poetry has been wrung forth by suffering; for it has been written in the intervals of suffering, and the exercise of poetical imagination on it has been itself one of its alleviations. The poets who have so written have not only held their grief at arm's length, as it were, but have counteracted the pain inherent in it, even when so held, by the pleasure of exercising the energy of imagination. This is true also when applied to acute pleasures. They do not become poetical until they are held at arm's length, and pierced through and through with imaginative thought. Here then we come to the complete account of the matter. This union of thought with emotion is poetical imagination on one side, and poetical emotion on the other; and the energy, which works the fusion and expresses it, has a pleasure as energy, distinct from the interest of the objects and emotions themselves. The absence of the immediate pressure of mental pain, and of the immediate excitement of mental pleasure, is indeed the enabling cause of poetical or imaginative pleasure; enabling us, that is, to take pleasure in the poetic energy of representing actions, events, and circumstances, which may have been either intensely pleasureable or intensely painful, either to ourselves or others; actions and circumstances which we then regard as displays of character, or of the skill and power of the agents in fighting the battle, or playing the game, of life. But the positive or active cause of the pleasure lies in the exercise of the imaginative energy itself; and that this is the true account of the matter seems to be shown by the circumstance, that persons who have not, or do not exercise, this imaginative energy take no pleasure in the poetry of profound emotion either pleasureable or tragic,

BOOK I.

CH. II. PART V.

§ 41. The nature of poetical emotion.

BOOK I. CH. II. PART V.

§ 42.

The modes of poetry; the poetical arts.

and that subjects of this kind seem to them, as they say, too grave and serious for poetry, which is suited only to things light and cheerful. In other words, where the positive source of pleasure, the imaginative energy, is absent, there the greater intensities both of pleasure and of pain are wearisome and overpowering, and, being in this way painful, are thought unfit for poetry.

§ 42. 1. All poetry, then, in its strict sense is poetical imagination, and poetical imagination is the representative framework of poetical emotion, which pervades it as in other cases of emotion. This state of consciousness is the fountain-head of all poetry, the completion of the aesthetic emotions, whether expressed or embodied in words and metre, or in the sounds of music, or in forms visible and tangible, as in sculpture, painting, and architecture. Poetical imagination, poetical emotion, -two aspects of one phenomenon or one state of consciousness,-how can we descend from this fountain-head, and, truly distinguishing its streams, follow them to their issue in works of art ? The framework and its emotion are inseparable; they grow or lessen hand in hand; change pari passu. And, as in all the foregoing cases, so also in this, it is the framework of images which offers the object of analysis and the means of analysing. The connection between images or parts of images is association or redintegration, and this process being in this case voluntary, not spontaneous, is a process of reasoning; and this its nature is not altered by the circumstance that pleasure in the redintegration itself is its law, end, or scope. The ultimate kinds or modes of poetry therefore must be reducible to general kinds or modes of reasoning;

Book I.

CH. II. PART V.

§ 42. The modes of

poetry; the

the explanation of their ultimate kinds as poetry must consist in their being cases of some general kinds of reasoning. Now there are two great modes of all reasoning, clearly distinguishable from each other, but inseparably interdependent, analysis and poetical arts. synthesis. Every train of reasoning redintegration contains both; but when you take a point in the train of reasoning to start from, the process from that point onwards may be either synthetic alone or synthetic and analytic together, because, in the first case, the analysis may lie before the point of starting. So if you take as a starting point the point reached by a previous reasoning, and the object which is its result at that point, your onward process is an analysis of that object, a going back over the previous synthesis. To express it by a simile, the gathering of clouds in a clear sky is a synthesis, the analysis or separation of the clouds from other clouds beyond the horizon, or from fine vapour overhead, has taken place previous to the beginning of overclouding the clear sky. The changes which take place in these clouds themselves when gathered is both synthetic and analytic at once; and the disappearance of them from the sky so as to leave it clear again would be analysis alone, the corresponding synthesis taking place out of view. The process is precisely similar when, in poetry, we take a starting point and bring together images for the first time; and the poetry is then synthetic or constructive; or when we take an object or set of images, with their emotions, already known to us, examine it and remodify it; the poetry is then analytic or descriptive. Constructive and descriptive are terms which are properly and usually applicable to poetry, and will be admitted, I think,

to express the most general modes into which it is possible to distinguish it. Out of these most general modes it can be shown that the less general distinctions flow, such as those of epic, dramatic, and lyrical poetry. But let us first apply these principles to the several poetical arts, as distinguished by the natural organs or instruments proper to each.

2. Music, the instrument and material of which is sound only, supplies the purest instance of synthetic or constructive imagination; it does not imitate but produce. Before however entering on this point, it will be advisable to continue the analysis of music from the point at which it was left in § 18. It was there remarked that modern music is founded chiefly upon the relations of colours to each other, and upon their combination into chords governed by the tonic coloured note, whereas the ancient music was built upon the relations of pitch; and that consequently, while melody is common to both, the melody of the moderns is rich in sequences and combinations of chords or colour harmony, which has to a great extent replaced the elaboration of pitch harmony alone, which characterised ancient melody. Not however that the sounds in ancient music were destitute of colour, but that the profound musical significance of their colour was not perceived. Two causes contributed to the change from the ancient to the modern system; the first was the continued elaboration of the old system itself, through counterpoint and part-singing, which compelled the perception of the consonance of chords with each other when heard simultaneously; and this may be called the purely æsthetic cause of the change; the second was the peculiarly emotional effect attached to colours when

BOOK I.
CH. II.
PART V.

§ 42. The modes of

poetical arts.

Music.

combined in chords, the interest of which emotional element in chords fixed increased attention upon them. The framework of modern music, then, can be analysed into precisely the same elements as that poetry; the of ancient, namely, melody, harmony of pitch, and harmony of colour; but to the extent that combination of colours is employed or made the chief staple of music, to that extent the music contains or chiefly consists of emotional effect, in contradistinction to the purely aesthetical beauty of its framework of sounds. A part of the music little noticed in ancient musical art, namely, the emotion peculiarly attached to colour in sound, was now in modern music brought into prominence, and, without destroying, gave an entirely new character to the æsthetic beauty attaching to combinations of pitch, which had been before the predominant feature. The sense of aesthetic beauty and the peculiar emotions attaching to colour harmonies are the subjective aspect of the beauty which we conceive objectively as inherent in a piece of music. The emotion attaching to colour harmony is that which constitutes the poetry of music, the material out of which the great masters form their spirit-stirring creations.

3. It will help to show more clearly the bearing of the foregoing remarks, if we take the melody that element in a piece of music which is common to both styles, ancient and modern. The melody is the movement of the sounds in time; and their succession may be more or less rapid, and longer or shorter intervals of time, of pitch, of intensity, may be interposed between them; this belongs solely to the melody. But when we take the sounds themselves and consider the relations which they bear to