INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. XXI 



goodness, and of the excellency of virtue, but 

 has so constructed the world, that the same 

 saving, purifying, and ennobling principles, 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 melodies to which 

 all men listen, but even in the roar of the 

 stream, and the rushing of the forest, 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 seek- 

 ing to sympathise and communicate with us 

 from the utmost nearness to which their Na- 

 tures 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 poet 



S ! 



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 

 multitude of authors throughout every depart- 

 ment of our literature, who have with one ac- 

 cord turned us for wisdom to the great book 



