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with soldiers from Echalia, Ithome, and Trica. At his return Podalirius was shipwrecked on the coast of Caria, where he cured of the epilepsy a daughter of the king. He fixed his habitation there; and built two towns, one of which he called Syrna, after his wife. The Carians, on his death, built him a temple, and paid him divine

honors.

PODGORZA, a manufacturing town in Austrian Galicia, on the Vistula, opposite to Cracow. Its trade was formerly considerable; but, after this part of Poland became subject to Austria, it declined, though the government made it one of the principal depots of the salt from the mines of Wieliczka. Population 4000.

PODLACHIA, one of the eight palatinates of the present kingdom of Poland, bounded on the north and east by the Bug, on the south by Lublin, and on the west by the Vistula. Its area is 5520 square miles; entirely level, and with a number of marshy tracts and small streams; the only large rivers are those which are on its boundaries. Population 438,000. The chief town is Siedlce. Podlachia was also the name of a palatinate in ancient Poland, the chief town Bielsk. It was of greater extent than the present province, and is now incorporated with Russia.

PODLUZACS, a tribe of Croats, settled in a district in the southern extremity of Moravia. Their numbers have considerably increased of late, and, though surrounded with a German population, they preserve their ancient dress, language, and manners.

PODOLIA, an extensive government of European Russia, lying adjacent to the province of Buckowine in Austria. Its area is 20,100 square miles; adjoining the Carpathians, and having a considerably elevated surface; so that vines do not thrive here, but corn, pasturage, and cattle abound. The inhabitants are not industrious; the surface of the soil being barely scratched by the plough, and every process connected with the arts conducted in the most rude manner. The forests afford for export, timber, pitch, tar, rosin, potash, and Polish cochineal. The other products are flax, hemp, salt-petre, tobacco, and bees-wax. The chief rivers, the Dniester and the Bog, facilitate the communication with the Black Sea; but the commerce is very limited. Population 1,330,000.

Podolia, an independent duchy in the middle ages, was conquered by the Poles, and long incorporated with the Ukraine. The capital is Kaminiec, or, as it is called by the Russians, Kaminetz-Podolsk, a place well known in the seventeenth century, for the noble opposition which it make to the Turks.

PODOPHYLLUM, duck's foot, or May apple, in botany, a genus of the monogynia order, and polyandria class of plants; natural order twenty-seventh, rhæadeæ: COR. nine petals CAL. triphyllous: BERRY unilocular, crowned with the stigma.

PODURA, or spring tail, in entomology, a genus of insects of the order of aptera. They have six feet formed for running; two eyes composed of eight facets; a tail forked, bent under the body, elastic, and acting like a spring; the

This genus

antenna are long and setaceous. is distinguished,' says Barbut, into several species. Some inhabit still waters, leaping and walking with ease on the surface of that element. They assemble in troops in the morning, on the banks of pools, fish-ponds, and reservoirs; others are found in damp places, under leaves, bark, and stones; others among heaps of rotten wood, mushrooms, and in melon beds. In Lapland they are seen running upon the snow, but when it begins to melt they perish. The podura, by its elasticity, eludes the eager grasp of the naturaiist. Its hard forky tail is a kind of spring, by means of which the body of the animal is thrown up into the air.' P. villosa is one of the largest species found in Britain, and appears to be of a brown sooty color, though it is really of a yellow brown, interspersed throughout with black-colored spots and streaks. The head and thorax are hairy, and stick to the fingers when touched: the abdomen is smooth: the antennæ, consisting of four articulations, are as long as two thirds of the body. It is commonly found under stones.

POE-BIRD, in ornithology, is an inhabitant of some of the South Sea Islands, where it is held in great esteem and veneration by the natives. It goes by the name of kogo in New Zealand; but it is better known by that of poë-bird. It is somewhat less than our blackbird. The feathers are of a fine mazarine blue, except those of its neck, which are of a most beautiful silver gray, and two or three short white ones which are on the pinion joint of the wing. Under its throat hang two little tufts of curled snow-white feathers, called its poies (the Otaheitean word for ear-rings); which occasioned the name of poëbird. It is remarkable for the sweetness of its note, as well as the beauty of its plumage. Its flesh is also delicate food.

POECILE, a famous portico at Athens, which received its name from the variety (oog), of paintings which it contained. Zeno kept his school there; and there also the stoics received their lessons, whence their name, from soa, a porch. It was adorned with historical pictures of the siege and destruction of Troy, battle of Marathon, &c. POEM, n. s.

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PO'ESY, PC'ET, PO'ETASTER, POETESS, POETIC, adj. POETICAL, POET'ICALLY, adv. PO'ETIZE, v. n. Po'ETRESS, n. s. POETRY.

Fr.poesie, poete, poetiser:

Lat. poema, poesis, poeta; Gr. ποιημα, ἃ ποιεω (facio) શે See below. A metrical composition: poesy and >poetry mean the art of making or producing such a composition: Shakspeare uses poesy for a short conceit, or legend, on a ring: a poet is, a aker or author of poetry; one who writes with measure: poetaster, a low dabbler in poetry: poetess and poetress, a female poet: poetic and poetical, expressed in, or partaking the nature of, poetry: poetically following this sense: to poetize is, to compose poetry; write as, or like, a poet.

Most peerless poetress, The true Pandora of all heavenly graces. Spenser. Musick and poesy used to quicken you. Shakspeare.

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The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,

Upon a knife: Love me, and leave me not.

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Neither is it enough to give his author's sense in numbers.

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical

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The many rocks, in the passage between Greece and the bottom of Pontus, are poetically converted into those fiery bulls. Raleigh.

There is an hymn, for they have excellent poesy; the subject is always the praises of Adam, Noah, and Abraham, concluding ever with a thanksgiving for the nativity of our Saviour. Bacon. Donne.

I versify the truth, not poetize. A poem is the work of the poet; poesy is his skill or craft of making; the very fiction itself, the reason or form of the work. Ben Jonson.

Id.

Let no poetaster command or intreat Another, extempore verses to make. The lady Anne of Bretaigne, passing through the presence in the court of France, and espying Chartier, a famous poet, fast asleep, kissing him, said, We must honour the mouth whence so many golden poems have proceeded. Peacham on Poetry.

Virgil, speaking of Turnus and his great strength, thus poetizes. Hakewill.

Strike the best invention dead, Till baffled poetry hangs down the head. Cleaveland. Ah! wretched we, poets of earth, but thou Wert living the same poet that thou'rt now, While angels sing to thee their aires divine, And join in an applause so great as thine.

Cowley. 'Tis not vain or fabulous, What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly muse, Story'd of old in high immortal verse, Of dire chimeras and enchanted isles.

Milton.

The moral of that poetical fiction, that the uppermost link of all the series of subordinate causes is fastened to Jupiter's chair, signifies that almighty God governs and directs subordinate causes and

effects.

Hale.

They apprehend a veritable history in an emblem or piece of christian poesy.

Browne's Vulgar Errours.

Begin not as the old poetaster did, Troy's famous war, and Priam's fate I sing.

Roscommon.

With courage guard, and beauty warm our age, And lovers fill with like poetick rage. Waller. The utmost that can be achieved, or I think pretended, by any rules in the art of poetry, is but to hinder some men from being very ill poets, but not to make any man a very good one. Sir W. Temple.

To you the promised poem I will pay. Dryden.
How far have we

Prophaned thy heavenly gift of poesy?
Made prostitute and profligate the muse,
Whose harmony was first ordained above
For tongues of angels?

Id.

Id. The criticks have concluded that the manners of the heroes are poetically good, if of a piece. Id. Although in poetry it be necessary that the unities of time, place, and action should be explained, there is still something that gives a greatness of mind to the reader, which few of the criticks have considered. Addison's Spectator.

Horace hath exposed those trifling poetasters that spend themselves in glaring descriptions, and sewing here and there some cloth of gold on their sackcloth. Felton. The muse saw it upward rise, Though marked by none but quick poetick eyes. Pope.

I alone can inspire the poetical crowd. Swift. These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed imagination, the melancholy madness of poetry withJunius. out the inspiration.

The gentleman deals in fiction, and naturally appeals to the evidence of the poets.

Id.

There was a predominant fancy and spirit of his the ancients, or from poesies, here and there culled own infused, superior to what some draw off from out of the moderns, by a painful industry and servile imitation. Johnson.

The death of the king furnished a general subject for a poetical contest, in which Mr. Savage engaged, and is allowed to have carried the prize of honour from his competitors.

They best can judge a poet's worth,
Who oft themselves have known
of a poetic birth,

The

pangs

By labours of their own.

Id.

Cowper.

POENI, a name given by the Romans to the Carthaginians; a corruption of the word Phoni,

POERSON (Charles Francis), an eminent French painter, born at Paris in 1653. He excelled in portraits and history, and became director of the French academy at Rome. He died in 1725.

cient city of Græcia Magna, now part of Naples. PŒSTUM, PÆSTUM, or POSIDONIA, an anSee PESTUM. It was founded by one of those colonies from Greece who early established themselves in Italy; and it flourished before the foundation of Rome itself. It was destroyed by the Goths on the decline of the Roman empire. Since that time it has lain in ruins, which in 1755 were accidentally discovered, and ordered by the king of Naples to be cleared out; upon which Postum arose from the obscurity in which it had continued for seven centuries, covered with rubbish, and little noticed either by neighbours or travellers. It appears, at present, to have been of an oblong figure, two miles and a half in circumference, and having four gates opposite to each other. The chief antiquities are a theatre, ainphitheatre, and three temples, with relics of aqueducts, &c.

POETRY.

POETRY, Gr. ποιητρια, οι ποιεω (Ι make), is a term of art, more correctly expressive than most others which have been handed down to us from the ancients. It is, indeed, the art, the power to make or create more than any other human pursuit, and while it may, perhaps, be generally defined as the language of passion and imagination, this clearly rather describes it in its effect than in its origin or essential nature; as the dews rising from a collection of herbage in spring seem to have originated in the vegetable mass which they have only visited and fertilised. The poetic forms of language, we mean, are obviously distinguishable from the poetry of thought. For while both may combine, and in their union afford the only perfect exhibition of the power of each, as in our unequalled Milton, the latter is not to be denied to some of our distinguished prose writers, as, for instance, Milton's great contemporary Jeremy Taylor.

We must therefore reject, as wholly heretical, the doctrine of Aristotle that poetry is but rexvn μntin, an imitative art. It has in charge a much higher task. The utterance of some of the deepest feelings and most original thoughts of the human mind belongs to poetry. Lord Bacon has happily described its chief office when he says, Poetry doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the theory of things to the desires of the mind. It submits the whole outward world to the plastic hand of the true poet; to this he adds the thousand forms of an imaginary world, and concentrates, combines, and models, the whole by a power assuredly not of any imitative kind; as certainly not to be learnt or derived from his fellow man; and as clearly not transferrable by him to another. The father of the modern philosophy has exactly indicated the true tendency of real poetry, when he speaks of it as elevating the mind by the submission of its materials to the desires. Its whole business is to enrich and magnify and dignify the literal facts and images with which it works: a Miltonic Satan is almost dangerously grand and awe-inspiring; the mad Lear of a Shakspeare has nothing mean nor disgusting in his madness. And poetry, we are persuaded, can only captivate when it addresses our hopes rather than our fears; when it stirs up and administers to our desires' as opposed to our aversions. It was the child, perhaps, of the praise of God-(It is well established that the dramatic poetry of all the western civilised nations, see our article DRAMA, had its origin in hymns sung to the honor of Bacchus)—it expressed gratitude and burst into strains of extatic joy before an infinitely great and good Being, the very thought of whom would be accompanied with the desire and the hope of propitiating him. Under every form of religion this desire has obtained and been loudly expressed; the early poetry of all nations abounds with the strongest manifestations of it. Such poetry would naturally appropriate all that is splendid and glowing, serene and beautiful in the external creation.

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If, as it has been well said upon this point, 'there is great beauty in the use of familiar words, skilfully applied and combined, and that some of the most affecting and sublime passages in our great poets are constituted of materials of the cheapest quality: they are no longer cheap or ordinary in the place into which we find them transplanted; and in giving to them this new value lies the profound secret of the poetical artist. It is by arrangement, and disposition, and combination, that he draws out the latent powers of language, and, by the contact of new affinities, mysteriously varies its nature, and endows it with new properties. But, if words or phrases of vulgar origin still retain in their new situation the savour of their plebeian stock, they retain also their full disqualification for the post and preferment to which they are advanced. Poets, such as Shakspeare and Milton, have each been the fountain of honor, from which sometimes a language of the lowest birth has derived a nobility of rank. Something doubtless is to be ascribed to the prerogative of transcendant excellence, and something to prescription, and the reconciling effect of time and usage; but the magic really resides in that fine and discriminative tact, which at once detects the capabilities of homely expressions, and snatches them warm and breathing from the intercourse of common life, to impart their freshness and stamina, and to take on themselves another nature.'

Another natural source of poetry was love; or the mutual desire of the sexes, connected with this passion, to please and to be pleased; or to find and to exhibit personal attractions. Hence the impassioned but still tender, and touching, and simple power of the ancient lyric poetry,

Warm from the heart and faithful to its fires. The thousand causes of separation between lovers are often commemorated in its odes; while the final and desolating separation of death gave rise to the shorter dirge; then to the elegy. Epic and moral poetry would first express the detestation of the wise and good against the corruptions and corrupters of mankind: it was at first vehement and severe; then more coolly preceptive. Afterwards followed the adaptation of poetry to war, and, as the stimulant of patriotism; its association with music; its application to the purposes of personal satire.

We believe the actual history of this almost divine art will be found to correspond with these general views. Whether we look, however, at sacred or profane poetry, what shall we find like a mere imitative art in the first masters? What did David or Solomon imitate in their divine poems? A man, who is really joyful or afflicted, cannot be said to imitate joy or afflic tion. The lyric verses of Alcæus, Alcman, and Ibycus, the hymns of Callimachus, the elegy of Moschus on the death of Bion, are all strongly depicted poetry, at once from the earliest and purest sources: but Alcæus was no imitator of

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love, Callimachus no hypocrite in his religious awe and adiniration, Moschus no imitator of grief at the loss of an amiable friend. Aristotle himself wrote a poetical elegy on the death of a man whom he had loved; but it would be difficult to say what he imitated in it. O beautiful Virtue,' he exclaims, it was always an envied happiness in Greece even to die, and to suffer the most painful, the most afflicting evils: such are the immortal fruits which thou raisest in our minds; fruits more precious than gold, more sweet than the love of parents and soft repose; for thee Hercules the son of Jove, and the twins of Leda, sustained many labors, and by their illustrious actions sought thy favor; for love of thee Achilles and Ajax descended to the mansion of Pluto; and, through a zeal for thy charms, the prince of Atarnea also was deprived of the sun's light: therefore shall the Muses, daughters of Memory, render him immortal for his glorious deeds, whenever they sing of hospitality, and the honors due to a constant friendship.'

It has however been asserted, in modern times, that descriptive poetry, and descriptive music, as they are called, are strict imitations; but, not to insist that mere description is the meanest part of both arts, if indeed it belongs to them at all, it is clear that words and sounds have no necessary resemblance to visible objects: and what is an imitation, but a resemblance of some other thing? Besides, no unprejudiced hearer will say that he finds the smallest traces of imitation in the numerous fugues, counterfugues, and divisions, which disgrace rather than adorn the modern music: even sounds themselves are imperfectly imitated by harmony, and, if we sometimes hear the murmuring of a brook, or the chirping of birds in a concert, we are generally apprised beforehand of the passages where we may expect them. Some eminent musicians, indeed, have been absurd enough to think of imitating laughter and other noises; but, if they had succeeded, they could not have made amends for their want of taste in attempting it; for such ridiculous imitations must necessarily destroy the spirit and dignity of the finest poems, which they ought to illustrate by a graceful and natural melody. It seems to us that as those parts of poetry, music, and painting, which relate to the passions, affect by sympathy; so those, which are merely descriptive, act by a kind of substitution; that is, by raising in our minds affections, or sentiments, analogous to those which arise in us when the respective objects in nature are presented to our senses.

A late able writer thus compares the history and claims of the different fine arts:-'Poetry is the oldest, the rarest, and the most excellent of the fine arts. It was the first fixed form of language; the earliest perpetuation of thought; it existed before prose in history, before music in melody, and before painting in description. Anterior to the discovery of letters, it was employed to communicate the lessons of wisdom, and to celebrate the achievements of valor; music was invented to accompany, and painting to illustrate it. We have said that poetry is the rarest of the fine arts, and we may appeal to almost any collection

of specimens of poetry in proof of our assertion. Thus Southey's specimens exhibit pieces of more than 200 writers, among whom there are not twenty whose compositions rise to the dignity of poetry; and of these, perhaps, not more than seven will be known to posterity by their works. The art of constructing easy, elegant, and even spirited verse, may be acquired by any mind of moderate capacity and liberal knowledge; but to frame the lay that quickens the pulse, flushes the cheek, warms the heart, and expands the soul of the reader, playing upon his passions as upon a lyre, and making him feel as if he were conversing with a spiritthis is the art of nature herself, invariably and perpetually pleasing, by a secret undefinable charm, that lives through all her works.

'The power of being a poet is a power from heaven: wherein it consists we know not; but this we do know, that there never existed a poet of the highest order,—and we acknowledge none other to be truly poets, who either learned his art of one, or taught it to another. It is true that the poet communicates to the bosom of his reader that flame that burns in his own, but the bosom thus enkindled cannot communicate the fire to a third; in the mind of the hard alone that energy of thought which gives birth to poetry is an active principle, in all others it is only a passive feeling. This theory is confirmed by the fact that, though poetical genius is wonderfully aided in its development and display by learning and taste, yet among the rudest people it is found, like native gold and diamonds, as pure and perfect in substance, though encrusted in baser matter, as among the most enlightened nations; but it is seldomer seen, and in smaller quantities, not being laboriously dug from the mine, purified in the furnace, and polished on the wheel, but only occasionally washed from the mountains, or accidentally discovered among the sands. It is another curious fact that, with the exception of ancient Rome, the noblest works of the muse have been produced in the middle age between gross barbarism and voluptuous refinement, when the human mind yet possessed strong traits of its characteristic grandeur and simplicity, but, divested of its native fierceness, and chastened by courtesy, felt itself rising in knowledge, worth, and intellectual superiority. The poems of Homer existed long before Greece arrived at its zenith of glory. Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, in Italy; Camoens, in Portugal; and Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton, in England, flourished in ages far inferior to the present in luxury of manners, and refinement of taste: yet their poems, in the respective countries, have not since been equalled, and will probably never be surpassed by their successors.

'Poetry is also the most excellent of the fine arts. It transcends all other literary composition in harmony, beauty, and splendor of style, imagery, and thought, as well as the permanency and vivacity of its influence on the mind; for its language and sentiments are so intimately connected that they are remembered together: they are soul and body, that cannot be separated without death,-a death, in which the dissolution of the one causes the disappearance of the

other; if the spell of the words be broken, the charm of the idea is lost. Poetry excels music in the passion and pathos of its movements; for its cadences are ever united with distinct feelings and emotions of the soul, and their association is always clear and comprehensible; whereas music, except when it is allied with poetry, or appeals to memory, is simply a sensual and vague, though innocent, delight, conveying no improvement to the heart, and leaving no abiding impression on the mind.

Once more--Poetry is superior to painting: for poetry is progressive, painting stationary, in its powers of description. Poetry elevates the soul through every rising gradation of thought and feeling, and produces its grandest effects at the last painting begins precisely where poetry ends, with the climax of the subject, and lets down the mind from the catastrophe, through the details of the story, imperceptibly soothing it from sublime astonishment into tranquil approbation. Poetry tells its own story; painting usually requires an interpreter. Painting is limited to a moment of time, and an eye-glance of space; but it must be confessed that it can make that moment last for years, and render that eye-glance as illustrious as the sun. Poetry is restricted neither to time nor place; resembling the sun itself, it may shine in every quarter of he globe, and endure to the end of ages.

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Poetry has a fourth peculiarity, to which we have not yet alluded:-though the most beneficial to the world, it is the most unprofitable to its possessors of all the fine arts. There has scarcely been a period, or a country, in which a poet could live by his skill. It is allowed that great honors and emoluments have been bestowed on some of the tribe; but munificent patronage is yet rarer than transcendant talents:-at the court of Augustus there was only one Mecanas, but there were many poets. Now, in all ages and nations, musicians and painters of every description have been able to get bread by their labors, and in general they have been dignified and remunerated to the extent of their merits. It must be enough to make a poor poet burst with spleen to read the lives of eminent musicians and painters, and contrast them with those of his more illustrious brethren: while the former have been courted, enriched, and ennobled, by pontiffs and princes, the latter have languished in poverty, and died in despair. Will any man deny that the poems of Milton, as works of genius, are equal to the pictures of Rubens? Yet the painter's pencil supported him in princely magnificence; the poet's muse could not procure, what even his enemies would have furnished to him gratuitously in a dungeon-bread and water. Poets might be permitted to say, that painting and music may be appreciated in this world, and recompensed by the kings of it; but poetry cannot its price is above rubies,' and its honors are those which kings cannot confer.'-Eclectic Review iii. 847.

Mr. Hazlitt, who yet can call poetry afterwards an imitation of nature,' has the following sprightly and correct passage on its general character Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It relates to whatever

gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of men; for nothing but what so comes home to them in the most general and intelligible shape can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for himself, or for any thing else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment (as some persons have been led to imagine), the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours-it has been the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with like endings: but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of a flower that 'spreads its sweet leaves through the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun,'-there is poetry in its birth. If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver: its materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from century to century: but there is no thought or feeling that can have entered into the mind of man, which he would be eager to communicate to others, or which they would listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch of authorship: it is the stuff of which our life is made.' The rest is 'mere oblivion,' a dead letter: for all that is worth remembering in life is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry, contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, and madness, are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole being: without it man's life is poor as beast's.' Man is a poetical animal: and those of us who do not study the principles of poetry act upon them all our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who had always spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a poet, in fact, when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a poet when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers; the countryman when he stops to look at the rainbow; the city apprentice when he gazes after the lord mayor's show; the miser when he hugs his gold; the courtier who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage who paints his idol with blood; the slave who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant who fancies himself a god;-the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of their own making; and the poet does no more than describe what all the others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and madness at second hand. There is warrant for it.' Poets alone have not such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cooler reason' can.

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