Nineteenth-Century Mystery Syntax

Oh, the bloody unfathomable delay. . . yes it's been weeks, but I've not been idle: every femtosecond not spent changing diapers I've spent reading the following sentence:

Leave us then attempt, in the way of modest inquiry, not to coerce and confine nature within the bounds of an arbitrary definition, but rather to find the boundaries which she herself has set, and erect a barrier round them; not calling mankind to account for having misapplied the word "poetry," but attempting to clear up to them the conception which they already attach to it, and to bring before their minds as a distinct principle that which, as a vague feeling, has really guided them in their actual employment of the term. (John Stuart Mill, "What Is Poetry?")

I have a three-word paper on this sentence due next month, so will surely not be blogging for yet more weeks to come.