I have made no attempt to set confines to poetry, for no two people will ever agree as to whether a literary performance has sufficient ecstasy or whether the ecstasy is of a high strain to entitle it to be called poetry, but I believe all will agree that ecstasy is necessary.
I believe, however, that many authoritative works and essays on Poetry, from Aristotle to our own day, are obsolete. I shall mention only Watts-Dunton's article on Poetry in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ which has furnished modern critics with many of their ideas. The article is beyond question one of the most interesting produced in England in many years. Watts-Dunton has a true conception of poetry when he calls it the product of inspiration or concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional language. He believes, however, versification is necessary to all poetry. He also makes too much of the divisions of poetry into the various orders, like epic, lyric, drama, an artificial division adopted by all critics from Aristotle. Watts-Dunton's divisions of poets into those with an absolute or personal vision and those with a relative vision, is arbitrary and confused. All poets are personal, and even when they depict other people's emotions objectively, the product is personal because touched with the creator's personality. He is also too much under the influence of Hegel's _Aesthetics_.
Watts-Dunton could not understand the value of impassioned prose or its right to be called poetry. He once said to William Michael Rossetti that the latter's reputation as a critic would soon vanish because of his admiration for Whitman, whom he himself detested. He is blamed with having done much to quench the poetic fire of Swinburne's muse, for whose changed attitude towards Whitman he also was responsible. He had no sympathy with the poetry that had a social message and he did not understand its effect as a catharsis. Watts-Dunton cannot remain our leading authority on poetry. His essay belongs to the extinct class of _Ars Poetica_, with Boileau and Opitz.
Ecstasy is then the substance of poetry, and there are all kinds of ecstasy, from a very exalted to a primitive order. It includes the scientist's or philosopher's passion for knowledge, the idealist's devotion to a cause. It comprehends the warrior's madness for battle, the patriot's ardor to die for his country, and man's submission to his God. Ecstasy holds in its sway the man who is moved by reading a great work of art. It sweeps every one who is in the throes of ambition. Those who enjoy nature, athletics, and games are in the throes of ecstasy. Those who are bemoaning the death of one they love, or rejoicing in the emergence of dear ones from illness or danger, those who take pride in watching their children grow up, those who exult in the pleasure of friendship, are all in ecstasy.