Hence, while dull writers appear to know little or nothing, those of lively as. losophy, yet it must be allowed to be the nature of an ingenious mind to find resources in its own stores, and to dispose of what it collects elsewhere to the greatest advantage. Though poetry, then, is thus linked, as we have seen, with phi. Writers much inferior to Burns prove no less such as Taylor the Water Poet, and Stephen Duck the Thresher: they considered mental improvement so essential to their pretensions, as to be even ostentatious of the little they knew and whoever chooses to dip into their poems, will find that the extent of their reading was commensurate, at least, with the reach of their poetry.īut not to seem presumptuous, and to claim for the poets more than their due, let us, in closing, make all reasonable con. Such a character would not have existed, but for that love of general: nature and strength of feeling which in part lead to, and in part constitute, mental improvemept. That story would be poorly, indeed falsely, told, that left Burns gasping for inspiration at the ploughtail. « But such writers as Burns"-Such writers as Burns confirm my argument. Similar examples too might be shewn in our own time, to prove that the relation here contended for is real, and that those who have obtained any notice for their poetry, were persons, though in different degrees and, perhaps, different ways, of enlarged and cultivated minds.
paid with interest, by the pleasure and instruction which they af. They by their literature enriched their poetry and what they borrowed from the public stock of art and science, they re.
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