nothing can be useless.  Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination:  he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast, or elegantly little.  The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for every idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power of diversifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruction.

“All the appearances of nature I was, therefore, careful to study, and every country, which I have surveyed, has contributed something to my poetical powers.”

“In so wide a survey,” said the prince, “you must surely have left much unobserved.  I have lived till now, within the circuit of these mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of something, which I had never beheld before, or never heeded.”

“The business of a poet,” said Imlac, “is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances:  he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest.  He is to exhibit, in his portraits of nature, such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristicks which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.

“But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be acquainted, likewise, with all the modes of life.  His character requires, that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind, as they are modified by various institutions, and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude.  He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same; he must, therefore, content himself with the slow progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity.  He must write, as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself, as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations; as a being superiour to time and place.

“His labour is not yet at an end:  he must know many languages and many sciences; and, that his style may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony.”

CHAP.  XI.

IMLAC’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED. A HINT ON PILGRIMAGE.