example) by the limits of actual human life; although his representations are, in many ways, far from being close to the origihals. It is essential to the interest that he gives, and a part of is greatness, to idealize beyond nature, in the intensity of the bassions portrayed, in the one-sidedness of the characters, and n the intellectual power of the dialogue.

It is a rule of criticism, on this subject, that the departure

from nature should not extend to incompatibility, or contradic tion of the laws of things. It would be censurable to describe a moonlight night as following a solar eclipse, to introduce a man 150 years old, or to assign to the same person the highest rank as a poet and as a man of science. But rare and fortunate conjunctions may be made use of, and even such conjunctions as have never been actually known to occur, provided they are such as might occur. Poetical justice is sometimes realized in fact, and the only thing against nature would be to set it up as the rule. It was remarked by Hobbes :-" For as truth is the bound of the historian, so the resemblance of truth is the utmost limit of poetical liberty." "Beyond the actual works of nature a poet may go; beyond the possibilities of nature, never."

Scott has been blamed by Senior for introducing lucky "coincidences" beyond all the bounds of probability and of admissible exaggeration.

The dangerous tendencies of Poetry being to over-stimulate the passionate impulses, such as love and ambition, to make us dissatisfied with reality, to discourage the calculations of prudence, and to give a distaste for the severity of scientific method,—its character is improved as these tendencies are kept within control.

127. VII. Interest of Plot enters largely into Poetry.

The peculiar suspense induced by uncertainty as to some approaching end has a powerful fascination, much sought after as a means of amusement. It is the interest of story, and is obtainable through the narrative kinds of Poetry-the Epic and the Drama. The poet, in constructing his ideal narratives. considers best how to bring out and sustain this kind of inter est. His means are the studious concealment of the end, the introduction of circumstances to foster uncertainty, and the delay of the final issue by alternating the excitement of the

way.

It is in the Romance, or Novel, that the management of plot, or story, has been carried to the highest pitch.

The Drama contains a story, like the Epic; and, in its distinguishing peculiarity of the dialogue, gives additional scope for animation of plot. The spectator of a play is intent on watching the action and re-action of the personages.

The story is an important means of rousing the feelings: we are familiar with tales of distress, of wonder, of devotedness, of perseverance, of heroism. It being the nature of all such qualities to involve action, a narrative is the means of making them apparent.

128. VIII. Whatever painful effects are admitted into Poetry should be fully redeemed.

A work of Art is meant to give us pleasure, and the occurrence of anything to cause pain must be justified or atoned for. The chief example of the use of pain is seen in Tragedy, which is a representation of dire calamity and ruin overtaking men without corresponding ill desert on their part. Such events, of themselves, would necessarily shock our sympathies and offend our sense of justice. They are justified or redeemed in various ways:

(1.) They occur in actual life; and, although we expect that Art should, as a rule, hold up the pleasing side of things, yet we do not wish it altogether to shut out painful realities from the view.

(2.) The exercise of compassion is agreeable within limits. We are not indisposed to have our sympathies engaged with suffering and sorrow. We do not shrink from encountering our fellow-beings, even in their miseries. The combined force of sympathy and tender feeling is able to swallow up the pain that the sight of calamity would cause us.

But there is a line that divides pity from horror. That line has been passed by some of the greatest poets; as by Shakespeare in Lear, if not also in Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet; by Campbell in Lord Ullin's daughter; in Byron's Shipwreck. Senior's remarks on Scott's Kenilworth are in point:—

"It is a fault perhaps of the conclusion, that it is too uniformly tragical. In Waverley,' and the Abbot,' the happiness of Rose

and Waverley, and of Catherine and Roland, is entwined, like the ivy of a ruined window, with the calamities of their unfortunate associates, and relieves us from one unvaried spectacle of misery. And even in the Bride of Lammermoor,' our author relents from what appears to have been his earlier intention, restores Bucklaw to health, and pensions Craigengelt, and suffers the whole weight of the catastrophe to fall only on his hero and heroine. But in 'Kenilworth,' the marriage of Wayland Smith and Janet (an event which scarcely excites any interest) is the only instance of mercy. The immediate circumstances of Amy's death, as she rushes to meet, what she supposes to be, her husband's signal, almost pass the limit that divides pity from horror. It is what Foster calls it, 'a seething of the kid in the mother's milk.' All our author's reiterations of Varney's devilishness, do not render it credible. Tressilian, Sir Hugh Robsart, Varney, Foster, Demetrius, Lambourne, almost every agent in the story, perishes prematurely or violently. Elizabeth is reserved for the sorrows of disappointed love and betrayed confidence, and Leicester for misery, such as even our author has not ventured to describe." (Essays on Fiction, p. 73.)

(3.) Calamity brings out the force and grandeur of the human spirit, and is thus an occasion of the sublime. The great tragedies of the Greek and of the modern drama, are exhibitions of lofty and heroic qualities of mind, endurance, daring, superiority to misfortune. Prometheus could defy, though he must succumb to, the might of Zeus.

(4.) The representation of painful scenes is an opportunity of showing the power of poetry. The influence of pleasure is manifested in subduing pain. The charm of imagery, the flow of numbers, and all the resources of poetic genius, are employed upon fictitious misery, that they may be at hand in real distress. Tragic situations call forth the energies of the poet himself, as well as of his heroes. It says much for the horrors of Lear, that the genius of the poet has not sufficed to redeem them. Poetry has especially endeavored to soften the terrors of

death. "After life's fitful fever he sleeps well." The Stoical mode of regarding death took a slightly different, but equally poetical turn; it was a great, a sacred, an inviolable asylum, beyond the reach of human passion and injustice.

129. The form of Metre has been always considered suitable to Poetry.