It is admitted that
the exercise of the imagination is the most delightful, but it is
alleged that that of reason is the more useful.
the exercise of the imagination is the most delightful, but it is
alleged that that of reason is the more useful.
Yeats
It should seem natural to find his thought full
of subtlety, for Mrs. Shelley has told how he hesitated whether he
should be a metaphysician or a poet, and has spoken of his 'huntings
after the obscure' with regret, and said of that _Prometheus Unbound_,
which so many for three generations have thought _Political Justice_
put into rhyme, 'It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his
own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem.
They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of
distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write
prose metaphysical essays on the Nature of Man, which would have served
to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered
fragments of observation and remarks alone remain. He considered
these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with
the intensest spirit of poetry. ' From these scattered fragments and
observations, and from many passages read in their light, one soon
comes to understand that his liberty was so much more than the liberty
of _Political Justice_ that it was one with Intellectual Beauty, and
that the regeneration he foresaw was so much more than the regeneration
many political dreamers have foreseen, that it could not come in its
perfection till the hours bore 'Time to his grave in eternity. ' In _A
Defence of Poetry_, the profoundest essay on the foundation of poetry
in English, he shows that the poet and the lawgiver hold their station
by the right of the same faculty, the one uttering in words and the
other in the forms of society, his vision of the divine order, the
Intellectual Beauty. 'Poets, according to the circumstances of the age
and nation in which they appeared, were called in the earliest epoch
of the world legislators or prophets, and a poet essentially comprises
and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely
the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which
present things are to be ordained, but he beholds the future in the
present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flowers and the fruit of
latest time. ' 'Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits
of action are all the instruments and materials of poetry. ' Poetry
is 'the creation of actions according to the unchangeable process of
human nature as existing in the mind of the creator, which is itself
the image of all other minds. ' 'Poets have been challenged to resign
the civic crown to reasoners and merchants. . . .
It is admitted that
the exercise of the imagination is the most delightful, but it is
alleged that that of reason is the more useful. . . . Whilst the mechanist
abridges and the political economist combines labour, let them be sure
that their speculations, for want of correspondence with those first
principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have
in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and
want. . . . The rich have become richer, the poor have become poorer, . . .
such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise
of the calculating faculty. ' The speaker of these things might almost
be Blake, who held that the Reason not only created Ugliness, but all
other evils. The books of all wisdom are hidden in the cave of the
Witch of Atlas, who is one of his personifications of beauty, and when
she moves over the enchanted river that is an image of all life, the
priests cast aside their deceits, and the king crowns an ape to mock
his own sovereignty, and the soldiers gather about the anvils to beat
their swords to ploughshares, and lovers cast away their timidity, and
friends are united; while the power which in _Laon and Cythna_ awakens
the mind of the reformer to contend, and itself contends, against the
tyrannies of the world, is first seen as the star of love or beauty.
And at the end of _The Ode to Naples_, he cries out to 'the spirit of
beauty' to overturn the tyrannies of the world, or to fill them with
its 'harmonizing ardours. ' He calls the spirit of beauty liberty,
because despotism, and perhaps, as 'the man of virtuous soul commands
not nor obeys,' all authority, pluck virtue from her path towards
beauty, and because it leads us by that love whose service is perfect
freedom.
of subtlety, for Mrs. Shelley has told how he hesitated whether he
should be a metaphysician or a poet, and has spoken of his 'huntings
after the obscure' with regret, and said of that _Prometheus Unbound_,
which so many for three generations have thought _Political Justice_
put into rhyme, 'It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his
own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem.
They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of
distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write
prose metaphysical essays on the Nature of Man, which would have served
to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered
fragments of observation and remarks alone remain. He considered
these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with
the intensest spirit of poetry. ' From these scattered fragments and
observations, and from many passages read in their light, one soon
comes to understand that his liberty was so much more than the liberty
of _Political Justice_ that it was one with Intellectual Beauty, and
that the regeneration he foresaw was so much more than the regeneration
many political dreamers have foreseen, that it could not come in its
perfection till the hours bore 'Time to his grave in eternity. ' In _A
Defence of Poetry_, the profoundest essay on the foundation of poetry
in English, he shows that the poet and the lawgiver hold their station
by the right of the same faculty, the one uttering in words and the
other in the forms of society, his vision of the divine order, the
Intellectual Beauty. 'Poets, according to the circumstances of the age
and nation in which they appeared, were called in the earliest epoch
of the world legislators or prophets, and a poet essentially comprises
and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely
the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which
present things are to be ordained, but he beholds the future in the
present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flowers and the fruit of
latest time. ' 'Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits
of action are all the instruments and materials of poetry. ' Poetry
is 'the creation of actions according to the unchangeable process of
human nature as existing in the mind of the creator, which is itself
the image of all other minds. ' 'Poets have been challenged to resign
the civic crown to reasoners and merchants. . . .
It is admitted that
the exercise of the imagination is the most delightful, but it is
alleged that that of reason is the more useful. . . . Whilst the mechanist
abridges and the political economist combines labour, let them be sure
that their speculations, for want of correspondence with those first
principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have
in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and
want. . . . The rich have become richer, the poor have become poorer, . . .
such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise
of the calculating faculty. ' The speaker of these things might almost
be Blake, who held that the Reason not only created Ugliness, but all
other evils. The books of all wisdom are hidden in the cave of the
Witch of Atlas, who is one of his personifications of beauty, and when
she moves over the enchanted river that is an image of all life, the
priests cast aside their deceits, and the king crowns an ape to mock
his own sovereignty, and the soldiers gather about the anvils to beat
their swords to ploughshares, and lovers cast away their timidity, and
friends are united; while the power which in _Laon and Cythna_ awakens
the mind of the reformer to contend, and itself contends, against the
tyrannies of the world, is first seen as the star of love or beauty.
And at the end of _The Ode to Naples_, he cries out to 'the spirit of
beauty' to overturn the tyrannies of the world, or to fill them with
its 'harmonizing ardours. ' He calls the spirit of beauty liberty,
because despotism, and perhaps, as 'the man of virtuous soul commands
not nor obeys,' all authority, pluck virtue from her path towards
beauty, and because it leads us by that love whose service is perfect
freedom.
