The Fall of Man, that is to
say, offers opportunities of poetic effects wider in range and more
penetrating in appeal. And the fact is that such a subject, as it exists
in the general imagination, has some aesthetic value before the poet
touches it. It is, as you may choose to call it, an inchoate poem or the
debris of a poem. It is not an abstract idea or a bare isolated fact,
but an assemblage of figures, scenes, actions, and events, which already
appeal to emotional imagination; and it is already in some degree
organized and formed. In spite of this a bad poet would make a bad poem
on it; but then we should say he was unworthy of the subject. And we
should not say this if he wrote a bad poem on a pin's head. Conversely,
a good poem on a pin's head would almost certainly transform its subject
far more than a good poem on the Fall of Man. It might revolutionize its
subject so completely that we should say, "The subject may be a pin's
head, but the substance of the poem has very little to do with it."
This brings us to another and a different antithesis.
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