ther to himself nor others sound."

The true remedy for suspicion in talking is more knowledge in the head
and more love in the heart. As bats fly before the light, so suspicions
before knowledge and love. Throw open the windows of the soul, and admit
the truth. Be generous and noble in thoughts of others. Give credit for
purity of intention and disinterestedness of motives. Build no fabric of
fancies and surmises in the imagination without a solid basis. Be pure
in yourself in all things. "The more virtuous any man is in himself,"
says Cicero, "the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious."

XXIX.

_THE POETIC._

"I begin shrewdly to suspect the young man of a terrible
taint--poetry; with which idle disease, if he be infected, there is
no hope of him in a state course."--BEN JONSON.

Scraps of poetry picked up from Burns, or Thomson, or Shakespeare, or
Tennyson, are ready to hand for every occasion, so that you may
calculate upon a piece, in or out of place, in course of conversation.
If you will do the prose, rely upon it he will do the poetic, much to
his own satisfaction, if not to your entertainment. In walking he will
gently lay his finger on your shoulder, saying, as he gathers up his
recollection, and raising his head, "Hear what my favourite poet says
upon the subject."

Sometimes the poetic afflatus falls upon him as he converses, and he
will impromptu favour you with an original effusion of rhyme or blank
verse, much to the strengthening of his self-complacency, and to the
gratification of your sense of the ludicrous.

Talking with Mr. Smythe, a young student, some time ago, I found he was
so full of poetic quotations that I began to think whether all his
lessons at college had not consisted in the learning of odds and ends
from "Gems" and "Caskets" and "Gleanings."

Speaking about the man who is not enslaved to sects and parties, but
free in his religious habits, he paused and said, "You remind me, Mr.
Bond, of what Pope says,--

'Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through nature up to nature's God.'"

The subject of _music_ was introduced, when, after a few words of prose
he broke out in evident emotion,--

"Music! oh, how faint, how weak,
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should feeling ever speak
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?
Friendship's balmy words may pain,
Love's are e'en more false than they--