We come, then, to the consideration of this specific quality that
distinguishes what we recognise as poetry from all other verbal expression.
Returning for a moment to _Paradise Lost_, we find that here is a work
of art of which the visible and external sign is words. That it has three
qualities--there may be more, but it is not to the point--architectural
power, moral exaltation and a sense of character, each of which, although
it may be more impressive when presented as it were under the auspices of
the poetic quality, can exist independently of it, as in _Tom Jones_,
_Unto This Last_, and _The School for Scandal_ respectively;
that there remains a last and dominating quality, which is not related to
intellectual fusion of much diverse material, as is the first of those
other qualities, or to the kind of material, as are the other two, but to
extreme activity of the perceptive mood upon whatever object it may be
directed, remembering that this activity is highly exacting as to the
worthiness of objects in which it can concern itself. We find, further,
that this is a quality which it has in common not with _Tom Jones_
or _Unto This Last_, but with a thing so inconsiderable in all other
respects as those songs of Herrick's.
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