sea of glue, as
Tennyson said. It is partly that highly-cultivated minds grow to be
subservient to authority, and to contemn experiment as rash and
obstreperous. Partly also the least movement of the mind dislodges such
a pile of precedents and phrases and aphorisms, stored and amassed by
diligent reading, that the mind is encumbered by the thought that most
things worth saying have been so beautifully said that repetition is
out of the question. Partly, too, a false and fastidious refinement
lays hold of the mind; and an intellect trained in the fine perception
of ancient expression is unable to pass through the earlier stages
through which a writer must pass, when the stream flows broken and
turbid, when it appears impossible to capture and define the idea which
seems so intangible and indefinable.

What an original writer requires is to be able to see a subject for
himself, and then to express it for himself. The only cultivation he
needs is just enough to realise that there are differences of subject
and differences of expression, just enough to discern the general lines
upon which subjects can be evolved, and to perceive that lucidity,
grace, and force of expression are attainable. The overcultivated man,
after reading a masterpiece, is crushed and flattened under his
admiration; but the effect of a masterpiece upon an original spirit, is
to make him desire to say something else that rises in his soul, and to
say it in his own words; all he needs in the way of training is just
enough for him to master technique. The highly-cultivated man is as one
dazzled by gazing upon the sun; he has no eyes for anything else; a
bright disc, imprinted upon his eyes, floats between him and every
other object.

The best illustration of this is the case of the great trio,
Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. All three started as poets.
Coleridge was distracted from poetry into metaphysics, mainly, I
believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the torturing contemplation of
his own moral impotence. He turned to philosophy to see if he could
find some clue to the bewildering riddle of life, and he lost his way
among philosophical speculations. Southey, on the other hand, a man of
Spartan virtue, became a highly-cultivated writer; he sate in his
spacious library of well-selected books, arranged with a finical
preciseness, apportioning his day between various literary pursuits. He
made an income; he wrote excellent ephemeral volumes; he g