centrifugal tendency of a man, to his passage out
into free space, and they help him to escape the
custody of that body in which he is pent up, and
of that jail-yard of individual relations in which
he is enclosed. Hence a great number of such as were
professionally expressers of Beauty, as painters,
poets, musicians, and actors, have been more than
others wont to lead a life of pleasure and indulgence;
all but the few who received the true nectar; and, as
it was a spurious mode of attaining freedom, as it was
an emancipation not into the heavens but into the
freedom of baser places, they were punished for that
advantage they won, by a dissipation and deterioration.
But never can any advantage be taken of nature by a
trick. The spirit of the world, the great calm presence
of the Creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of
opium or of wine. The sublime vision comes to the pure
and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. That is not
an inspiration, which we owe to narcotics, but some
counterfeit excitement and fury. Milton says that the
lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the
epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods and their
descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden
bowl. For poetry is not 'Devil's wine,' but God's wine.
It is with this as it is with toys. We fill the hands
and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls,
drums, and horses; withdrawing their eyes from the
plain face and sufficing objects of nature, the sun,
and moon, the animals, the water, and stones, which
should be their toys. So the poet's habit of living