[Sidenote: Application of these principles to the Drama.] These fundamental principles of the poetical art possess a closer application to Dramatic Poetry than to any other species. [Sidenote: The Passions are the chief subjects of Poetry.] All poetry being directly or indirectly a representation of human character; and human character admitting of appreciation only by an exhibition of its results in action; and action being prompted by the passionate impulses of the mind, which its reflective faculties only modify or stay; it follows that the Passions are the leading subjects of Poetry, which consequently must be examined in the first instance with a view to its strength and accuracy as a representation of the working and results of that department of the mind. The nature of the dramatic art allows this rule to be applied to it with the greatest strictness. [Sidenote: They work more alone in the Drama than elsewhere.] The drama is the species which presents the essential qualities of poetry less mingled with foreign adjuncts than they are in any other species; and there seems to be a cause, (independent of its mechanical necessities,) enabling it to dispense with those decorations which abound in other kinds of poetry. The acted drama presents its picture of life directly to the senses, and permits the imagination, without any previous exertion, to proceed at once to its proper task of forming its own combinations from the sensible forms thus offered to it; and even when the drama is read, the office of the imagination in representing to itself the action and the characters of the piece, is an easy one, and performed without the necessity of great activity of mind. [Sidenote: In Epic and other poetry relying only on words, the effort to turn them into a picture hinders their prompt action.] On the other hand, in the epic, or any other species of poetry which represents action by [92:1]words, and not by an imitation of the action itself, the imagination has at first to form, from the successively presented features of the poetical description, a picture which shall be the exciting cause of the poetical impression: this supposes considerable energy of thought, and the necessity of relief from that exertion seems to have suggested the introduction of images of external nature and the like, on which the fancy may rest and disport itself. [Sidenote: Didactic poetry is not true poetry, but sermons in verse.] Those classes of poetry which are either partially or wholly didactic, cannot receive a strict application of the principles of the pure art; because they are not properly poetry, but attempts to make poetical forms serve purposes which are not poetical. [Sidenote: Shakspere again.]