XXIV INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



virtue, but has so constructed the world, that 

 the same saving, purifying, and ennobling prin- 

 ciples, are reflected upon us from every natural 

 object. " Between the Poet and Nature," says 

 Schlegel, " no less than between the poet and 

 man, there is a sympathy of feeling. Not only 

 in the song of the Nightingale, or in the melo- 

 dies to which all men listen, but even in the 

 roar of the stream, and the rushing of the fo- 

 rest, the poet thinks that he hears a kindred 

 voice of sorrow or of gladness ; as if spirits and 

 feelings like our own were calling to us from 

 afar, or seeking to sympathise and communicate 

 with us from the utmost nearness to which their 

 Natures will allow them to approach us. It is 

 for the purpose of listening to these tones, and 

 of holding mysterious converse with the soul 

 of Nature, that every great poet is a lover of 

 solitude !" Therefore 



Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, 

 Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares 

 The poets ; 



and not with the poets only, but with the great- 

 est names in our philosophy ; Newton, Bacon, 

 Locke, and a host of others ; nor less with a 



