The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1873-04-11

among recent writer's, Henri Taine. The
great Lord Bacon, with deeper insight
in this direction than his Greek prede-
cessor, placed its essence in imagina-
ton, or the idealization of nature; and
he, too, is the founder of a school. It
has been defined as "the natural Ian
guage of excited feeling intense and in
spired;" and as 4" work of the imagi-
nation wrought into form by art ;"
suggestive definition is that which rep
resents it as 60 the indirect expression Of
that which cannot be expressed direct
ly. Still more suggestive is that re-
Gently advanced by writer in one of
our ablest weekly journals of criticism:
I" Poetry is the protest of the emotions
against the dominion of the intellect;
and the various schools of poetry have
been thus described: Greek poetry, as
&C the protest of free-will against the
domination of fate or necessity ;" jew
ish poetry, as "the passionate outbreak
of human love, devotion and trust,
against the restraints OF mere outward
law ;" Dante's poetry, as "the protest
of human instincts against ecclesiastical
tyranny ;" Chaueer's against &c the iron
monotomy of medieval life" Shakes
peare's, as "the general assertio e
right of man to be as various and as
wonderful a creature as God had made
him, which was the fit accompaniment
of that new springtime of human
| thought and enterprise, the reviewa of
learning and the discovery of the New
world" And in the modern poetry of
Coleridge, Shelley, Wordsworth, Ten
nyson and Browning, there is detected
the same remonstrance of the human
spirit against external pressure, against
the despotism of nature, and even the
yoke of mere science or knowledge.
! This is a much more valuable contribu-
ton to true theory than Keeble's, who,
to his Oxford lectures, considered it as
ga vent for overcharged feeling, Or a
! full imagination, when the mind is over
powered and requires relief :" or that
of Sir Francis Doyle, who traces it to
dissatisfaction with what is present
and close at hand ;" which is, he says,
Zone of natures silent promises to the
heart, one stimulus to the advancement
of the race, one source of the abiding
greatness of man" Shelley himself,
one Of our greatest poets, in a remark
ably beautiful essay Gin defense of poe
try, - is as signally deficient in clearness
of definition ''To be a poet, :" he says,
sis to apprehend the true and the beau
tiful in a word, the good, which exists
in the relation between existence and
perception, and between perception and
expression" Again, he says, "poetry
expresses those arrangements of Ian
guage which are created by that impe-
rial faculty, whose throne is curtained
within the invisible nature of man. .
This is nearly as unsatisfactory as the
deliverance of a recent ambitious wri-
ter, that poetry is " the record of pleas
ure, intended TO produce pleasure.
Wordsworth's essays on this subject
dixie all that he ever wrote) are worthy
of thoughtful bordering; though his
theory, erring through a restriction Of
the sphere of imagination, stands il
marked contrast to his own practice Of
the art. It would be easy to multiply
definitions but those we have giver
sufficiently illustrate the drift of specu
Iation and of criticism on the subject
Saturday ReVie1O.