The Pleasures Of Imagination - The General Argument Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B C| THE GENERAL ARGUMENT | A |
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| The pleasures of the imagination proceed either from natural objects as from a flourishing grove a clear and murmuring fountain a calm sea by moon light or from works of art such as a noble edifice a musical tune a statue a picture a poem In treating of these pleasures we must begin with the former class they being original to the other and nothing more being necessary in order to explain them than a view of our natural inclination toward greatness and beauty and of those appearances in the world around us to which that inclination is adapted This is the subject of the first book of the following poem But the pleasures which we receive from the elegant arts from music sculpture painting and poetry are much more various and complicated In them besides greatness and beauty or forms proper to the imagination we find interwoven frequent representations of truth of virtue and vice of circumstances proper to move us with laughter or to excite in us pity fear and the other passions These moral and intellectual objects are described in the second book to which the third properly belongs as an episode though too large to have been included in it | B |
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| With the above mentioned causes of pleasure which are universal in the course of human life and appertain to our higher faculties many others do generally concur more limited in their operation or of an inferior origin such are the novelty of objects the association of ideas affections of the bodily senses influences of education national habits and the like To illustrate these and from the whole to determine the character of a perfect taste is the argument of the fourth book Hitherto the pleasures of the imagination belong to the human species in general But there are certain particular men whose imagination is endowed with powers and susceptible of pleasures which the generality of mankind never participate these are the men of genius destined by nature to excel in one or other of the arts already mentioned It is proposed therefore in the last place to delineate that genius which in some degree appears common to them all yet with a more peculiar consideration of poetry inasmuch as poetry is the most extensive of those arts the most philosophical and the most useful | C |
Mark Akenside
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