Our expectations were raised to a high pitch by such grandiloquent announcement: and we have found in the Essay--which is unscientific in form--has no method--makes no progress--and is throughout a jumble,--not one bold or original thought. BULLER. Too much occupied with exposure of vulgar errors--and instances beneath the matter in hand. Great part too--_extra thesin_. SEWARD. You expect great things from the title--the Idea of the POET. You then see that Mr Stewart after all does not intend this, but only certain influences, moral and intellectual, of characteristic pursuits. This, if rightly and fully done, would have _involved_ the Idea--and so a portraiture indirect and incidental--still the features and their proportion. Instead of the Idea, you find-- BULLER. I don't know what. TALBOYS. The reader is made unhappy, first, by defect, or the absence of principal features--then by degradation, or the low contemplation--and by the general tenor. NORTH. Why, perhaps, you had better return the Quarto to its shelf in the Van. Yet 'twould be a pity, too, to do so. I am for always keeping our engagements; and as we agreed to have a talk about the Section this evening, let us have a talk. Read away, Talboys--at the very next Paragraph. TALBOYS. "The culture of Imagination does not diminish our interest in human life, but is extremely apt to inspire the mind with false conceptions of it. As this faculty derives its chief gratification from picturing to itself things more perfect than what exist, it has a tendency to exalt our expectations above the level of our present condition, and frequently produces a youth of enthusiastic hopes, while it stores up disappointment and disgust for maturer years. In general, it is the characteristic of a poetical mind to be sanguine in its prospects of futurity--a disposition extremely useful when seconded by great activity and industry, but which, when accompanied, as it too frequently is, with indolence, and with an overweening self-conceit, is the source of numberless misfortunes." BULLER. Why, all this is-- NORTH. Stop. Read on, Talboys. TALBOYS. "A thoughtlessness and imprudence with respect to the future, and a general imprudence in the conduct of life, has been often laid to the charge of Poets. Horace represents them as too much engrossed and intoxicated with their favourite pursuits to think of anything else-- BULLER. Leave out the quotation from old Flaccus--and go on. TALBOYS.