ey. Here we
find the higher class of poets a very valuable remedy. For observe that
poets of the grander and more comprehensive kind of genius have in them
two separate men, quite distinct from each other,--the imaginative man,
and the practical, circumstantial man; and it is the happy mixture
of these that suits diseases of the mind, half imaginative and half
practical. There is Homer, now lost with the gods, now at home with the
homeliest, the very 'poet of circumstance,' as Gray has finely called
him; and yet with imagination enough to seduce and coax the dullest into
forgetting, for a while, that little spot on his desk which his banker's
book can cover. There is Virgil, far below him, indeed,--`Virgil the
wise, Whose verse walks highest, but not flies,' as Cowley expresses it.
But Virgil still has genius enough to be two men,--to lead you into the
fields, not only to listen to the pastoral reed and to hear the
bees hum, but to note how you can make the most of the glebe and the
vineyard. There is Horace, charming man of the world, who will condole
with you feelingly on the loss of your fortune, and by no means
undervalue the good things of this life, but who will yet show you
that a man may be happy with a vile modicum or parva rura. There is
Shakspeare, who, above all poets, is the mysterious dual of hard sense
and empyreal fancy,--and a great many more, whom I need not name, but
who, if you take to them gently and quietly, will not, like your mere
philosopher, your unreasonable Stoic, tell you that you have lost
nothing, but who will insensibly steal you out of this world, with its
losses and crosses, and slip you into another world before you know
where you are!--a world where you are just as welcome, though you carry
no more earth of your lost acres with you than covers the sole of your
shoe. Then, for hypochondria and satiety, what is better than a brisk
alterative course of travels,--especially early, out-of-the-way,
marvellous, legendary travels! How they freshen up the spirits! How
they take you out of the humdrum yawning state you are in. See, with
Herodotus, young Greece spring up into life, or note with him how
already the wondrous old Orient world is crumbling into giant decay; or
go with Carpini and Rubruquis to Tartary, meet 'the carts of Zagathai
laden with houses, and think that a great city is travelling towards
you.' (2) 'Gaze on that vast wild empire of the Tartar, where the
descendants of Jenghis