nd circumstance, at which he usually
connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent
lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and
enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the
first Bard[282]--poetry without stop--hymn, ode and epic,[283] poetry
still flowing, Apollo[284] and the Muses[285] chanting still. Will these
two separate themselves from me again, or some of them? I know not, but
I fear it not; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by
simple affinity, and the Genius[286] of my life being thus social, the
same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is as noble as these
men and women, wherever I may be.

6. I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is
almost dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison,[287] of misused
wine" of the affections. A new person is to me a great event, and
hinders me from sleep. I have had such fine fancies lately about two
or three persons, as have given me delicious hours, but the joy ends
in the day: it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it; my action
is very little modified. I must feel pride in my friend's
accomplishments as if they were mine, and a property in his virtues.
I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears
applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our
friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer,
his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his
dress, books and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds
new and larger from his mouth.

7. Yet the systole and diastole[288] of the heart are not without
their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the
immortality[289] of the soul, is too good to be believed. The lover,
beholding his maiden, half knows that she is not verily that which he
worships; and in the golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with
shades of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero
the virtues in which he shines, and afterward worship the form to
which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the
soul does not respect men as it respects itself. In strict science,
all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness.
Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical
foundation of this Elysian temple?[290] Shall I not be as real as the
things I see? If I am, I shall not fe