If we take the different definitions of the term "Poetry," that have been given this beautiful and magical art by the various writers upon its nature and properties, as _each_ supported by reason and fact, we shall hardly arrive at any degree of certainty as to its _real_ meaning. It has been called "the art of imitation," or mimickry. Aristotle and Plato characterize it as "the expression of thoughts by fictions;" and there are innumerable other definitions, none of which are more satisfactory to the student than is that of the celebrated "Blair." He says, "it is the language of Passion,--or enlivened Imagination, formed, most commonly, into regular numbers. The primary object of a poet is to _please_, and to _move_; and therefore it is to imagination and the passions that he speaks. He may, and he ought to have it in his view to _instruct_ and _reform_; but it is _indirectly_, and by _pleasing_, and _moving_, that he accomplishes this end. His mind is supposed to be animated by some interesting object which fires his imagination or engages his passions: and which, of course, communicates to his style a peculiar elevation, suited to his ideas, very different from that mode of expression which is natural to the mind in its calm, ordinary state." And this definition will allow of being yet more particularly and minutely understood: it is susceptible of being analyzed still farther, and described as "a language, in which fiction and imagination may, with propriety, be indulged beyond the strict limits of truth and reality."