Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
And why should those who are sanguine in hope be "too frequently
indolent?" A hopeful temper engender indolence! A desponding temper
engenders it; a hopeful one is the very spur of activity. The sanguine
spirit of hope taking possession of an active intellect, engenders the
Projector--of all human beings the most restless and indefatigable--his
undaunted and unconquerable trust in futurity creates for itself
incessantly new shapes of exertion--till the curtain falls.
SEWARD.
There is, I suppose, a species of Castle-builder who hopes and does
nothing; as if he believed that futurity had the special charge of
bringing into existence the children of his wish. But his temper is
not properly called sanguine--it is _dreamy_. Neither is his indolence
a consequence of his dreams; but as much or more, his dreams, of his
indolence. He sits and dreams. Say that Nature has given to some
one, as she will from time to time, an active fancy and an indolent
humour--a disproportion in one faculty. 'Tis a misfortune: and a reason
why his friends should seek out, if possible, the means of stirring him
into activity; but it has nothing to do with describing the Idea of the
Poetical Character.
TALBOYS.
The Great Poets have not been indolent. They have been working men.
The genius of the Poet calls him to his work. Shakspeare was a man of
business. Spenser was a state-secretary.
BULLER.
Read Milton's Life.
TALBOYS.
See Cowper drowned in an invincible melancholy, and deliberately
choosing a long-lasting and severe task of his Art, as a means of
relieving, from hour to hour, the pressure of his intolerable burthen.
If he had drooped under his hopeless disease into motionless stupor,
you could not have wondered, much less could you have blamed. He
fought, pen in hand, year after year, against the still-repelled and
ultimately victorious enemy.
BULLER.
Think of Southey!
NORTH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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