s. All who sin suffer, with or without genius; and we are nowhere
taught in the New Testament, that remorse in its agony, and penitence in
its sorrow, visit men's imaginations only; but whatever way they enter,
their rueful dwelling is in the heart. Poets shed no bitterer tears than
ordinary men; and Fonblanque finely showed us, in one of his late little
essays, clear as wells and deep as tarns, that so far from there being
anything in the constitution of genius naturally kindred either to vice
or misery, it is framed of light and love and happiness, and that its
sins and sufferings come not from the spirit but from the flesh. Yet is
its flesh as firm as, and perhaps somewhat finer than, that of the
common clay; but still it is clay--for all men are dust.

But what if they who, on the ground of genius, claim exemption from our
blame, and inclusion within our sympathies, even when seen suffering
from their own sins, have no genius at all, but are mere ordinary men,
and but for the fumes of some physical excitement, which they mistake
for the airs of inspiration, are absolutely stupider than people
generally go, and even without any tolerable abilities for alphabetical
education? Many such run versifying about, and will not try to settle
down into any easy sedentary trade, till, getting thirsty through
perpetual perspiration, they take to drinking, come to you with
subscription-papers for poetry, with a cock in their eye that tells of
low tippling-houses, and, accepting your half-crown, slander you when
melting it in the purling purlieus of their own donkey-browsed
Parnassus.

Can this age be fairly charged--we speak of England and Scotland--with a
shameful indifference--or worse--a cruel scorn--or worse still--a
barbarous persecution of young persons of humble birth, in whom there
may appear a promise of talent, or of genius? Many are the scholars in
whom their early benefactors have had reason to be proud of themselves,
while they have been happy to send their sons to be instructed in the
noblest lore, by men whose boyhood they had rescued from the darkness of
despair, and clothed it with the warmth and light of hope. And were we
to speak of endowments in schools and colleges, in which so many fine
scholars have been brought up from among the humbler classes, who but
for them had been bred to some mean handicraft, we should show better
reason still for believing that moral and intellectual worth is not
overlooked, or l