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are in any way repeated in another.

So far from

it, that on any point that I had ever studied (and on no other should I dare discourse-I mean, that I would not lecture on any subject for which I had to acquire the main knowledge, even though a month's or three months' previous time were allowed me; on no subject that had not employed my thoughts for a large portion of my life since earliest manhood, free of all outward and particular purpose) on any point within my habit of thought, I should greatly prefer a subject I had never lectured on, to one which I had repeatedly given; and those who have attended me for any two seasons successively will bear witness, that the lecture given at the London Philosophical Society, on the Romeo and Juliet, for instance, was as different from that given at the Crown and Anchor, as if they had been by two individuals who, without any communication with each other, had only mastered the same principles of philosophic criticism. This was most strikingly evidenced in the coincidence between my lectures and those of Schlegel; such, and so close, that it was fortunate for my moral reputation that I had not only from five to seven hundred ear witnesses that the passages had been given by me at the Royal Institution two years before Schlegel commenced his lectures at Vienna, but that notes had been taken of these by several men and ladies of high rank. (b) The fact is this; during a course of lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening

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days in collecting and digesting the materials, whether I have or have not lectured on the same subject before, making no difference. The day of the lecture, till the hour of commencement, I devote to the consideration, what of the mass before me is best fitted to answer the purposes of a lecture, that is, to keep the audience awake and interested during the delivery, and to leave a sting behind, that is, a disposition to study the subject anew, under the light of a new principle. Several times, however, partly from apprehension respecting my health and animal spirits, partly from the wish to possess copies that might afterwards be marketable among the publishers, I have previously written the lecture; but before I had proceeded twenty minutes, I have been obliged to push the MS. away, and give the subject a new turn. Nay, this was so notorious, that many my auditors used to threaten me, when they saw any number of written papers upon my desk, to steal them away; declaring they never felt so secure of a good lecture as when they perceived that I had not a single scrap of writing before me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the set composition of a lecture, both by varied reading and by meditation; but for the words, illustrations, &c., I know almost as little as any one of the audience (that is, those of any thing like the same education with myself) what they will be five minutes before the lecture begins. Such is my way, for such is my nature; and in attempting any other, I should only

of

torment myself in order to disappoint my auditors -torment myself during the delivery, I mean; for in all other respects it would be a much shorter and easier task to deliver them from writing. I am anxious to preclude any semblance of affectation; and have therefore troubled you with this lengthy preface before I have the hardihood to assure you, that you might as well ask me what my dreams were in the year 1814, as what my course of lectures was at the Surrey Institution. Fuimus Troes.

6

SHAKSPEARE,

With introductory matter on Poetry, the
Drama, and the Stage.

DEFINITION OF POETRY.

POETRY is not the proper antithesis to prose,

but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and degree of

excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the
act of composition;-and in order to understand
this, we must combine a more than ordinary sym-
pathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents con-
templated by the poet, consequent on a more than
common sensibility, with a more than ordinary
activity of the mind in respect of the fancy and
the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid
reflection of the truths of nature and of the human
heart, united with a constant activity modifying and /
correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable
emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties
gives in a certain degree; but which can only be
felt in perfection under the full play of those
powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than
voluntary, and in which the effort required bears
no proportion to the activity enjoyed. This is the
state which permits the production of a highly
pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also
communicate for itself a distinct and conscious
pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which I
trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a
poem, is a species of composition, opposed to
science, as having intellectual pleasure for its ob-
ject, and as attaining its end by the use of language
natural to us in a state of excitement,-but distin-
guished from other species of composition, not
excluded by the former criterion, by permitting a
pleasure from the whole consistent with a con-
sciousness of pleasure from the component parts;-

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