if he presumes to hope, hopes as superstitiously as he fears; he keeps
his attention sedulously fixed upon all the probabilities in his
favour; he will not listen to any arguments in opposition to his
wishes; he knows he is unreasonable, he persists in continuing so; he
does not connect any idea of exertion with hope; his hope usually
rests upon the exertions of others, or upon some fortuitous
circumstances. A man of a strong mind, reasons before he hopes; he
takes in, at one quick, comprehensive glance, all that is to be seen
both for and against him; he is, from experience, disposed to depend
much upon his own exertions, if they can turn the balance in his
favour; he hopes, he acts, he succeeds. Poets, in all ages, have
celebrated the charms of hope; without her propitious influence, life,
they tell us, would be worse than death; without her smiles, nature
would smile in vain; without her promises, treacherous though they
often prove, reality would have nothing to give worthy of our
acceptance. We are not bound, however, to understand literally, the
rhetoric of poets. Hope is to them a beautiful and useful allegorical
personage: sometimes leaning upon an anchor; sometimes "waving her
golden hair;" always young, smiling, enchanting, furnished with a rich
assortment of epithets suited to the ode, the sonnet, the madrigal,
with a traditionary number of images and allusions; what more can a
poet desire? Men, except when they are poets, do not value hope as the
first of terrestrial blessings. The action and energies which hope
produces, are to many more agreeable than the passion itself; that
feverish state of suspense, which prevents settled thought or vigorous
exertion, far from being agreeable, is highly painful to a well
regulated mind; the continued repetition of the same ideas and the
same calculations, fatigues the mind, which, in reasoning, has been
accustomed to arrive at some certain conclusion, or to advance, at
least, a step at every effort. The exercise of the mind, in changing
the views of its object, which is supposed to be a great part of the
pleasure of hope, is soon over to an active imagination, which quickly
runs through all the possible changes; or is this exercise, even while
it lasts, so delightful to a man who has a variety of intellectual
occupations, as it frequently appears to him who knows scarcely any
other species of mental activity? The vacillating state of mind,
peculiar to hope and fear, is