Part I
According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered as mind contemplating1 the relations borne by one thought to another, however produced; and the latter, as mind acting2 upon those thoughts so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity. The one is the [word in Greek], or the principle of synthesis, and has for its objects those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself; the other is the [word in Greek], or principle of analysis, and its action regards the relations of things, simply as relations; considering thoughts, not in their integral unity3, but as the algebraical representations which conduct to certain general results. Reason is the enumeration4 of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to the imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be ‘the expression of the imagination’: and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient5 beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, in a determined6 proportion of sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakened7 it; it will be the reflected image of that impression; and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the objects which delight a child, these expressions are, what poetry is to higher objects. The savage8 (for the savage is to ages what the child is to years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surrounding objects in a similar manner; and language and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial9 imitation, become the image of the combined effect of those objects, and of his apprehension10 of them. Man in society, with all his passions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and pleasures of man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented11 treasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the imitative arts, become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel13 and the statue, the chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present, as the plant within the seed; and equality, diversity, unity, contrast, mutual14 dependence15, become the principles alone capable of affording the motives16 according to which the will of a social being is determined to action, inasmuch as he is social; and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue17 in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the intercourse18 of kind. Hence men, even in the infancy19 of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. But let us dismiss those more general considerations which might involve an inquiry20 into the principles of society itself, and restrict our view to the manner in which the imagination is expressed upon its forms.
In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results: but the diversity is not sufficiently21 marked, as that its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances where the predominance of this faculty22 of approximation to the beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relation between this highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it exists in excess are poets, in the most universal sense of the word; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in which they express the influence of society or nature upon their own minds, communicates itself to others, and gathers a sort or reduplication from that community. Their language is vitally metaphorical23; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates25 their apprehension, until the words which represent them become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts; and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have been thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse. These similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be ‘the same footsteps of nature impressed upon the various subjects of the world’; [Footnote: De Augment12. Scient., cap. i, lib. iii.] and he considers the faculty which perceives them as the storehouse of axioms common to all knowledge. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend24 the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, subsisting26, first between existence and perception, and secondly27 between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos28 of a cyclic poem: the copiousness30 of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.
But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders32 of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible33 of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially35 comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds36 intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell37 the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence38 of superstition39, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, and the distinction of place, are convertible40 with respect to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry; and the choruses of Aeschylus, and the book of Job, and Dante’s Paradise, would afford, more than any other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did not forbid citation41. The creations of sculpture, painting, and music, are illustrations still more decisive.
Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym43 of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty; whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination and has relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments and conditions of art, have relations among each other, which limit and interpose between conception and expression The former is as a mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors44, painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic45 of their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term, as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp46. The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question, whether, if we deduct47 the celebrity48 which their flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them in their higher character of poets, any excess will remain.
We have thus circumscribed49 the word poetry within the limits of that art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of the faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle still narrower, and to determine the distinction between measured and unmeasured language; for the popular division into prose and verse is inadmissible in accurate philosophy.
Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets has ever affected51 a certain uniform and harmonious52 recurrence53 of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar55 order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible56 that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse57 from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower — and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.
An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony in the language of poetical58 minds, together with its relation to music, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed convenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such composition as includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably59 innovate60 upon the example of his predecessors61 in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet — the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic62, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle63 a harmony in thoughts divested64 of shape and action, and he forbore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the varied65 pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence66 of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet. [Footnote: See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death particularly]. His language has a sweet and majestic67 rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which distends68, and then bursts the circumference70 of the reader’s mind, and pours itself forth71 together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical72, and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being the echo of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme73 poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth of things, than those who have omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very loftiest power.
A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite period of time, and a certain combination of events which can never again recur54; the other is universal, and contains within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest them, augments74 that of poetry, and for ever develops new and wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes75 have been called the moths76 of just history; they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition as a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be a considered as a whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated portions: a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought. And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were poets; and although, the plan of these writers, especially that of Livy, restrained them; from developing this faculty in its highest degree, they made copious29 and ample amends77 for their subjection, by filling all the interstices of their subjects with living images.
Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed to estimate its effects upon society.
Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled78 with its delight. In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves nor their auditors79 are fully80 aware of the excellence81 of poetry: for it acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness; and it is reserved for future generations to contemplate82 and measure the mighty83 cause and effect in all the strength and splendour of their union. Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fullness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgement upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude84 with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened85, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed86. Homer embodied87 the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism88, and persevering89 devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal90 creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration91. Nor let it be objected, that these characters are remote from moral perfection, and that they can by no means be considered as edifying92 patterns for general imitation. Every epoch34, under names more or less specious93, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the naked idol94 of the worship of a semi-barbarous age; and Self-deceit is the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety95 lie prostrate96. But a poet considers the vices97 of his contemporaries as a temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and which cover without concealing100 the eternal proportions of their beauty. An epic or dramatic personage is understood to wear them around his soul, as he may the ancient armour101 or the modern uniform around his body; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress more graceful102 than either. The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed103 by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its naked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful whether the alloy104 of costume, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this planetary music for mortal ears.
The whole objection, however, of the immorality105 of poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man. Ethical106 science arranges the elements which poetry has created, and propounds107 schemes and proposes examples of civil and domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable doctrines108 that men hate, and despise, and censure110, and deceive, and subjugate111 one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens112 and enlarges the mind itself by rendering113 it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated114 them as memorials of that gentle and exalted116 content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thought of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals118 and interstices whose void for ever craves119 fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to embody120 his own conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical creations, which participate in neither By this assumption of the inferior office of interpreting the effect in which perhaps after all he might acquit121 himself but imperfectly, he would resign a glory in a participation123 in the cause. There was little danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets should have so far misunderstood themselves as to have abdicated124 this throne of their widest dominion125. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert126 to this purpose.
Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval117 by the dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished contemporaneously with all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions of the poetical faculty; architecture, painting, music the dance, sculpture, philosophy, and, we may add, the forms of civil life. For although the scheme of Athenian society was deformed127 by many imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry128 and Christianity has erased130 from the habits and institutions of modern Europe; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty, and virtue, been developed; never was blind strength and stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or that will less repugnant to the dictates131 of the beautiful and the true, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language, which has rendered this epoch memorable132 above all others, and the storehouse of examples to everlasting133 time. For written poetry existed at that epoch simultaneously134 with the other arts, and it is an idle inquiry to demand which gave and which received the light, which all, as from a common focus, have scattered135 over the darkest periods of succeeding time. We know no more of cause and effect than a constant conjunction of events: poetry is ever found to coexist with whatever other arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of man. I appeal to what has already been established to distinguish between the cause and the effect.
It was at the period here adverted136 to, that the drama had its birth; and however a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed those few great specimens137 of the Athenian drama which have been preserved to us, it is indisputable that the art itself never was understood or practised according to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For the Athenians employed language, action, music, painting, the dance, and religious institutions, to produce a common effect in the representation of the highest idealisms of passion and of power; each division in the art was made perfect in its kind by artists of the most consummate139 skill, and was disciplined into a beautiful proportion and unity one towards the other. On the modern stage a few only of the elements capable of expressing the image of the poet’s conception are employed at once. We have tragedy without music and dancing; and music and dancing without the highest impersonations of which they are the fit accompaniment, and both without religion and solemnity. Religious institution has indeed been usually banished140 from the stage. Our system of divesting141 the actor’s face of a mask, on which the many expressions appropriated to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable142 only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue143, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry144. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly145 an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in KING LEAR, universal, ideal, and sublime146. It is perhaps the intervention147 of this principle which determines the balance in favour of KING LEAR against the OEDIPUS TYRANNUS or the AGAMEMNON, or, if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected; unless the intense power of the choral poetry, especially that of the latter, should be considered as restoring the equilibrium148. KING LEAR, if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most perfect specimen138 of the dramatic art existing in the world; in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed in modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious AUTOS, has attempted to fulfil some of the high conditions of dramatic representation neglected by Shakespeare; such as the establishing a relation between the drama and religion and the accommodating them to music and dancing; but he omits the observation of conditions still more important, and more is lost than gained by the substitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted superstition for the living impersonations of the truth of human passion.
But I digress. — The connexion of scenic149 exhibitions with the improvement or corruption150 of the manners of men, has been universally recognized: in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form, has been found to be connected with good and evil in conduct or habit. The corruption which has been imputed151 to the drama as an effect, begins when the poetry employed in its constitution ends: I appeal to the history of manners whether the periods of the growth of the one and the decline of the other have not corresponded with an exactness equal to any example of moral cause and effect.
The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to its perfection, ever co-existed with the moral and intellectual greatness of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stript of all but that ideal perfection and energy which every one feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and would become. The imagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty, that they distend69 in their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived; the good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror, and sorrow; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the tumult153 of familiar life: even crime is disarmed154 of half its horror and all its contagion155 by being represented as the fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its wilfulness156; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred157; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity158 of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty159 and beauty, and multiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the power of propagating its like wherever it may fall.
But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes with that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great masterpieces of antiquity160, divested of all harmonious accompaniment of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice98 or weakness, with which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addison’s CATO is a specimen of the one; and would it were not superfluous161 to cite examples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient162. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and appetite. The period in our own history of the grossest degradation163 of the drama is the reign164 of Charles II, when all forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be expressed became hymns165 to the triumph of kingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating167 an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades169 all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of pleasure; malignity170, sarcasm171, and contempt, succeed to sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy172 against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster for which the corruption of society for ever brings forth new food, which it devours173 in secret.
The drama being that form under which a greater number of modes of expression of poetry are susceptible of being combined than any other, the connexion of poetry and social good is more observable in the drama than in whatever other form. And it is indisputable that the highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence; and that the corruption or the extinction174 of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished, is a mark of a corruption of manners and an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli says of political institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles. And this is true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense: all language, institution and form, require not only to be produced but to be sustained: the office and character of a poet participates in the divine nature as regards providence175, no less than as regards creation.
Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance first of the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols of the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece. The bucolic176 writers, who found patronage177 under the lettered tyrants178 of Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representatives of its most glorious reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious180, like the odour of the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness; whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale of June, which mingles181 the fragrance182 all the flowers of the field, and adds a quickening and harmonizing spirit of its own, which endows the sense with a power of sustaining its extreme delight. The bucolic and erotic delicacy183 in written poetry is correlative with that softness in statuary, music and the kindred arts, and even in manners and institutions, which distinguished184 the epoch to which I now refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty itself, or any misapplication of it, to which this want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal sensibility to the influence of the senses and the affections is to be found in the writings of Homer and Sophocles: the former, especially, has clothed sensual and pathetic images with irresistible185 attractions. Their superiority over these succeeding writers consists in the presence of those thoughts which belong to the inner faculties186 of our nature, not in the absence of those which are connected with the external: their incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the union of all. It is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their imperfection consists. It is not inasmuch as they were poets, but inasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be considered with any plausibility187 as connected with the corruption of their age. Had that corruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility to pleasure, passion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would have been achieved. For the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure; and, therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the imagination and the intellect as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a paralysing venom188, through the affections into the very appetites, until all become a torpid189 mass in which hardly sense survives. At the approach of such a period, poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps of Astraea, departing from the world. Poetry ever communicates all the pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever still the light of life; the source of whatever of beautiful or generous or true can have place in an evil time. It will readily be confessed that those among the luxurious190 citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly191 have destroyed the fabric192 of human society before poetry can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely193 disjoined, which descending194 through the minds of many men is attached to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once connects, animates195, and sustains the life of all. It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at once of its own and of social renovation196. And let us not circumscribe50 the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the sensibility of those to whom it was addressed. They may have perceived the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments and isolated197 portions: those who are more finely organized, or born in a happier age, may recognize them as episodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the cooperating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world.
The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient Rome; but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to have been perfectly122 saturated198 with the poetical element. The Romans appear to have considered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries199 of the selectest forms of manners and of nature, and to have abstained200 from creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or architecture, anything which might bear a particular relation to their own condition, whilst it should bear a general one to the universal constitution of the world. But we judge from partial evidence, and we judge perhaps partially201 Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgil in a very high sense, a creator. The chosen delicacy of expressions of the latter, are as a mist of light which conceal99 from us the intense and exceeding truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of the Virgilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The institutions also, and the religion of Rome were less poetical than those of Greece, as the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence poetry in Rome, seemed to follow, rather than accompany, the perfection of political and domestic society. The true poetry of Rome lived in its institutions; for whatever of beautiful, true, and majestic, they contained, could have sprung only from the faculty which creates the order in which they consist. The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious202 Gauls: the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding203 the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward everliving fame. These things are not the less poetry quid carent vate sacro. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men. The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their harmony.
At length the ancient system of religion and manners had fulfilled the circle of its revolutions. And the world would have fallen into utter anarchy204 and darkness, but that there were found poets among the authors of the Christian129 and chivalric205 systems of manners and religion, who created forms of opinion and action never before conceived; which, copied into the imaginations of men, become as generals to the bewildered armies of their thoughts. It is foreign to the present purpose to touch upon the evil produced by these systems: except that we protest, on the ground of the principles already established, that no portion of it can be attributed to the poetry they contain.
It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon, and Isaiah, had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus and his disciples206. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers of this extraordinary person, are all instinct with the most vivid poetry. But his doctrines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a certain period after the prevalence of a system of opinions founded upon those promulgated207 by him, the three forms into which Plato had distributed the faculties of mind underwent a sort of apotheosis208, and became the object of the worship of the civilized209 world. Here it is to be confessed that ‘Light seems to thicken,’ and
The crow makes wing to the rooky wood,
Good things of day begin to droop210 and drowse,
And night’s black agents to their preys211 do rouze.
But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and blood of this fierce chaos! how the world, as from a resurrection, balancing itself on the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has reassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen to the music, unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind, nourishing its everlasting course with strength and swiftness.
The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology212 and institutions of the Celtic conquerors213 of the Roman empire, outlived the darkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and victory, and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is an error to impute152 the ignorance of the dark ages to the Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies may have contained sprang from the extinction of the poetical principle, connected with the progress of despotism and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others: lust42, fear, avarice214, cruelty, and fraud, characterized a race amongst whom no one was to be found capable of CREATING in form, language, or institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected with them, and those events are most entitled to our approbation215 which could dissolve it most expeditiously216. It is unfortunate for those who cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies have been incorporated into our popular religion.
It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest themselves. The principle of equality had been discovered and applied217 by Plato in his Republic, as the theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials of pleasure and of power, produced by the common skill and labour of human beings, ought to be distributed among them. The limitations of this rule were asserted by him to be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the utility to result to all. Plato, following the doctrines of Timaeus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system of doctrine109, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged218 the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation219 of the Celtic nations with the exhausted220 population of the south, impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions. The result was a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes included in it; for it may be assumed as a maxim221 that no nation or religion can supersede222 any other without incorporating into itself a portion of that which it supersedes223. The abolition224 of personal and domestic slavery, and the emancipation225 of women from a great part of the degrading restraints of antiquity, were among the consequences of these events.
The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest political hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. The freedom of women produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became a religion, the idols226 of whose worship were ever present. It was as if the statues of Apollo and the Muses227 had been endowed with life and motion, and had walked forth among their worshippers; so that earth became peopled by the inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar appearance and proceedings229 of life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks230 of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument of their art: ‘Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse.’ The Provencal Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal the inmost enchanted231 fountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous to explain how the gentleness and the elevation232 of mind connected with these sacred emotions can render men more amiable233, more generous and wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours of the little world of self. Dante understood the secret things of love even more than Petrarch. His Vita Nuova is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sentiment and language: it is the idealized history of that period, and those intervals of his life which were dedicated234 to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns235 himself to have ascended236 to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed the judgement of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the ‘Divine Drama’, in the measure of the admiration which they accord to the Hell, Purgatory238, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn166 of everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy168 poet in Plato alone of all the ancients, has been celebrated239 by a chorus of the greatest writers of the renovated240 world; and the music has penetrated241 the caverns242 of society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own age, have celebrated the dominion of love, planting as it were trophies243 in the human mind of that sublimest244 victory over sensuality and force. The true relation borne to each other by the sexes into which human kind is distributed, has become less misunderstood; and if the error which confounded diversity with inequality of the powers of the two sexes has been partially recognized in the opinions and institutions of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship of which chivalry was the law, and poets the prophets.
The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle245 in which these great poets walk through eternity246 enveloped247 and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted248 in their minds between their own creeds250 and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by placing Riphaeus, whom Virgil calls justissimns unus, in Paradise, and observing a most heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton’s poem contains within itself a philosophical251 refutation of that system, of which by a strange and natural antithesis252, it has been a chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless253 refinement254 of device to inflict255 the extremest anguish256 on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial257 in a slave are not to be forgiven in a tyrant179; although redeemed258 by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued259, are marked by all that dishonours260 his conquest in the victor. Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres261 in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts262 the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent263 of a perseverance264 in enmity, but with the alleged266 design of exasperating267 him to deserve new torments268. Milton has so far violated the popular creed249 (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy269 of Milton’s genius. He mingled as it were the elements of human nature as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged them in the composition of his great picture according to the laws of epic truth; that is, according to the laws of that principle by which a series of actions of the external universe and of intelligent and ethical beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeeding generations of mankind. The Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost have conferred upon modern mythology a systematic270 form; and when change and time shall have added one more superstition to the mass of those which have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators271 will be learnedly employed in elucidating272 the religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly forgotten because it will have been stamped with the eternity of genius.
Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is, the second poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible273 relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it: developing itself in correspondence with their development. For Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world; and Virgil, with a modesty274 that ill became his genius, had affected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he created anew all that he copied; and none among the flock of mock-birds, though their notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a single condition of epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the Aeneid, still less can it be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen.
Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient religion of the civilized world; and its spirit exists in their poetry probably in the same proportion as its forms survived in the unreformed worship of modern Europe. The one preceded and the other followed the Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony, than in the boldness of his censures275 of papal usurpation276. Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion277, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning; the Lucifer of that starry278 flock which in the thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted279 world. His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor. All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn280, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain for ever overflowing281 with the waters of wisdom and delight; and after one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.
The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, was characterized by a revival282 of painting, sculpture, and architecture. 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 pointed283 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 civic284 crown to reasoners and mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of the imagination is most delightful285, 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 acquiesces286. There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable287, 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 banishes288 the importunity289 of the wants of our animal nature, the surrounding men with security of life, the dispersing290 the grosser delusions291 of superstition, and the conciliating such a degree of mutual forbearance among men as may consist with the motives of personal advantage.
Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, have their appointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of poets, and copy the sketches292 of their creations into the book of common life. They make space, and give time. Their exertions293 are of the highest value, so long as they confine their administration of the concerns of the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions294, let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges295, and the political economist296 combines labour, let them beware that their speculations297, for want of correspondence with those first principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate298 at once the extremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying, ‘To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away.’ The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel299 of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty.
It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes300. For, from an inexplicable301 defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic302 fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy303 which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of mirth.’ Not that this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. The delight of love and friendship, the ecstasy304 of the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception and still more of the creation of poetry, is often wholly unalloyed.
The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is true utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or poetical philosophers.
The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, [Footnote: Although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a poet. The others, even Voltaire, were mere31 reasoners.] and their disciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded305 humanity, are entitled to the gratitude306 of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women, and children, burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have been congratulating each other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain. But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton, had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with its belief. The human mind could never, except by the intervention of these excitements, have been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical307 reasoning to the aberrations308 of society, which it is now attempted to exalt115 over the direct expression of the inventive and creative faculty itself.
We have more moral, political and historical wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought, is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes. There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government, and political economy, or at least, what is wiser and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let ‘I DARE NOT wait upon I WOULD, like the poor cat in the adage309.’ We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life: our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can digest. The cultivation310 of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains311 himself a slave. To what but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a degree disproportioned to the presence of the creative faculty, which is the basis of all knowledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention for abridging312 and combining labour, to the exasperation313 of the inequality of mankind? From what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries which should have lightened, have added a weight to the curse imposed on Adam? Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible, incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world.
The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates new materials of knowledge and power and pleasure; by the other it engenders314 in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it.
Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns315 all; and that which, if blighted316, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds317 from the barren world the nourishment318 and the succession of the scions319 of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture320 of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy321 and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship — what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations322 on this side of the grave — and what were our aspirations323 beyond it, if poetry did not ascend237 to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, ‘I will compose poetry.’ The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil324 and the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions; We have his own authority also for the muse228 having ‘dictated’ to him the ‘unpremeditated song’. And let this be an answer to those who would allege265 the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic325 is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty, is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother’s womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is incapable326 of accounting327 to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression; so that even in the desire and regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases328, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues329 of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions330 which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide331 — abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divin
收听单词发音 |
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contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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enumeration
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| n.计数，列举；细目；详表；点查 | |
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sentient
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| adj.有知觉的，知悉的；adv.有感觉能力地 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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Augmented
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| adj.增音的 动词augment的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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augment
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| vt.(使)增大，增加，增长，扩张 | |
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chisel
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| n.凿子；v.用凿子刻，雕，凿 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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18
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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19
infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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20
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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21
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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22
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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23
metaphorical
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| a.隐喻的，比喻的 | |
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24
apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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25
perpetuates
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| n.使永存，使人记住不忘( perpetuate的名词复数 )；使永久化，使持久化，使持续 | |
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26
subsisting
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| v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的现在分词 ) | |
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27
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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28
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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29
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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30
copiousness
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| n.丰裕，旺盛 | |
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31
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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32
founders
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| n.创始人( founder的名词复数 ) | |
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33
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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34
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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35
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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36
beholds
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| v.看，注视( behold的第三人称单数 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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37
foretell
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| v.预言，预告，预示 | |
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38
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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39
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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40
convertible
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| adj.可改变的，可交换，同意义的；n.有活动摺篷的汽车 | |
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41
citation
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| n.引用，引证，引用文；传票 | |
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42
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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43
synonym
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| n.同义词，换喻词 | |
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44
sculptors
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| 雕刻家，雕塑家( sculptor的名词复数 )； [天]玉夫座 | |
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45
hieroglyphic
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| n.象形文字 | |
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46
harp
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| n.竖琴；天琴座 | |
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47
deduct
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| vt.扣除，减去 | |
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48
celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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49
circumscribed
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|
| adj.[医]局限的：受限制或限于有限空间的v.在…周围划线( circumscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；划定…范围；限制；限定 | |
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50
circumscribe
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| v.在...周围划线，限制，约束 | |
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51
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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52
harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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53
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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54
recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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55
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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56
crucible
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| n.坩锅，严酷的考验 | |
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57
transfuse
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| v.渗入；灌输；输血 | |
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58
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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59
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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60
innovate
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| v.革新，变革，创始 | |
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61
predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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62
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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63
kindle
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| v.点燃，着火 | |
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64
divested
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| v.剥夺( divest的过去式和过去分词 )；脱去（衣服）；2。从…取去…；1。（给某人）脱衣服 | |
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65
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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66
cadence
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| n.（说话声调的）抑扬顿挫 | |
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67
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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68
distends
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| v.（使）膨胀，肿胀( distend的第三人称单数 ) | |
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69
distend
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| vt./vi.（使）扩大，（使）扩张 | |
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70
circumference
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| n.圆周，周长，圆周线 | |
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71
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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72
rhythmical
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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73
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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74
augments
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| 增加，提高，扩大( augment的名词复数 ) | |
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75
epitomes
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| n.缩影 | |
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76
moths
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| n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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77
amends
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| n. 赔偿 | |
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78
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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79
auditors
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| n.审计员，稽核员( auditor的名词复数 )；（大学课程的）旁听生 | |
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80
fully
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|
| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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81
excellence
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|
| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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82
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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83
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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84
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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85
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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86
reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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87
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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88
patriotism
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|
| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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89
persevering
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| a.坚忍不拔的 | |
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90
immortal
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|
| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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91
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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92
edifying
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|
| adj.有教训意味的，教训性的，有益的v.开导，启发( edify的现在分词 ) | |
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93
specious
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|
| adj.似是而非的；adv.似是而非地 | |
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94
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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95
satiety
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|
| n.饱和；(市场的)充分供应 | |
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96
prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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97
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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98
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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99
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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100
concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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101
armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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102
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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103
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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104
alloy
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| n.合金，(金属的)成色 | |
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105
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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106
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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107
propounds
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| v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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108
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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109
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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110
censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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111
subjugate
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| v.征服；抑制 | |
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112
awakens
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的第三人称单数 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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113
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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114
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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115
exalt
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| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
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116
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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117
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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118
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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119
craves
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| 渴望，热望( crave的第三人称单数 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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120
embody
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| vt.具体表达，使具体化；包含，收录 | |
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121
acquit
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| vt.宣判无罪；(oneself)使(自己)表现出 | |
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122
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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123
participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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124
abdicated
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| 放弃（职责、权力等）( abdicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 退位，逊位 | |
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125
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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126
advert
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| vi.注意，留意，言及；n.广告 | |
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127
deformed
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| adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的 | |
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128
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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129
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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130
erased
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| v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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131
dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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132
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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133
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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134
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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135
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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136
adverted
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| 引起注意（advert的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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137
specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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138
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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139
consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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140
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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141
divesting
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| v.剥夺( divest的现在分词 )；脱去（衣服）；2。从…取去…；1。（给某人）脱衣服 | |
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142
favourable
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|
| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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143
monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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144
mimicry
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| n.（生物）拟态，模仿 | |
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145
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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146
sublime
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|
| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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147
intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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148
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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149
scenic
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| adj.自然景色的，景色优美的 | |
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150
corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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151
imputed
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| v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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152
impute
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| v.归咎于 | |
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153
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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154
disarmed
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| v.裁军( disarm的过去式和过去分词 )；使息怒 | |
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155
contagion
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| n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延 | |
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156
wilfulness
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| 任性；倔强 | |
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157
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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158
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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159
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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160
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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161
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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162
subservient
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| adj.卑屈的，阿谀的 | |
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163
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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164
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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165
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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166
hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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167
illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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168
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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169
pervades
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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170
malignity
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| n.极度的恶意，恶毒；（病的）恶性 | |
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171
sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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172
blasphemy
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| n.亵渎，渎神 | |
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173
devours
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| 吞没( devour的第三人称单数 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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174
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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175
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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176
bucolic
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|
| adj.乡村的；牧羊的 | |
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177
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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178
tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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179
tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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180
melodious
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|
| adj.旋律美妙的，调子优美的，音乐性的 | |
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181
mingles
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| 混合，混入( mingle的第三人称单数 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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182
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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183
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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184
distinguished
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|
| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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185
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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186
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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187
plausibility
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| n. 似有道理, 能言善辩 | |
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188
venom
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| n.毒液，恶毒，痛恨 | |
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189
torpid
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| adj.麻痹的，麻木的，迟钝的 | |
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190
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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191
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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192
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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193
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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194
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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195
animates
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| v.使有生气( animate的第三人称单数 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命 | |
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196
renovation
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| n.革新，整修 | |
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197
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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198
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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199
treasuries
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| n.（政府的）财政部( treasury的名词复数 )；国库，金库 | |
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200
abstained
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|
| v.戒（尤指酒），戒除( abstain的过去式和过去分词 )；弃权（不投票） | |
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201
partially
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|
| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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202
victorious
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|
| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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203
beholding
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|
| v.看，注视( behold的现在分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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204
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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205
chivalric
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| 有武士气概的，有武士风范的 | |
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206
disciples
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|
| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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207
promulgated
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|
| v.宣扬（某事物）( promulgate的过去式和过去分词 )；传播；公布；颁布（法令、新法律等） | |
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208
apotheosis
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|
| n.神圣之理想；美化；颂扬 | |
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209
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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210
droop
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| v.低垂，下垂；凋萎，萎靡 | |
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211
preys
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| v.掠食( prey的第三人称单数 )；掠食；折磨；（人）靠欺诈为生 | |
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212
mythology
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|
| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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213
conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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214
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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215
approbation
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|
| n.称赞；认可 | |
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216
expeditiously
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|
| adv.迅速地，敏捷地 | |
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217
applied
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|
| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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218
divulged
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|
| v.吐露，泄露( divulge的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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219
incorporation
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| n.设立，合并，法人组织 | |
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220
exhausted
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|
| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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221
maxim
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|
| n.格言，箴言 | |
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222
supersede
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| v.替代；充任 | |
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223
supersedes
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| 取代，接替( supersede的第三人称单数 ) | |
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224
abolition
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|
| n.废除，取消 | |
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225
emancipation
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|
| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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226
idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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227
muses
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的第三人称单数 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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228
muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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229
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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230
wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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231
enchanted
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|
| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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232
elevation
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|
| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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233
amiable
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|
| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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234
dedicated
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|
| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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235
feigns
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| 假装，伪装( feign的第三人称单数 )； 捏造（借口、理由等） | |
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236
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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237
ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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238
purgatory
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| n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的 | |
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239
celebrated
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|
| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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240
renovated
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| 翻新，修复，整修( renovate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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241
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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242
caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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243
trophies
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|
| n.（为竞赛获胜者颁发的）奖品( trophy的名词复数 )；奖杯；（尤指狩猎或战争中获得的）纪念品；（用于比赛或赛跑名称）奖 | |
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244
sublimest
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| 伟大的( sublime的最高级 )； 令人赞叹的； 极端的； 不顾后果的 | |
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245
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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246
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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247
enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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248
subsisted
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| v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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249
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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250
creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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251
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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252
antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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253
sleepless
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|
| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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254
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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255
inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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256
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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257
venial
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| adj.可宽恕的；轻微的 | |
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258
redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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259
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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260
dishonours
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|
| 不名誉( dishonour的名词复数 )； 耻辱； 丢脸； 丢脸的人或事 | |
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261
perseveres
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| v.坚忍，坚持( persevere的第三人称单数 ) | |
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262
inflicts
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的第三人称单数 ) | |
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263
repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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264
perseverance
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| n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠 | |
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265
allege
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| vt.宣称，申述，主张，断言 | |
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266
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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267
exasperating
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|
| adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
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268
torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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269
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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270
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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271
commentators
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| n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员 | |
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272
elucidating
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| v.阐明，解释( elucidate的现在分词 ) | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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censures
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| v.指责，非难，谴责( censure的第三人称单数 ) | |
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276
usurpation
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| n.篡位；霸占 | |
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277
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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278
starry
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| adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的 | |
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279
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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280
acorn
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| n.橡实，橡子 | |
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281
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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282
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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283
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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284
civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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285
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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286
acquiesces
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的第三人称单数 ) | |
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287
durable
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| adj.持久的，耐久的 | |
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288
banishes
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的第三人称单数 ) | |
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289
importunity
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| n.硬要，强求 | |
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290
dispersing
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| adj. 分散的 动词disperse的现在分词形式 | |
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291
delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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292
sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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293
exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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294
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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295
abridges
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| 节略( abridge的第三人称单数 )； 减少； 缩短； 剥夺（某人的）权利（或特权等） | |
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296
economist
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| n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人 | |
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297
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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298
exasperate
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| v.激怒，使（疾病）加剧，使恶化 | |
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299
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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300
paradoxes
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| n.似非而是的隽语，看似矛盾而实际却可能正确的说法( paradox的名词复数 )；用于语言文学中的上述隽语；有矛盾特点的人[事物，情况] | |
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301
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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302
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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303
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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304
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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305
deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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306
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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307
analytical
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| adj.分析的；用分析法的 | |
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308
aberrations
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| n.偏差( aberration的名词复数 )；差错；脱离常规；心理失常 | |
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309
adage
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| n.格言，古训 | |
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cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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311
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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312
abridging
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| 节略( abridge的现在分词 )； 减少； 缩短； 剥夺（某人的）权利（或特权等） | |
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313
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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314
engenders
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的第三人称单数 ) | |
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315
adorns
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| 装饰，佩带( adorn的第三人称单数 ) | |
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316
blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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317
withholds
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| v.扣留( withhold的第三人称单数 )；拒绝给予；抑制（某事物）；制止 | |
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318
nourishment
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| n.食物，营养品；营养情况 | |
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319
scions
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| n.接穗，幼枝( scion的名词复数 )；（尤指富家）子孙 | |
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320
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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321
anatomy
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| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
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322
consolations
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| n.安慰，慰问( consolation的名词复数 )；起安慰作用的人（或事物） | |
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323
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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324
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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325
mosaic
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| n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的 | |
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326
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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327
accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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328
erases
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| v.擦掉( erase的第三人称单数 )；抹去；清除 | |
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329
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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330
apparitions
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| n.特异景象( apparition的名词复数 )；幽灵；鬼；（特异景象等的）出现 | |
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331
abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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