_Tristo._ “You mistake my meaning, if you infer from it that I think the _existence_ of poetic power incompatible with moral degradation, for there are many, too many instances of this kind. My position was that a pure and unsophisticated character was essential to the _enjoyment_ of this faculty in one’s self, or as displayed by others. And of this Byron is as strong a case as I could wish. Every spark of genius, but assisted in lighting the flame, which scathed and consumed his heart. ’Twas so with Shelly, and in the later years of his life, with Burns. Moore is the only similar author who approaches to an exception to this rule. But how widely different with the opposite class of poets. Can you read a page of Cowper, or Wordsworth, without feeling that they derive pure and exquisite pleasure from their inspiration. Indeed to the former it was almost his _only_ source of enjoyment--without it he would have been wretched, in truth, for his nature was too sensitive for a rough and jostling world.” _Nescio._ “I cannot deny it. You have, however, a higher idea of the value and interest and influence of poetry than is current now-a-days. I myself have been disposed to regard the high pretensions of this ‘divina gens’ with something of distrust. I have dipped into our poetic literature as extensively, probably, as most of my age; I have been pleased and profited, but never have I been blessed with an admission into the _penetralia_. My most diligent search (as Pausanias records of the petitioner at Pion’s tomb) has been rewarded by _smoke_.” _Tristo._ “I know that to the unreflecting crowd the life and labors of the poet seem poor and paltry. He is one by himself--a flower-gathering, shade-loving idler in a garden, where others are busily plying the mattock and the spade. To them he appears engaged neither in lessening the evils, nor in adding to the blessings of life. His musings they deem like the dreams of the sleeper, where fancy, and vanity, and passion, draw scenes of glory and of pleasure with the bold tracery of an unfettered hand; but to the waking eye in the light of reason, those pictures are changed to the ungraceful lines, and uncolored objects of ordinary life.”