fastidious refinement lays hold of the mind; and an intellect
trained in the fine perception of ancient expression is unable to
pass through the earlier stages through which a writer must pass,
when the stream flows broken and turbid, when it appears impossible
to capture and define the idea which seems so intangible and
indefinable.

What an original writer requires is to be able to see a subject for
himself, and then to express it for himself. The only cultivation
he needs is just enough to realise that there are differences of
subject and differences of expression, just enough to discern the
general lines upon which subjects can be evolved, and to perceive
that lucidity, grace, and force of expression are attainable. The
overcultivated man, after reading a masterpiece, is crushed and
flattened under his admiration; but the effect of a masterpiece
upon an original spirit, is to make him desire to say something
else that rises in his soul, and to say it in his own words; all he
needs in the way of training is just enough for him to master
technique. The highly-cultivated man is as one dazzled by gazing
upon the sun; he has no eyes for anything else; a bright disc,
imprinted upon his eyes, floats between him and every other object.

The best illustration of this is the case of the great trio,
Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. All three started as poets.
Coleridge was distracted from poetry into metaphysics, mainly, I
believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the torturing
contemplation of his own moral impotence. He turned to philosophy
to see if he could find some clue to the bewildering riddle of
life, and he lost his way among philosophical speculations.
Southey, on the other hand, a man of Spartan virtue, became a