The result was that I gradually, but completely,
emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it.
I long continued to value Wordsworth less according to his intrinsic
merits, than by the measure of what he had done for me. Compared with
the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures,
possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are
precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation
Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically
far more poets than he.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: From Chapter V of the Autobiography, 1874.]
OLD CHINA[4]
CHARLES LAMB
I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any
great house, I inquire for the china-closet, and next for the
picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying
that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of
our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to
mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to; but
I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced
into my imagination.
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