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CHAPTER I.

ON THE DEFENCE OF POESY.

THE defence of poesy has already more than once been written; and with more than usual power by a Sidney and a Shelley. Without any slight to these able works, it may, however, be said, that they can have little weight with those who push poetry to defend its own. They are mostly written from the whereabouts of the poet; and the weapon employed is the unsearchable logic of poesy-a logic most true, but too brief for common purposes, a logic swift and untraceable as electricity, flying straight from point to point, unmindful of the turns, the stoppages, and the stages, the ifs, buts, and therefores, of ordinary argument. Such reasoning will seldom hit those who drive poets to the defensive. The poet is thus pressed by two very different personages; by the philosopher, and by one who stands between philosopher and poet, of neither gender, the proser. The proser has been dipt in some unknown Styx that has case-hardened him against almost every weapon

-all but the heel; and there is no way of dealing with him but by putting motion into those heels, I mean, by arousing his activities; and then he will turn, according to his degree, either a poet or a philosopher. If he takes the part of the poet, good and well, nothing more has to be said. If he becomes a philosopher, and still decries the poet, he must be met on the side of his arithmetical understanding with common logic and the rule of three.

In the foregoing pages, it is hoped that somewhat has been advanced, which, in this regard, may be of service; since if anything need and be worthy of defence, the best that can be given is to make known_its real nature, and show its true colours. Having already at some length (in Books Third and Fourth) put forward doctrines that illustrate the positive worth of poesy, it will here be sufficient to stand wholly on the defensive. Not that in every case, and from every mind, it will be possible to remove objections; but at least they may be silenced. We may spike the guns which we cannot take away.

There is no denying that, however much poesy may be ill-spoken of by some, it has always been well received by the wide world; more heartily welcomed than aught else the work of man; more lastingly kept, and never willingly forgotten. This is not (although it might be) brought forward as a plea in favour of poetry, lest any one should think that plea in danger of

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Bacon's remark, that man has in him more of the fool than of the wise, and is more strongly influenced by his foolish than by his reasonable powers; but simply to show, that on the whole poets have no ground for quarrelling with their treatment and their lot on this earth. Pindar, for his poesy, is said to have been loved of Pan, and even to have heard one of his own odes chanted by the god: there is a truth in the story.

Any direct and formal charge is seldom brought against poetry: it is generally assailed by means of clever backstrokes and passing lounges. Oftenest of all, however, with inarticulate sneers. And these attacks come not merely from such as Sir Edward Coke, who, in the exercise of his judicial functions, foredoomed to everlasting pain five classes of men, namely, Chemists, Monopolists, Concealers, Promoters, and Rhyming Poets; but even from such writers as Bacon. The latter have keenly felt the power of poetry, but have been unwilling to own because unable satisfactorily to account for that power, and have fretted and chafed under the yoke. They have often been gifted with no small share of the poetic faculty, and in anticipation of Hahnemann have sought by a small dose of poetic language to cure the poetry of their fellows. Like the monkeys, that, to keep the sailors from landing on their island, pelted them with cocoa-nuts, the very and only thing which was wanted, Bacon pelted the poet with flowers, and tried to stop his mouth

with pleasant words: while others, beside, in rich and glowing language, seek to overwhelm the imagination and its works. They are bent on the same error as the wise men of Gotham, who set about the drowning of an eel. Upon all such, the scorners of poesy, Sir Philip Sidney, in closing the treatise above mentioned, has pronounced a curse which would certainly be very frightful if it would only take effect: "Thus much curse I must lend you in the behalf of all poets, that while you live you live in love, and never get favour for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph."

Whenever these assailants come to close quarters, and give us a clue to their meaning, it will be found that their objections naturally range themselves under three heads. They say that poesy is not Beautiful, or not True, or not Good. An attempt has already been made in these pages to show that it is all three. It is now behoveful to show the insufficiency of those grounds upon which the doctrine is denied.

CHAPTER II.

BEAUTY OF POESY.

It is objected that Poesy is not beautiful. The objection, indeed, is never stated thus plainly, but rather implied, and implied in such a way, that it might almost be regarded as impugning either the truth or the good of poesy even more than its beauty. Thus parasitically entwined with other and bolder objections, it is not possible to grapple with it singly; and we must therefore consider it as entangled, in the first place with a question of Truth, in the second place with a question of Good.

Of the many forms which objections of the former class may take, the Puritanic seems not yet to have spent itself. "The imaginations of men's hearts are only evil continually," it is said; and therefore from the delights of the imagination we are to call a solemn, a perpetual fast. Such a fast is simply impossible; at best it can only be a Ramazan, which forbids food during the day, but allows it after sunset, since,

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