Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)

On Poetry in General [from Lectures on the English Poets]

London

Taylor and Hessey

1818

"This language is not the less true to nature, because it is false in point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind."

[...] Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this reason, "has something divine in it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the shows of things to the desires of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, as reason and history do." It is strictly the language of the imagination; and the imagination is that faculty which represents objects, not as they are in themselves, but as they are moulded by other thoughts and feelings, into an infinite variety of shapes and combinations of power. This language is not the less true to nature, because it is false in point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear--and the imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. Our eyes are made the fools" of our other faculties. This is the universal law of the imagination [...]
(pp. 6-7)

Impressions

Reading M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford UP, 1953), p. 54.

William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1818). <Link to Google Books>

06/06/2013