the happiest effusions of human genius have
seemed like inspiration--the deductions of reason destroy sublimity.

23.

I am more and more convinced, that poetry is the first effervescence of
the imagination, and the forerunner of civilization.

24.

When the Arabs had no trace of literature or science, they composed
beautiful verses on the subjects of love and war. The flights of the
imagination, and the laboured deductions of reason, appear almost
incompatible.

25.

Poetry certainly flourishes most in the first rude state of society. The
passions speak most eloquently, when they are not shackled by reason.
The sublime expression, which has been so often quoted, [Genesis, ch. 1,
ver. 3.] is perhaps a barbarous flight; or rather the grand conception of
an uncultivated mind; for it is contrary to nature and experience, to
suppose that this account is founded on facts--It is doubtless a sublime
allegory. But a cultivated mind would not thus have described the
creation--for, arguing from analogy, it appears that creation must have
been a comprehensive plan, and that the Supreme Being always uses second
causes, slowly and silently to fulfil his purpose. This is, in reality, a
more sublime view of that power which wisdom supports: but it is not the
sublimity that would strike the impassioned mind, in which the
imagination took place of intellect. Tell a being, whose affections and
passions have been more exercised than his reason, that God said, _Let
there be light! and there was light_; and he would prostrate himself
before the Being who could thus call things out of nothing, as if they
were: but a man in whom reason had taken place of passion, would not
adore, till wisdom was conspicuous as well as power, for his admiration
must be founded on principle.

26.

Individuality is ever conspicuous in those enthusiastic flights of fancy,
in which reason is left behind, without being lost sight of.

27.

The mind has been too often brought to the test of enquiries which only
reach to matter--put into the crucible, though the magnetic and electric
fluid escapes from the experimental philosopher.

28.

Mr. Kant has observed, that the understanding is sublime, the imagination
beautiful--yet it is evident, that poets, and men who undoubtedly possess
the liveliest imagination, are most touched by the sublime, while men who
have cold, enquiring minds, have not this exquisite feeling in any great
degree, and