led him to believe that the most advantageous at
least, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, lies
in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus it
happened he became neither musician nor poet--if we use this latter term
in its every-day acceptation. Or it might have been that he neglected
to become either, merely in pursuance of his idea that in contempt of
ambition is to be found one of the essential principles of happiness on
earth. Is it not indeed, possible that, while a high order of genius
is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed
ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton
have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious?" I believe that the
world has never seen--and that, unless through some series of accidents
goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world
will never see--that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer
domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.

Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more
profoundly enamored of music and poetry. Under other circumstances than
those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would have become
a painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously poetical was too
limited in its extent and consequences, to have occupied, at any time,
much of his attention. And I have now mentioned all the provinces in
which the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared it
capable of expatiating. But Ellison maintained that the richest, the
truest, and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive province,
had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the
landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the
creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most
magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for
the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of
novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast
superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In the
multiform and multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the
most direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And
in the direction or concentration of this effort--or, more properly,
in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth--he
perceived that he should be employ