ould we suffer young gentlemen and ladies, treading among the
profusion, to gather the glorious scatterings, and weaving them into
fantastic or even tasteful garlands, to present them to us, as if they
had been raised from the seed of their own genius, and entitled
therefore "to bear their name in the wild woods." This flower-gathering,
pretty pastime though it be, and altogether innocent, fell into
disrepute; and then all such florists began to complain of being
neglected, or despised, or persecuted, and their friends to lament over
their fate, the fate of all genius, "in amorous ditties all a summer's
day."

Besides the living poets of highest rank, are there not many whose
claims to join the sacred band have been allowed, because their lips,
too, have sometimes been touched with a fire from heaven? Second-rate
indeed! Ay, well for those who are third, fourth, or fifth rate--knowing
where sit Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Round about Parnassus run
_many_ parallel roads, with forests of "cedar and branching palm"
between, overshadowing the sunshine on each magnificent level with a
sense of something more sublime still nearer the forked summit; and each
band, so that they be not ambitious overmuch, in their own region may
wander or repose in grateful bliss. Thousands look up with envy from
"the low-lying fields of the beautiful land" immediately without the
line that goes wavingly asweep round the base of the holy mountain,
separating it from the common earth. What clamour and what din from the
excluded crowd! Many are heard there to whom nature has been kind, but
they have not yet learned "to know themselves," or they would retire,
but not afar off, and in silence adore. And so they do ere long, and are
happy in the sight of "the beauty still more beauteous" revealed to
their fine perceptions, though to them was not given the faculty that by
combining in spiritual passion creates. But what has thither brought the
self-deceived, who will not be convinced of their delusion, even were
Homer or Milton's very self to frown on them with eyes no longer dim,
but angry in their brightness like lowering stars?

But we must beware--perhaps too late--of growing unintelligible, and ask
you, in plainer terms, if you do not think that by far the greatest
number of all those who raise an outcry against the injustice of the
world to men of genius, are persons of the meanest abilities, who have
all their lives been foolishly fighting