Form.] And the mood of mind to which this representation gives birth, is radically opposite to the other; it is active, sympathetic, and even reflective: we seem, as it were, to share the feeling with others, to derive an added delight from witnessing the manner in which they are affected, or even to have the original passive sentiment of pleasure entirely swallowed up in that energetic emotion.[89:1] [Sidenote: 2. Poetry's true subject is Mind, and not external nature,] Secondly, the true subject of poetry is [90:1]Mind. Its most strictly original purpose is that of imaging mind _directly_, by the representation of humanity as acting, thinking, or suffering; it presents images of external nature only because the weakness of the mind compels it; and it is careful to represent sensible images solely as they are acted on by mind. [Sidenote: except as tinged with thought and feeling.] When it makes the description of external nature its professed end, it in truth does not represent the sensible objects themselves, but only exhibits certain modes of thought and feeling, and characterises the sensible forms no farther than as the causes which produce them. [Sidenote: 3. Poetry is analytical; it perceives, discriminates.] Thirdly, The most characteristic function of the poetical faculty is _analytical_; it is essentially a _perception_, a power of discovery, analysis, and discrimination. An object having been presented to it by the imagination, it discovers, and separates from the mass of its qualities, those of them which are calculated to affect the mind with that emotion which is the instrumental end of poetry. [Sidenote: Its combinations depend on its first analysis.] Coincidently with the perception and discovery of the qualities, it perceives and experiences the peculiar effect which each particular quality produces; and, lastly, it sets forth and represents those resulting moods of mind, indicating at the same time what those qualities of the object are through which they are excited. Its task of combination is no more than consequent on this process, and supposes each step of it to have been previously gone through. [Sidenote: 4. Poetry depends on the power and accuracy of its perception of the poetical qualities in its materials.] Fourthly, It follows, (and this is the result which makes the inquiry important,) that the poetical faculty is measured by the strength and accuracy with which it perceives the poetical qualities of those objects which the imagination suggests as its materials, and not by the number of the ideas so presented. [Sidenote: Of imagination or Imagery.] A forgetfulness of this truth has occasioned more misapprehension and [90:2]false criticism than any other error whatever; and we are continually in danger of the mistake, from the extension of meaning which use has attached to the word imagination, that term being commonly employed to designate the poetical faculty. This extended application is