Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1851 Excerpt: ... ENGLISH POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The consideration of the "Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century" involves more than a mere criticism of individual authors. No one can pay much attention to the theme, without being led into inquiries concerning the nature and province of poetry, and the verbal difficulties which perplex the subject of literary ethics. A few observations on some of the sophisms which make poetry synonymous with falsehood, and virtue with propriety, may not be uninteresting to our readers. The common objection to poetry lies in the word "unreal." In most minds, real life is confounded with actual life. The ideal or the imaginary is deemed to be, at the best, but a beautiful illusion. Reality is affirmed chiefly of those objects directly cognizable by the senses and the understanding. Now, it seems to us, that the mere fact that most minds perceive a higher existence than the life they actually lead, a life more in harmony with moral and natural laws, is an evidence that actual life is a most imperfect embodiment of real life. The difference between duty and conduct, law and its observance, nature and convention, about measures the difference between the real and the actual. No sophism can be more monstrous than that which represents actual life as sufficient for the wants and capacities of human nature. In all the great exigencies of existence, the actual glides away under our very feet, and the soul falls back instinctively upon what is real and permanent. The code of practical atheism, which condemns poetry as fantastical, strikes at the very root of morals and religion; and those prudent worldlings who adopt it must have a very dim insight into the ethical significance of those words which represent the world as "living in a v...
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