wn eye such an exception to her general censure--unless, indeed (which
may not be far from the truth), she supposes that female genius is more
gentle and tractable, though as high in tone and spirit as that of the
masculine sex. But the truth is, I believe, we will find a great
equality when the different habits of the sexes and the temptations they
are exposed to are taken into consideration. Men early flattered and
coaxed, and told they are fitted for the higher regions of genius and
unfit for anything else,--that they are a superior kind of automaton and
ought to move by different impulses than others,--indulge their friends
and the public with freaks and caprioles like those of that worthy
knight of La Mancha in the Sierra Morena. And then, if our man of genius
escapes this temptation, how is he to parry the opposition of the
blockheads who join all their hard heads and horns together to butt him
out of the ordinary pasture, goad him back to Parnassus, and "bid him
on the barren mountain starve." It is amazing how far this goes, if a
man will let it go, in turning him out of the ordinary course of life
into the stream of odd bodies, so that authors come to be regarded as
tumblers, who are expected to go to church in a summerset, because they
sometimes throw a Catherine-wheel for the amusement of the public. A man
even told me at an election, thinking I believe he was saying a severe
thing, that I was a poet, and therefore that the subject we were
discussing lay out of my way. I answered as quietly as I could, that I
did not apprehend my having written poetry rendered me incapable of
speaking common sense in prose, and that I requested the audience to
judge of me not by the nonsense I might have written for their
amusement, but by the sober sense I was endeavouring to speak for their
information, and only expected [of] them, in case I had ever happened to
give any of them pleasure, in a way which was supposed to require some
information and talent, [that] they would not, for that sole reason,
suppose me incapable of understanding or explaining a point of the
profession for which I had been educated. So I got a patient and very
favourable hearing. But certainly these great exertions of friends and
enemies have forced many a poor fellow out of the common paths of life,
and obliged him to make a trade of what can only be gracefully executed
as an occasional avocation. When such a man is encouraged in all his
freaks and fo