In a world where evil is a mere consequence of good, and good a mere consequence of evil--in short where all of which we have any conception is good or bad only by comparison--we have never yet been fully able to appreciate the validity of that decision which would debar the critic from enforcing upon his readers the merits or demerits of a work by placing it in juxta-position with another. It seems to us that an adage based in the purest ignorance has had more to do with this popular feeling than any just reason founded upon common sense. Thinking thus, we shall have no scruple in illustrating our opinion in regard to what _is not_ Ideality or the Poetic Power, by an example of what _is_.[8] We have already given the description of the Sylphid Queen in the _Culprit Fay_. In the _Queen Mab_ of Shelley a Fairy is thus introduced-- Those who had looked upon the sight, Passing all human glory, Saw not the yellow moon, Saw not the mortal scene, Heard not the night wind's rush, Heard not an earthly sound, Saw but the fairy pageant, Heard but the heavenly strains That filled the lonely dwelling-- and thus described-- The Fairy's frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud That catches but the palest tinge of even, And which the straining eye can hardly seize When melting into eastern twilight's shadow, Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star That gems the glittering coronet of morn, _Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form, Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, Yet with an undulating motion, Swayed to her outline gracefully_. [Footnote 8: As examples of entire poems of the purest ideality, we would cite the _Prometheus Vinctus_ of Æschylus, the _Inferno_ of Dante, Cervantes' _Destruction of Numantia_, the _Comus_ of Milton, Pope's _Rape of the Lock_, Burns' _Tam O'Shanter_, the _Auncient Mariner_, the _Christabel_, and the _Kubla Khan_ of Coleridge; and most especially the _Sensitive Plant_ of Shelley, and the _Nightingale_ of Keats. We have seen American poems evincing the faculty in the highest degree.]