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POETRY EXPLAINED

FOR THE USE OF

YOUNG PEOPLE.

BY

Richard Loribl

R. L. EDGEWORTH, ESQ.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-

1-

YARD.

1,2755 Lit 1498,02

11 iii

PREFACE.

EXPERIENCE has convinced the author of the following pages, that children seldom understand the poetry, which they early learn by rote, and that thus, instead of forming a poetic taste, they acquire the habit of repeating words to which they affix no distinct ideas, or of admiring melodious sounds which are to them destitute of meaning.

The pleasure that we receive from the remote allusions or metaphoric language of poetry depends, in a great degree, upon the rapidity with which we pass over a number of intermediate ideas, and seize the meaning of the author; but children find much difficulty in supplying the elisions of poetic thought and diction. It is to them a laborious process; and even when they perform it successfully, much of the pleasure escapes during the operation. Surely it is doing young people injustice, to force fine poetry upon them before they can possibly taste it's excellence; for thus we rob them of present, and defraud them of future pleasure. Beside the hazard of disgusting them with poetry, there is danger of inducing servile imitation, and of habituating their minds to admire without choice or discrimination. The world of literature now abounds with copiers of copyists, who, varying merely the arrangement of the words, run the changes eternally upon the of ideas. Probably this want of originality of thought, and this perpetual of expression, may in some measure arise from the veneration which is early impressed upon the mind for certain standards of excellence; veneration independent of reason, which disposes the young student to admire and imitate, without instructing him how to analyze or combine. Whoever attends to the observations made by children upon poetry, will soon discover, that their admiration is usually excited by quaint and uncommon expressions, rather