The home journal. (Winchester, Tenn.) 1858-188?, 1873-04-17
Theories of Poetry.

Theories OF Poetry.
Aristotle taught that it's essence con
sisted in the imitation Of nature, cores
ponding to the pre- aphaelitism Of the
realist school Of painters and in this
he has had a large following, notably
among recent writer's, Henri Tame. The
great Lord Bacon, with deeper insight
| in this direction than his Greek prede'
%cessor, placed its essence in magma,
| ton, or the i~dealization of nature; and
no, too, is the founder OF a school. II
has been defined as "the natural Ian,
lguage of excited feeling intense and in
spired " and as ga work OF the imagi-
nation wrought INTO form by art a
suggestive definition is that which rep
r%esents it as "the indirect expression OF
that which cannot be expressed direct
ly. Still more suggestive il that re-
Gently advanced by n writer in one OF
our ablest weekly journals Of criticism
"Poctry is the protest Of the emotions
against the dominion Of the intellect "
and the various schools Of poetry have
been thus described: Greek poetry, rs
"the protest of free-will against the
| domination Of fate or necessity y 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 :" Chaucer's against "the iron
~monotomy of medieval life; /" Shakes
peare's, AZ "the general assertio &
right Of man to be M various and as
wonderful II creature as God had made
him, which was the fit accompaniment
of that Q 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 dospotism Of nature, and ever the
yoke of mere science or knowledge.
This is n much more valuable contribu-
ton to true theory than Keeble's, who,
to his Oxford lectures, considered it as
"a vent for overcharged feeling, or n
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 greatest poets, in n remark
beautiful essay Sin defense of poe
is IA signally deficient in clearness
Of definition. "To be u poet" he says,
" il to apprehend the true and the beau
tiful in II 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
which are created by that impe-
rial faculty, whose throne il curtained
the invisible nature Of man."
This is nearly as unsatisfactory ~ the
deliverance of II recent ambitious wri-
ter, that poetry is "the record of pleas
ure, intended to produce pleasure.
W~ordsworth's essays on this subject
like all that he ever wrote are worthy
IF thoughtful bordering though his
erring through a restriction of
sphere of imagination, stands in
marked contrast to his own practice Of
the art. 1t would be easy to multiply
definitions but those we have given
sufficiently illustrate the drift of spcou-
lation and Of criticism on the subject
Saturday RsUiev.