of the world through evil, and the stars fall from
heaven as the figtree casteth her untimely fruit;
when Aesop reports the whole catalogue of common
daily relations through the masquerade of birds and
beasts;--we take the cheerful hint of the immortality
of our essence and its versatile habit and escapes,
as when the gypsies say "it is in vain to hang them,
they cannot die."

The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient
British bards had for the title of their order, "Those
Who are free throughout the world." They are free, and
they make free. An imaginative book renders us much
more service at first, by stimulating us through its
tropes, than afterward when we arrive at the precise
sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value
in books excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.
If a man is inflamed and carried away by his thought,
to that degree that he forgets the authors and the
public and heeds only this one dream which holds him
like an insanity, let me read his paper, and you may
have all the arguments and histories and criticism.
All the value which attaches to Pythagoras, Paracelsus,
Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, Kepler, Swedenborg, Schelling,
Oken, or any other who introduces questionable facts
into his cosmogony, as angels, devils, magic, astrology,
palmistry, mesmerism, and so on, is the certificate we
have of departure from routine, and that here is a new
witness. That also is the best success in conversation,
the magic of liberty, which puts the world like a ball