Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the
superstructure of English literature is based upon the materials
of Italian invention.
But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history
of poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed
out the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word,
upon their own and all succeeding times.
But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners
and mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise
of the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that
of reason is more useful. Let us examine as the grounds of this
distinction, what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a
general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and
intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces.
There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal and
permanent; the other transitory and particular. Utility may either
express the means of producing the former or the latter. In the
former sense, whatever strengthens and purifies the affections,
enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. But
a narrower meaning may be assigned to the word utility, confining
it to express that which banishes the importunity of the wants of
our animal nature, the surrounding men with security of life, the
dispersing the grosser delusions of superstition, and the conciliating
such a degree of mutual forbearance among men as may consist with
the motives of personal advantage.
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