This principle is the great spring of the activity of
our minds and their chief feeder. From this principle the direction
of the sexual appetite, and all the passions connected with it take
their origin: It is the life of our ordinary conversation; and upon
the accuracy with which similitude in dissimilitude, and
dissimilitude in similitude are perceived, depend our taste and our
moral feelings. It would not have been a useless employment to have
applied this principle to the consideration of metre, and to have
shewn that metre is hence enabled to afford much pleasure, and to
have pointed out in what manner that pleasure is produced. But my
limits will not permit me to enter upon this subject, and I must
content myself with a general summary.
I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of
reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion,
similar to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is
gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
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