These are however, rather the misapplications than the proper employments of poetical minds. In these devious courses some unexpected beauties will occasionally burst upon us; and some unlooked-for fruit occasionally be furnished but much labour has, notwithstanding, been lost.

In different periods of society, the human mind employs itself in search of different fruits. Man is imitative; and few have the boldness to chalk out a road of their own.

In one age an image is deemed sufficient to fill the mind by its own simple grandeur in another, fashion places the interest in the decoration of it or in its use to adorn, or explain, something abstract, or in most respects dissimilar; and discovered in some one point to be unexpectedly like.

In proportion as the ideas in which the composition deals, are complex, is the force of any particular quality of genius less apparent, and less requisite.

The Metaphysical poets therefore, and those quaint writers, who formed the class that immediately succeeded them, were generally men of considerable talents and acquirements, but of minor genius.

The understanding is generally employed in studying and teaching the nature and due regulations of our material existence; or consciousness.

It is the business of poetry to represent our Intellectual existence, or Consciousness. If therefore it occupies itself principally in instructing us in the former, it descends from its due sphere,

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If we wish to represent things in the order and with the accompaniments in which they strike the outward senses cannot represent them poetically, because when the fancy renews the representation of them, it does not represent them in the same order, and with the same accompaniments.

As all poetry is addressed, or ought to be addressed, to the Fancy, it follows that what is not suited to the nature and rules by which the Fancy acts, can never produce the proper effect, nor be genuine in its character, or quality.

That, which does not strike at once, but of which the meaning is to be attained by laborious deduction, is not poetry.

That, of which the leading circumstance is not seized, or in which the attention is distracted by a detail of more than the leading circumstance, is not poetry.

The more servile, or faithful, the picture is of material or real life, as it actually is, the less poetical it is. Because this is not the picture, which is left upon the mind when the material objects are removed.

When the understanding, when complex reflection, comes in to disturb the natural order and simple colours of the images, as they voluntarily rise in the mind, the effect is someting artificial, for which the mind of the reader was not prepared..

There is no end to the varieties of aspect generated by the capricious judgements of the human intellect long pondering on the same subject; and losing sight of the point, whence they set out, in endless labyrinths.

It is the essence of little minds to love artifice; because the attainments of Art are within their reach; whereas the deficiency of natural endowments cannot be supplied.

It may be worth while to endeavour to try these theories by the test of experience. How do they appear to be illustrated by the actual conduct of the greatest poets?

What are Dante's subjects? Are they not the visions of the mind? And does he not present them characterized, and grouped, in the manner in which they appear to the Fancy?

The force of the images presented by his fancy, or created by his genius, gave him a confidence in its power, that rested satisfied without an effort at ornament or exaggeration.

Does not the same character belong to Milton?

A Didactic Poem then is a contradiction. It has for its aim to do that, which is the reverse of poetry.

But are there no poetical passages to be found in Didactic Poems? Yes but then they are not Didactic: they are ornamental patches, incongruous with the professed object of the Work!

If this theory be true, does it raise, or depreciate the dignity and use of poetry?

Many will pronounce that it depreciates, because they will say, that in this character, it does not come home to the business of life!

If poetry be a representation of our intellectual consciousness, not of our material, that is, of those images which exist in the mind, not of the external images themselves, it seems to me that when these images are originally derived externally thro' the senses, they do not take their proper form and character, till the original is entirely removed from them.

The fancied image is therefore a renewal, at some period separated from that when it was first impressed. In the interval, all the degrading and puzzling details sink away;

and leave none but the striking or characteristic features of the image.

It would seem that the same principle is applicable not only to those images which had their origin in something external, but to all the operations of the mind, whether imagery, sentiments, reasonings, or reflections. Poetry deals, or ought to deal, with them in the state, in which Fancy renews them—when the striking parts remain, and the dregs have sunk!

We arrive at a conclusion by a laborious process of ratiocination. We look back upon it at a mature interval : the result, the building remains the scaffolding has disappeared.

The nature of the human mind has been in all ages a difficult study. Locke made great advances in these fields of subtle enquiry; and in our days Reid, Dugald Stewart and others, have made still farther advances. There are probably mysteries in it, which the human mind is incapable of conquering.

I assume the fancy to be that faculty, which has the power of bringing before the eye of the mind any image, as if it had a material shape. It matters not, whether the materials, or likeness of that image, were originally borrowed from some external object; or whether by some inscrutable cause, they originated in the mind.

I assume Invention to apply to such of these Images brought before the mind's eye, as have not their archetypes in external material objects: whether the difference arises from novelty of combination only, or novelty of the whole. It is obvious that this may apply to a single image, or a combination of images to an Allegorical Ode, descriptive of a single ideal Being, or to an Epic Poem.