Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with
Truth.
A few words, however, in explanation. _That_ pleasure which is at once
the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I
maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation
of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable
elevation, or excitement _of the soul_, which we recognize as the Poetic
Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the
satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of
the heart. I make Beauty, therefore--using the word as inclusive of the
sublime--I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an
obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as
possible from their causes:--no one as yet having been weak enough to
deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least _most readily_
attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the
incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of
Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they
may subserve incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the
work: but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in
proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real
essence of the poem.
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