ever done for its votaries? What were all those great poets of whom we talk so much? what were they in their lifetime? The most miserable of their species: depressed, doubtful, obscure; or involved in petty quarrels, and petty persecutions; often unappreciated, utterly uninfluential, beggars, flatterers of men, unworthy of their recognition. What a train of disgustful incidents, what a record of degrading circumstances, is the life of a great poet!"*[1]
This is too true a picture; still, what does it prove, but that this earth is no home for the more spiritual part of our nature—that those destined to awaken our highest aspirations, and our tenderest sympathies, are victims rather than votaries of the divine light within them? They gather from sorrow its sweetest emotions; they repeat of hope but its noblest visions; they look on nature with an earnest love, which wins the power of making her hidden beauty visible; and they reproduce the
- ↑ * Contarini Fleming.
