ABSTRACT
105A Poem, says Horace, is a picture. Is not the converse of the proposition as true? Poet and artist, however, would both err, if they carried either maxim to extremes. Darwin and Fosbrooke wrote poems on the principle of using only precise images of picturesque effect, chiefly.founded upon the sense of vision. We know not that either can be said to have prospered in so partial an aim, and must be ignorant of this branch of literature altogether to assert that it is or has been approved by the judicious. It has been justly said, that the very remembrance of “ blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides” might have induced hesitation before such a theory was adopted. A poem, therefore, is something more than a picture, since it admits of images derived from the ear, the taste, the touch, and the smell, as well as the eye. In a similar manner a picture, though it may be truly said to be a poem in a certain sense, is at the same time something different. It may, indeed, suggest impressions of all the senses; but its direct province is with the sense of vision, and only through the medium of sight may it excite the soul.
