Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 edition. Excerpt: ... ed effect can be produced without them. If the product of an Eolian harp were noted and offered to us as a work of art, it would be received with deserved contempt, though we might be pleased with the very same succession of sounds considered as the effect of wandering and unconscious breezes. In the more intellectual arts,--and especially in poetry, the most intellectual,--it is essential that the elements of which it consists should be so arranged as constantly to present a distinct meaning, which meaning is the expression of learning, ingenuity, profundity, &c. in the mind of the author. The object of every poem, as such, like that of every musical composition, is the production of sublimity and beauty; but every poem must contain throughout a train of thought addressed to the understanding, and separable from those characteristics which constitute it a poem. Thus, the epic poem contains the narration of a story, the drama the representation of a story, the didactic poem contains the explanation of a system, the ode contains the description of various objects of the moral or natural world, things which may all be separated from the poetry in which they are involved, and presented to the understanding alone. Nevertheless, the presentation of these various combinations to the understanding is not the end of any poem as such, though it is certainly the end of many compositions to which it is impossible to deny the name of poem. We cannot indeed suppose that Virgil wrote his Georgics for the purpose of teaching husbandry; we should rather say that he taught husbandry for the purpose of producing poetical delight. But I see no reason for refusing credit to the professions with which Lucretius opens his fourth Book, that his purpose was to...
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