sopher cannot, by culture, make himself, in the
peculiar sense in which we now use the term, a poet, unless at least
he have that peculiarity of nature which would probably have made
poetry his earliest pursuit; a poet may always, by culture, make
himself a philosopher. The poetic laws of association are by no means
incompatible with the more ordinary laws; are by no means such as
_must_ have their course, even though a deliberate purpose require
their suspension. If the peculiarities of the poetic temperament were
uncontrollable in any poet, they might be supposed so in Shelley; yet
how powerfully, in the _Cenci_, does he coerce and restrain all the
characteristic qualities of his genius; what severe simplicity, in
place of his usual barbaric splendour; how rigidly does he keep the
feelings and the imagery in subordination to the thought.

The investigation of nature requires no habits or qualities of mind,
but such as may always be acquired by industry and mental activity.
Because at one time the mind may be so given up to a state of feeling,
that the succession of its ideas is determined by the present
enjoyment or suffering which pervades it, this is no reason but that
in the calm retirement of study, when under no peculiar excitement
either of the outward or of the inward sense, it may form any
combinations, or pursue any trains of ideas, which are most conducive
to the purposes of philosophic inquiry; and may, while in that state,
form deliberate convictions, from which no excitement will afterwards
make it swerve. Might we not go even further than this? We shall not
pause to ask whether it be not a misunderstanding of the nature of
passionate feeling to imagine that it is inconsistent with calmness;
whether they who so deem of it, do not mistake passion in the militant
or antagonistic state, for the type of passion universally; do not
confound passion struggling towards an outward object, with passion
brooding over itself. But without entering into this deeper
investigation; that capacity of strong feeling, which is supposed
necessarily to disturb the judgement, is also the material out of
which all _motives_ are made; the motives, consequently, which lead
human beings to the pursuit of truth. The greater the individual's
capability of happiness and of misery, the stronger interest has that
individual in arriving at truth; and when once that interest is felt,
an impassioned nature is sure to pursue this, as to pu