It follows that the poetical mind is one full of the eternal forms of beauty and perfection; these are its material of thought, its instrument and medium of observation; these color each object to which it directs its view. It is called 15 imaginative, or creative, from the originality and independence of its modes of thinking, compared with the commonplace and matter-of-fact conceptions of ordinary minds which are fettered down to the particular and individual. At the 20 same time it feels a natural sympathy with everything great and splendid in the physical and moral world; and selecting such from the mass of common phenomena, incorporates them, as it were, into the substance of its own creations. 25 From living thus in a world of its own, it speaks the language of dignity, emotion, and refinement. Figure is its necessary medium of communication with man; for in the feebleness of ordinary words to express its ideas, and in the absence of terms of 30 abstract perfection, the adoption of metaphorical language is the only poor means allowed it for imparting to others its intense feelings. A metrical garb has, in all languages, been appropriated to poetry--it is but the outward development of the music and harmony within. The verse, far 5 from being a restraint on the true poet, is the suitable index of his sense, and is adopted by his free and deliberate choice. We shall presently show the applicability of our doctrine to the various departments of poetical composition; 10 first, however, it will be right to volunteer an explanation which may save it from much misconception and objection. Let not our notion be thought arbitrarily to limit the number of poets, generally considered such. It will be 15 found to lower particular works, or parts of works, rather than the authors themselves; sometimes to disparage only the vehicle in which the poetry is conveyed. There is an ambiguity in the word "poetry," which is taken to signify 20 both the gift itself, and the written composition which is the result of it. Thus there is an apparent, but no real, contradiction in saying a poem may be but partially poetical; in some passages more so than in others; and sometimes not 25 poetical at all. We only maintain, not that the writers forfeit the name of poet who fail at times to answer to our requisitions, but that they are poets only so far forth, and inasmuch as they do answer to them. We may grant, for instance, 30 that the vulgarities of old Phoenix in the ninth _Iliad_, or of the nurse of Orestes in the _Choëphoræ_, are in themselves unworthy of their respective authors, and refer them to the wantonness of