er
nature. The great duty is to learn to be happy in ourselves.... I
am surprised (said Mr. Dana) to find how much my present tastes and
judgments are those of my childhood. In some respects, to be sure, I
have altered; but, in general, the authors I loved and sympathised with
then, I love and sympathise with now. When I was connected with the
North-American, I wrote a review of Hazlitt's British Poets, in which I
expressed my opinion of Pope and of Wordsworth. The sensation it excited
is inconceivable. One man said I was mad and ought to be put in a
strait-jacket. However, I did not mind it much, so long as they did not
put me in one--that, to be sure, I should not have liked very well.
Public opinion has changed since then. Many of the old _prose_ writers
are very fine. Jeremy Taylor, though I admire him exceedingly, has been,
I think, rather indiscriminately praised.... To come to the poets again,
Young should be read and thought upon. He is often antithetical, but is
a profound thinker. I was quite ashamed the other day on taking up his
works to find how many of my thoughts he had expressed better than I
could express them. I am convinced there is nothing new under the sun.
Collins has written but little, but he is a most graceful and beautiful
creature. For faithfulness of portraiture and bringing out every-day
characters, Crabbe is unrivalled in modern days. And Wordsworth--he and
Coleridge have been obliged to make minds to understand them. Who
equals Wordsworth in purity, in majesty, in tranquil contemplation, in
childlikeness? Coleridge is exerting a great influence in this country,
especially over the minds of some of the young men.

_Friday._--To-day by invitation I attended the first meeting of the new
class and heard the introductory lecture. Mr. D. began by speaking of
the object of the formation of the class. I shall adopt the first person
in writing what he said, though I do not pretend to give his words. I
have not invited you here to amuse an idle hour, or to afford you a
topic of conversation when you meet. One great design has been to
cherish in you a love of home and of solitude. Yet this is not all, for
of what advantage is it to be at home, unless home is a place for the
unfolding of warm affections? and of what use is solitude, unless it be
improved by patient thought, self-study and a communion with those great
minds who became great by thinking. But it is not merely thinking as an
operation of