Now this power of exciting the emotions depends of course on the richness of the imagination, and on its choice of those images which, in combination, will be most effective, or, for the particular work to be done, most fit.  And it is altogether impossible for a writer not endowed with invention to conceive what tools a true poet will make use of, or in what way he will apply them, or what unexpected results he will bring out by them; so that it is vain to say that the details of poetry ought to possess, or ever do possess, any definite character.  Generally speaking, poetry runs into finer and more delicate details than prose; but the details are not poetical because they are more delicate, but because they are employed so as to bring out an affecting result.  For instance, no one but a true poet would have thought of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describing his way of locking the door of his house: 

    Perhaps to himself at that moment he said,
    The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead;
    But of this in my ears not a word did he speak;
    And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.[41]

In like manner, in painting, it is altogether impossible to say beforehand what details a great painter may make poetical by his use of them to excite noble emotions:  and we shall, therefore, find presently that a painting is to be classed in the great or inferior schools, not according to the kind of details which it represents, but according to the uses for which it employs them.

It is only farther to be noticed, that infinite confusion has been introduced into this subject by the careless and illogical custom of opposing painting to poetry, instead of regarding poetry as consisting in a noble use, whether of colours or words.  Painting is properly to be opposed to speaking or writing, but not to poetry.  Both painting and speaking are methods of expression.  Poetry is the employment of either for the noblest purposes.

This question being thus far determined, we may proceed with our paper in the Idler.

“It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of enthusiasm that the arts of Painting and Poetry may admit.  There may, perhaps, be too great indulgence as well as too great a restraint of imagination; if the one produces incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless insipidity.  An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but not common sense, must at last determine its limits.  It has been thought, and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo sometimes transgressed those limits; and, I think, I have seen figures of him of which it was very difficult to determine whether they were in the highest degree sublime or extremely ridiculous.  Such faults may be said to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit, that he never was insipid; and whatever passion his works may excite, they will always escape contempt.