at they had wives and families like yourselves,
and laboured and rested like us all.

The greatest, perhaps, of modern poets seeming to take refuge from
this, has looked into the heart of man, and shown you its pulsations,
fears, self-doubts, hates, goodness, devotedness, and noble
world-love; this is not done under pretty flowers of metaphor in the
lispings of a pet parson, or in the strong but uncertain fashion of
the American school; still less in the dry operose quackery of
professed doctors of psychology, mere chaff not studied from nature,
and therefore worthless, never felt, and therefore useless; but with
the firm knowing hand of the anatomist, demonstrating and making
clear to others, that the knowledge may be applied to purpose. All
this difficult task is achieved so that you may read till your own
soul is before you, and you know it; but the enervated public
complains that the work is obscure forsooth: so we are always looking
for green grass--verdant meads, tall pines, vineyards, etc., as the
essentials of poetry; these are all very pretty and very delicate,
the dust blows not in your eyes, but Chaucer has told us all this,
and while it was new, far better than any one else; why are we not to
have something besides? Let us see a little of the poetry of man's
own works,--"Visibly in his garden walketh God."

The great portion of the public take a morbid delight in such works
as Frankenstein, that "Poor, impossible monster abhorred," who would
be disgusting if he were not so extremely ludicrous: and all this
search after impossible mystery, such trumpery! growing into the
popular taste, is fed with garbage; doing more harm than all the
preachings and poundings of optimistic Reviews will be able to remedy
in an hundred years.

The study of such matters as these does other harm than merely
poisoning the mind in one direction; it renders us sceptical of
virtue in others, and we lose the power of pure perception. So
--reading the glorious tale of Griselda and looking about you, you
say there never was such a woman; your wise men say she was a fool;
are there no such fools round about you? pray look close:--so the
result of this is, you see no lesson in such things, or at least
cannot apply it, and therefore the powers of the author are thrown
away. Do you think God made Boccaccio and Chaucer to amuse you in
your idle hours, only that you might sit listening like crowned
idiots, and then debate concerning their