the difference therefore must consist in a different combination of them, in
consequence of a different object proposed. According to the difference of the
object will be the difference of the combination. It is possible that the object
may be merely to facilitate the recollection of any given facts or observations
by artificial arrangement; and the composition will be a poem, merely because
it is distinguished from prose by meter, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly. In
this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem to the well-
known enumeration of the days in the several months: Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November, etc. and others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular pleasure is found
in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that
have this charm superadded, whatever be their contents, may be entitled
poems. So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents sup
plies an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose may be the
communication of truths; either of truth absolute and demonstrable, as in
works of science; or of facts experienced and recorded, as in history. Pleasure,
and that of the highest and most permanent kind, may result from the attain
ment of the end; but it is not itself the immediate end. In other works the
communication of pleasure may be the immediate purpose; and though truth,
either moral or intellectual, ought to be the ultimate end, yet this will distin
guish the character of the author, not the class to which the work belongs.
Blessed indeed is that state of society in which the immediate purpose would
be baffled by the perversion of the proper ultimate end; in which no charm of
diction or imagery could exempt the Bathyllus even of an Anacreon, or the
Alexis of Virgil,? from disgust and aversion! But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work
not metrically composed; and that object may have been in a high degree
7. Poems, 2 vols., 1815. a Greek lyric poet (ca. 560^175 B.C.E.); Alexis was 8. The reference is to poems of homosexual love. a young man loved by the shepherd Corydon in Bathyllus was a beautiful boy praised by Anacreon, Virgil's Eclogue 2.
.
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA / 48 1
attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere superaddition of
meter, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems? The answer
is that nothing can permanently please which does not contain in itself the
reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If meter be superadded, all other parts
must be made consonant with it. They must be such as to justify the perpetual
and distinct attention to each part which an exact correspondent recurrence
of accent and sound are calculated to excite. The final definition then, so
deduced, may be thus worded. A poem is that species of composition which
is opposed to works of science by proposing for its immediate object pleasure,
not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it
is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is com
patible with a distinct gratification from each component part. Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputants attach
ing each a different meaning to the same word; and in few instances has this
been more striking than in disputes concerning the present subject. If a man
chooses to call every composition a poem which is rhyme, or measure, or both,
I must leave his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent
to characterize the writer's intention. If it were subjoined that the whole is
likewise entertaining or affecting as a tale or as a series of interesting reflec
tions, I of course admit this as another fit ingredient of a poem and an addi
