There is, however, something of reality in this state of the ideal presence; for the most familiar instances will show how the nerves of each external sense are put in motion by the idea of the object, as if the real object had been presented to it.  The difference is only in the degree.  The senses are more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears.  The idea of a thing will make us shudder; and the bare imagination of it will often produce a real pain.  A curious consequence may be deduced from this principle; MILTON, lingering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt all the delights of those elements which he was creating; his nerves moved with the images which excited them.  The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the abysses of his “Inferno,” must often have been startled by its horrors, and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on the great criminal.  The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius are a reality, he sees, he hears, he feels, by each.  How mysterious to us is the operation of this faculty!

A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life itself—­embracing a circuit of human existence!  This state of the mind has even a reality in it for the generality of persons.  In a romance or a drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator, who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and existing scene.

[Footnote A:  Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often and as long as he wills—­with such a personal unity, that an ingenious lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.]

Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence?  When FIELDING said, “I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears,” he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling to his own.  Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the observation by facts which never reached him.  Metastasio, in writing the ninth scene of the second act of his Olympiad, found himself suddenly moved—­shedding tears.  The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and they afterwards proved contagious.  Had our poet not perpetuated his surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had passed away with the emotion, as many such have.  Pope could never read Priam’s speech for the loss of his son without tears, and frequently has been observed to weep over tender and melancholy passages.  ALFIERI, the most energetic poet of modern times, having composed, without a pause, the whole of an act, noted in the margin—­“Written under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while shedding