observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is

cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same

imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and

deadened by too much judgment. When we talk such language, or

entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented

with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless,

but pernicious.

If all this means what it is very possible was originally intended

only to be meant, that in order to cultivate an art, a man secludes

himself from the commerce of the world, and retires into the

country at particular seasons; or that at one time of the year his

body is in better health, and consequently his mind fitter for the

business of hard thinking than at another time; or that the mind

may be fatigued and grow confused by long and unremitted

application; this I can understand. I can likewise believe that a

man eminent when young for possessing poetical imagination, may,

from having taken another road, so neglect its cultivation as to

show less of its powers in his latter life. But I am persuaded

that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who

preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising

his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as

replete with the fire of imagination as those which were produced

in his more youthful days.

To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in

poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude that

because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the

dictates of a little winged boy or genius, that this same genius

did really inform him in a whisper what he was to write, and that

he is himself but a mere machine, unconscious of the operations of

his own mind.

Opinions generally received and floating in the world, whether true