'But O! how grateful to a wounded heart The tale of misery to impart From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow, And raise esteem upon the base of woe.'
The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the description. 'True,' (it may be answered) 'but how are the PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your description'?' We are for ever attributing personal unities to imaginary aggregates.--What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a number of scattered individuals? Of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or similar.
'Holy be the lay Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way.'
If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that the most interesting passages in our most interesting poems are those in which the author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice of Cona [21] never sounds so sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the third book of 'Paradise Lost' without peculiar emotion. By a law of nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for sympathy; but a poet's feelings are all strong.--Quicquid amat valde amat.--Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy when he classes love and poetry as producing the same effects:
'Love and the wish of poets when their tongue Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms Their own.'
There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that which leads to communicate our feelings to others, but that which would reduce the feelings of others; to an identity with our own.
The atheist who exclaims 'pshaw,' when he glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an egotist; an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of love verses is an egotist; and the sleek favourites of fortune are egotists when they condemn all 'melancholy discontented' verses. Surely it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give an innocent pleasure.