Jealous People Poison Their Own Banquet And

In Civilized Life, Where The Happiness, And Indeed Almost The Existence, Of Man Depends So Much Upon The Opinion Of His Fellow Men, He Is Constantly Acting A Studied Part.

He Who Thinks Much Says But Little In Proportion To His Thoughts. He Selects That Language Which Will Convey His Ideas In The Most Explicit And Direct Manner. He Tries To Compress As Much Thought As Possible Into A Few Words. On The Contrary, The Man Who Talks Everlastingly And Promiscuously, Who Seems To Have An Exhaustless Magazine Of Sound, Crowds So Many Words Into His Thoughts That He Always Obscures, And Very Frequently Conceals Them.

Some Minds Corrode And Grow Inactive Under The Loss Of Personal Liberty; Others Grow Morbid And Irritable; But It Is The Nature Of The Poet To Become Tender And Imaginitive In The Loneliness Of Confinement. He Banquets Upon The Honey Of His Own Thoughts, And, Like The Captive Bird, Pours Forth His Soul In Melody.

It Is The Divine Attribute Of The Imagination, That It Is Irrepressible, Unconfinable; That When The Real World Is Shut Out, It Can Create A World For Itself, And With A Necromantic Power Can Conjure Up Glorious Shapes And Forms, And Brilliant Visions To Make Solitude Populous, And Irradiate The Gloom Of A Dungeon.

There Is Nothing In England That Exercises A More Delightful Spell Over My Imagination Than The Lingerings Of The Holiday Customs And Rural Games Of Former Times. They Recall The Pictures My Fancy Used To Draw In The May Morning Of Life, When As Yet I Only Knew The World Through Books, And Believed It To Be All That Poets Had Painted It; And They Bring With Them The Flavour Of Those Honest Days Of Yore, In Which, Perhaps With Equal Fallacy, I Am Apt To Think The World Was More Home-bred, Social, And Joyous Than At Present.