After some remarks upon Dr. Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” the lecturer proceeded: Any true criticism of poetry must start from the axiom that what distinguishes that which we call the poetical in anything, and makes it so, is that it transcends the understanding, by however little or much, and is interpreted by the intuitive operation of some quite other faculty of the mind. It is precisely the something-more of feeling, of insight, of thought, of expression which for the moment lulls that hunger for the superfluous which is the strongest appetite we have, and which always gives the lie to the proverb that enough is as good as a feast. The boys in the street express it justly when they define the indefinable merit of something which pleases them, by saying it is a touch beyond--or it is first-rate and a half. The poetry of a thing is this touch beyond, this third half on the farther side of first-rate. Dr. Johnson said that that only was good poetry out of which good prose could be made. But poetry cannot be translated into prose at all. Its condensed meaning may be paraphrased, and you get the sense of it, but lose the condensation which is a part of its essence. If on Christmas day you should give your son a half-eagle, and should presently take it back, and give him the excellent prose version of five hundred copper cents, the boy would doubtless feel that the translation had precisely the same meaning in tops, balls, and gibraltars; but the feeling of infinite riches in a little room, of being able to carry in his waistcoat pocket what Dr. Johnson would have called the potentiality of tops and balls and gibraltars beyond the dreams of avarice--this would have evaporated. By _good_ prose the Doctor meant prose that was sensible and had a meaning. But he forgot his own theory sometimes when he thought he was writing poetry. How would he contrive to make any kind of sense of what he says of Shakspeare? that Panting Time toiled after him in vain. The difference between prose and poetry is one of essence and not one of accident. What may be called the negatively poetical exists everywhere. The life of almost every man, however prosaic to himself, is full of these dumb melodies to his neighbor. The farmer looks from the hillside and sees the tall ship lean forward with its desire for the ocean, every full-hearted sail yearning seaward, and takes passage with her from his drudgery to the beautiful conjectured land. Meanwhile he himself has Pegasus yoked to his plough without knowing it, and the sailor, looking back, sees him sowing his field with the graceful idyl of summer and harvest. Little did the needle-woman dream that she was stitching passion and pathos into her weary seam, till Hood came and found them there.