the power of metre in itself, it might, perhaps, as far as relates to these Volumes, have

been almost sufficient to observe, that poems are extant, written upon more humble

subjects, and in a still more naked and simple style, which 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, what I wish chiefly to

attempt, at present, was to justifY myself for having written under the impression of this

belief.

But various causes might be pointed out 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 proves the extent of that pleasure will be desirous to

impart. The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance

of pleasure; but, 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. If

the words, however, by which this excitement is produced be 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 in

various moods and in a less excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering and

restraining the passion by an intertexture of ordinary feeling, and of feeling not strictly

and necessarily connected with the passion. This is unquestionably true; and hence,

though the opinion will at first appear paradoxical, from the tendency of metre to divest

language, in a certain degree, of its reality, and thus to throw a sort of half-consciousness

of unsubstantial existence over the whole composition, there can be little doubt but that

more pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of

pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical composition, especially in rhyme,

than in prose. The metre of the old ballads is very artless; yet they contain many passages

which would illustrate this opinion; and, I hope, if the following Poems be attentively

perused, similar instances will be found in them. This opinion may be further illustrated

by appealing to the Reader's own experience of the reluctance with which he comes to

the reperusal of the distressful parts of Clarissa Harlowe, or The Gamester; while

Shakespeare's writings, in the most pathetic scenes, never act upon us, as pathetic,

beyond the bounds of pleasure-an effect which, in a much greater degree than might at

first be imagined, is to be ascribed to small, but continual and regular impulses of

pleasurable surprise from the metrical arrangement.-On the other hand (what it must be

allowed will much more frequently happen) if the Poet's words should be

incommensurate with the passion, and inadequate to raise the Reader to a height of

desirable excitement, then (unless the Poet's choice of his metre has been grossly

injudicious), in the feelings of pleasure which the Reader has been accustomed to

connect with metre in general, and in the feeling, whether cheerful or melancholy, which

he has been accustomed to connect with that particular movement of metre, there will be

found something which will greatly contribute to impart passion to the words, and to

effect the complex end which the Poet proposes to himself.

If! had undertaken a SYSTEMATIC defence of the theory here maintained, it would have 25

been my duty to develop the various causes upon which the pleasure received from

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