outbreakings of that temperament which the discipline of riper years,
and the natural awe of the world, afterward reduced into his
hereditary cast of character, in which so much of sullenness and
misanthropy was exhibited. I cannot, however, think that there was
anything either in the nature of his pastimes, or his studies,
unfavourable to the formation of the poetical character. His
amusements were active; his reading, though without method, was yet
congenial to his impassioned imagination; and the phantom of an
enthusiastic attachment, of which Miss Chaworth was not the only
object (for it was altogether intellectual, and shared with others),
were circumstances calculated to open various sources of reflection,
and to concentrate the elements of an energetic and original mind.

But it is no easy matter to sketch what may have been the outline of
a young poet's education. The supposition that poets must be
dreamers, because there is often much dreaminess in poesy, is a mere
hypothesis. Of all the professors of metaphysical discernment, poets
require the finest tact; and contemplation is with them a sign of
inward abstract reflection, more than of any process of mind by which
resemblance is traced, and associations awakened. There is no
account of any great poet, whose genius was of that dreamy
cartilaginous kind, which hath its being in haze, and draws its
nourishment from lights and shadows; which ponders over the mysteries
of trees, and interprets the oracles of babbling waters. They have
all been men--worldly men, different only from others in reasoning
more by feeling than induction. Directed by impulse, in a greater
degree than other men, poets are apt to be betrayed into actions
which make them singular, as compared by those who are less
imaginative; but the effects of earnestness should never be
confounded with the qualities of talent.

No greater misconception has ever been obtruded upon the world as
philosophic criticism, than the theory of poets being the offspring
of "capering lambkins and cooing doves"; for they differ in no
respect from other men of high endowment, but in the single
circumstance of the objects to which their taste is attracted. The
most vigorous poets, those who have influenced longest and are most
quoted, have indeed been all men of great shrewdness of remark, and
anything but your chin-on-hand contemplators. To adduce many
instances is unnecessary. Are there any symptoms of t