114
��INTRODUCTION
��sons of thought and experience. This is because in its nature everything is a subject of poetry, and gains its poetical adornment solely from the riches of the mind and the scientific skill of the artist who employs them. Hence, as I take it, comes the reason why young persons are never even the best poets, not because there is lack of imagination (indeed this faculty, one of the most cultivable of all, is in youth exceedingly active), but simply for want of material.
Can we wonder, then, that so great a number of persons favored by nature and fortune, and who for a time seem to promise somewhat, should soon wholly flatten away, when we see how few of such escape the domination of vanity and idleness .<* I have often observed that, where the mind acquires no wealth, the habits grow only proportionally worse as life advances. Thus all things advance or recede, and, of two bad men, the man of sixty can scarcely fail to be worse than the one of thirty.
So, too, if poetry is applied to no other objects than are the vernal songs of birds, and one should believe, with T. F. and Dr. M., that there is no such thing as poetry save a woman be in the case, we should not expect from such a source an " Ancient Mariner," a " Deserted Vil- lage," a " Comus," or a " Cymbeline." If we should be surprised, in looking at the long list of English poets, to find so little in them that is valuable, we shall be less so, I think, if we admit Johnson to have justly unfolded their lives.
Yet the old seems to me for the most part to be even better than the new. Poetry itself is, I am convinced, sus- ceptible of improvement to a point far beyond what it has yet attained, but not in the hands of the persons who are at present chiefly occupied with it. But I am more and
�� �
