Page:The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.djvu/249

 which we expected, we are shocked as by a falsehood, every circumstance of detail s which before induced us to be interested, making the distance from truth more palpable. You set out with a supposed reality and are disap- pointed and disgusted with the deception ; whilst, in respect to a work of genuine imita- tion, you begin with an acknowledged total difference, and then every touch of nature gives you the pleasure of an approximation to truth. The fundamental principle of all this is undoubtedly the horror of falsehood and the love of truth inherent in the human breast. The Greek tragic dance rested on these prin- ciples, and I can deeply sympathize in imagi- nation with the Greeks in this favourite part of their theatrical exhibitions, when I call to mind the pleasure I felt in beholding the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii most exquisitely danced in Italy to the music of Cimarosa.

Secondly, as to nature. We must imitate nature ! yes, but what in nature, — all and every thing? No, the beautiful in nature. And what then is the beautiful? What is beauty] It is, in the abstract, the unity of the manifold, the coalescence of the diverse ; in the concrete, it is the union of the shapely (formoswn) with the vital. In the dead organic it depends on regularity of form, the first and lowest species of which is the triangle with all its modifica- tions, as in crystals, architecture, &c. ; in the living organic it is not mere regularity of form,