(a) Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the aid of reason. - JOHNSON.

(b) Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds. -SHELLEY," Defense of Poetry." (c) Poesis est imitatio actionum humanarum cum fictione. — JUVENCIUS, "Ars Dicendi. "

(d) Poetry is the concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical language. - WATTS, in Encyclopædia Britannica.

(e) Poetry is idealised emotion expressed in the language of emotion.-H. SPENCER, "Essay on Style."

(f) Poetry is the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. - MACAULAY,

"On Milton."

(g) Poetry is the expression in beautiful form and melodious language of the best thoughts and noblest emotions which the spectacle of life awakens in the finest souls. - SHAIRP, "The Province of Poetry."

(h) Poetry is thought colored by strong emotion, expressed in metre and overheard. 1— J. S. MILL, "Thoughts on Poetry."

(i) Poetry is the natural impression of any object or event by its vividness exciting an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and producing by sympathy a certain modulation of the voice or sounds expressing it. - HAZLITT, "On Poetry."

(k) A poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth. COLERIDGE, "Biographia Literaria,” Chap. XIV.

(1) Poetry is the art of producing pleasure by the just expression of imaginative thought and feeling in metrical language. COURTHOPE,"Life in Poetry, Law in Taste."

1 In saying that a poem is not heard but "overheard," Mill indicates a trait of poetry referred to in the following chapter. The poet does not address an audience as does the orator, but rather contemplates a beautiful vision and sings of it to his own soul. The reader, as it were, overhears his raptures.

1. The Emotions.

CHAPTER II

Emotion in Poetry

By the emotions we understand all those stirrings of the soul that are derived not merely from the senses, but from the intellectual perception of an object, and variously designated by the terms, emotions, passions, sentiments, and the like. These various emotions in their simpler forms are: sorrow, resignation, sadness, despair, discontent; anger, hate, revenge, aversion; courage, fear, anxiety, confidence; love, friendship, affection, sympathy, piety, veneration, awe, esteem, joy, peace, contentment, cheerfulness, and countless others. The emotions, as we experience them, not only range through every grade of intensity, but are often highly complex, the simpler emotions, such as those indicated, combining in most unexpected ways which seem to defy analysis. Hence it is often no easy matter to define with nicety the emotion expressed in a poem; sometimes it might be best described as a certain exalted or high-keyed state of soul in regarding a subject.

These emotions, though never evoked without an intelligent motive, may be more or less spontaneous; that is, on beholding a beautiful object, we may conceive an emotion without realizing distinctly what we have apprehended in the object to create the feeling. It is the province of the poet to penetrate to this motive, and suggest it to the consciousness of the reader.

2. Poetry Emotional. When we say that poetry is emotional, we mean, not merely that it contains incidentally

some emotional coloring, but that the expression of emotion belongs to its very essence and is its specific object. This is of first importance in the study of our subject; for it is in this respect precisely that poetry differs from prose, whose primary function is not to express emotion, but to communicate fact and thought.

Let us examine this in detail:

(a) The scientific treatise in prose contains purely abstract, unemotional thought, such as the demonstration of a theorem or of the laws of nature, and hence of all forms is the farthest removed from poetry.

(b) Strictly literary compositions, such as the literary essay, history, biography, and the like, are indeed tinctured with emotion, and it is this that constitutes their distinctive quality as literature. Yet even in these cases the proper end of prose is kept uppermost, viz., to communicate thought or fact, - and the emotion is merely incidental and subsidiary. On the other hand, the poet's first thought is not to address the reader, but to express the enthusiasm he feels in contemplating a fact or a thought. The emotion is everywhere; it gathers up thought, images, incidents, suffuses them with its own glow, molds them into new combinations, transforms them with an idealized existence.

(c) The prose story runs somewhat nearer to poetry in respect to emotion; but even here the same general distinction may be observed, .if we attend to the spirit of the composition rather than to the letter. The story in prose differs from the poetic narrative in this, that its avowed end is to tell the story. It may indeed, and often does, portray an emotional situation, and the writer may select incidents, details, and coloring to emphasize the emotion. But he does not hold himself in a professedly emotional state towards his narrative. He is giving information about his characters or their environment; he is conscious of an audience; he is not singing in

his own heart. This at least is not his primary purpose. But this precisely is the attitude of the poet. The prose story-teller, as it were, exhibits his subject to an outsider; the poet flings himself into the situation and feels with it. and for it; he contemplates rather than narrates, and pours forth his story as he feels it. And so too when we read a narrative poem, we approach it in a condition of mind quite different from our attitude towards a story in prose. Instinctively we prepare ourselves to be swept into the emotion and carried where it leads. If we read a poem mainly to learn the incidents set forth, not only are we in no critical attitude, but we are not in the proper mood for reading poetry at all, nor the mood demanded of us by the poet.

To illustrate this difference between prose and poetic narrative, we may compare the opening lines of Maupassant's "Necklace" and of Tennyson's "Captain." The former begins as follows: :

She was one of those pretty and charming girls who, as if by an error, are born into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no

expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by any rich and distinguished man, and she let herself be married to a minor clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction.

The poem

of Tennyson begins :

Brave the Captain was; the seamen

Made a gallant crew,

Gallant sons of English freemen,

Sailors bold and true.

If we try to catch the difference in tone between these two passages, we shall recognize that the former is matter-of-fact; the latter is frankly emotional. The poet is interested not so much in declaring that the Captain was brave, as in giving utterance to his enthusiasm about that fact.

Again, there is the line from Tennyson,

Come into the garden, Maud.

If we pronounce these words merely by way of calling to the person addressed, they become simple prose; they are poetry when uttered in a remote, emotional tone with no expectation of a reply.1

(d) There are passages of impassioned prose that approach even more nearly to poetry than the preceding, and hence often go by the name of prose-poetry. Some of these are nothing more than poetry in disguise, lines that have been robbed of the important assistance which metre lends to the expression of emotion, though in substance poetic. Indeed, we should not be wrong in terming such passages simply poetry; if we do not do so habitually, it is because metre is the accepted vehicle for poetic expression, and we are prone to cling to external conventions in everyday. speech, rather than to the internal essence of things.

3. Poetry Nobly Emotional. It is not sufficient that poetry be emotional; the emotion must be noble. This principle, which was examined in the preceding chapter, must be considered in its practical bearing on poetry. It must be noted in the first place that the nobility of any primary emotion depends upon the object that excites it, and we cannot rightly estimate the former without considering it in its relations to the latter. There is nothing that can ennoble the sentiment of love or admiration, if directed to what is unlovely or not admirable; and hatred and scorn may be as noble as love at its best, if the object that we hate and scorn is really hateful and contemptible. Premising this we may consider the following details.

(a) The emotion proper to poetry must not be immoral, that is, must not imply sympathy with what is immoral. Several views of the question require our attention.

1 See on this whole subject F. N. Scott, in Mod. Lang. Assoc. Publication, Vol. 19, p. 250, from whom this example is taken. Also Mill's "Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties." (Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. I.)