by the Poet who comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet writes under one restriction

only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of

that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a

mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. Except this one

restriction, there is no object standing between the Poet and the image of things; between

this, and the Biographer and Historian, there are a thousand.

Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation

of the Poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgement of the beauty of the

universe, an acknowledgement the more sincere, because not formal, but indirect; it is a

task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love: further, it is a

homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of

pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy but

what is propagated by pleasure: I would not be misunderstood; but wherever we

sympathize with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by

subtle combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles

drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure,

and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of science, the Chemist and Mathematician,

whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this.

However painful may be the objects with which the Anatomist's knowledge is

connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has

no knowledge. What then does the Poet? He considers man and the objects that surround

him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of

pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as

contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain

convictions, intuitions, and deductions, which from habit acquire the quality of

intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations,

and finding everywhere objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from

the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment.

To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in

which, without any other discipline than that of our daily life, we are fitted to take

delight, the Poet principally directs his attention. He considers man and nature as

essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the

fairest and most interesting properties of nature. and thus the Poet, prompted by this

feeling of pleasure, which accompanies him through the whole course of his studies,

converses with general nature, with affections akin to those, which, through labour and

length of time, the Man of science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those

particular parts of nature which are the objects of his studies. The knowledge both of the

Poet and the Man of science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a

necessary part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance; the other is a

personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and direct

sympathy connecting us with our fellow-beings. The Man of science seeks truth as a

remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet,

singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth

as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all

knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.

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