I think Wordsworth's analysis of emotion is clearly wrong. The reason why the harrowing descriptions of Richardson are simply painful, while Shakspere's tragic situations are pleasurable, is that the imagination shrinks from dwelling on ideas so closely imitated from real objects as the scenes in _Clarissa Harlowe_, but contemplates without excess of pain the situation in _Othello_, for example, because the imitation is poetical and ideal. Prose is used by Richardson because his novel professedly resembles a situation of real life; metre is needed by Shakspere to make the ideal life of his drama real to the imagination. Wordsworth, if I may say so, has put the poetical cart before the horse.... The propriety of poetical expression is the test and the touch-stone of the justice of poetical conception.... Poetry lies in the invention of the right metrical form--be it epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric--for the expression of some idea universally interesting to the imagination. When the form of metrical expression seems _natural_--natural, that is, to the genius of the poet and the inherent character of the subject--then the subject-matter will have been rightly conceived.... Apply this test of what is natural in metrical expression to any composition claiming to be poetically inspired, and you will be able to decide whether it fulfils the universal conditions of poetical life, or whether it is one of those phantoms, or, as Bacon calls them, idols of the imagination, which vanish as soon as the novelty of their appearance has exhausted its effect. For instance, the American poet, Walt Whitman, announces his theme, and asks for the sympathy of the reader in these words: "Oneself I sing, a simple, separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En Masse. Poets to come, orators, singers, musicians to come, Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me!..." To this appeal I think the reader may reply: The subject you have chosen is certainly an idol of the imagination. For if you had anything of universal interest to say about yourself, you could say it in a way natural to one of the metres, or metrical movements, established in the English language. What you call metre bears precisely the same relation to these universal laws of expression, as the Mormon church and the religion of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young bear to the doctrines of Catholic Christendom.[58] ...