Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/78



§ 17. in his preface to the Bridal of Triermain, published in 1813, offered some remarks "on what has been called romantic poetry." Though the main object of these remarks was to deprecate the practice of selecting "epic" subjects after the Homeric model, they contain a passage which, apparently without any conception of this particular bearing on the author's part, touches a most profound problem, not only of literature, but of all human thought. The passage is as follows: "Two or three figures, well grouped, suit the artist better than a crowd, for whatever purpose assembled. For the same reason, a scene immediately presented to the imagination and directly brought home to the feelings, though involving the fate of but one or two persons, is more favourable for poetry than the political struggles and convulsions which influence the fate of kingdoms. The former are within the reach and comprehension of all, and, if depicted with vigour, seldom fail to fix attention; the other, if more sublime, are more vague and distant, less capable of being distinctly understood, and infinitely less capable of exciting the sentiments which it is the very purpose of poetry to inspire. To generalise is always to destroy effect.