36 



imitative or truthful, and the pleasure afforded by it the pleasure 

 attendant on the perception of a truth. Bacon, on the other hand, 

 calls the poetic art creative or feigned, and the pleasure afforded by it 

 the pleasure of deception. Plato speaks of it at one time as creative, 

 at another as imitative. The complete truth I believe to be, as the 

 Germans would express it, that Poetry is true and imitative subjectivelij, 

 but creative or fictitious objectively; that is, it truly represents the 

 impressions and emotions of our own minds, though by the aid of 

 fanciful and fictitious foi-ms ; and gives us pleasure by awakening 

 our deepest sympathy, and at the same time surprising us with a 

 beautiful but unexpected congruity or analogy. Though the form be 

 perceived to be fictitious, yet our feelings acknowledge that it is an 

 appropriate and well-invented fiction. Thus when ^schylus speaks of 



TTOVTIWI' Te KVfiaTODV 



ayripi0/j.ov y^Kaa/xa, 



" the measureless laughter of the ocean's waves," we are pleased with 

 the beauty and appropriateness of the metaphor, as descriptive of the 

 interminable sparkling and dashing of a sunny sea, though of course 

 we know that except in reference to the impression on our owu minds, 

 the metaphor is purely fictitious. So when Tennyson says (in his 



" Lotos Eaters") 



'• The charmed sunset lingered low adown 

 In the red west," 

 it is truthful in regard to our owu feelings to interpret the slow and 

 gradual fading of the bun"s light, as though he v.ere an animated being, 

 reluctant to take his departure from a scene so fair, though in any other 

 relation we know it to be false ; and it is this congi'uity of the fiction 

 with our natural feelings which gives us pleasure. Where the feelings 

 do not readily respond, the analogy seized hold of becomes a fanciful 

 conceit, approximating to wit rather than to poetry, as in Lord Chester- 

 field's simile — 



" The dews of the evening most carefully shun — 

 They 're the tears of the sky for the loss of the sun ;" 

 on which "Wordsworth has observed that there is not an adequate 

 occasion for the imagined sorrow of nature, and he contrasts it with 

 Milton's description of the effect on nature of the fall of Adam : 

 " Sky lour'd, and, mutt'rmg thunder, some sad drops 

 Wept, at completing of the mortal sin." 

 Shakspeare has many quaint poetical conceits, as, for instance, in his 

 reference to the chalk cliffs on both sides of the channel, in " Henry 



Y. (Act V. Scene 2) — 



'' that the contending kingdoms 



Of France and England, whose very shores look pale 

 With envy of each other's happiness, 

 May cease their hatred." 



