Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo;

and that which makes the greatest vernal shoot is apt to make the
least autumnal. Authors in general who have met celebrity at starting,
have already had their reward; always their utmost due, and often much
beyond it. We cannot hope for both celebrity and fame: supremely
fortunate are the few who are allowed the liberty of choice between
them. We two prefer the strength that springs from exercise and toil,
acquiring it gradually and slowly: we leave to others the earlier
blessing of that sleep which follows enjoyment. How many at first
sight are enthusiastic in their favour! Of these how large a portion
come away empty-handed and discontented! like idlers who visit the
seacoast, fill their pockets with pebbles bright from the passing
wave, and carry them off with rapture. After a short examination at
home, every streak seems faint and dull, and the whole contexture
coarse, uneven, and gritty: first one is thrown away, then another;
and before the week's end the store is gone, of things so shining and
wonderful.

_Petrarca._ Allegory, which you named with sonnets and canzonets, had
few attractions for me, believing it to be the delight in general of
idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds, in whose mansions there is neither
hall nor portal to receive the loftier of the Passions. A stranger to
the Affections, she holds a low station among the handmaidens of
Poetry, being fit for little but an apparition in a mask. I had
reflected for some time on this subject, when, wearied with the length
of my walk over the mountains, and finding a soft old molehill,
covered with grey grass, by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and
slept. I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream or
vision came over me.

Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged; but the
wings were hanging down, and seemed ill adapted to flight. One of
them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me
frequently, said to the other:

'He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken him with
that feather.'

Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an
arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point;
although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first
to discover more than a palm's length of it: the rest of the shaft,
and the whole of the barb, was behind his ankles.

'This feather never awakens any one,' re