Biographia Literaria | Page 5

et gratia quasi satietate
languescet? At hoc pravum, malignumque est, non admirari hominem
admiratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nec laudare tantum,
verum etiam amare contingit.

I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the sonnets of Mr.
Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto
pamphlet, were first made known and presented to me, by a
schoolfellow who had quitted us for the University, and who, during
the whole time that he was in our first form (or in our school language
a Grecian,) had been my patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton,
the truly learned, and every way excellent Bishop of Calcutta:
qui laudibus amplis Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terra Obruta; vivit amor, vivit
dolor; ora negatur Dulcia conspicere; at fiere et meminisse relictum est.
It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender recollection,
that I should have received from a friend so revered the first knowledge
of a poet, by whose works, year after year, I was so enthusiastically
delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will not have
forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and impetuous zeal, with which I
laboured to make proselytes, not only of my companions, but of all
with whom I conversed, of whatever rank, and in whatever place. As
my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made,
within less than a year and a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the
best presents I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard.
And with almost equal delight did I receive the three or four following
publications of the same author.
Though I have seen and known enough of mankind to be well aware,
that I shall perhaps stand alone in my creed, and that it will be well, if I
subject myself to no worse charge than that of singularity; I am not
therefore deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever have regarded
the obligations of intellect among the most sacred of the claims of
gratitude. A valuable thought, or a particular train of thoughts, gives me
additional pleasure, when I can safely refer and attribute it to the
conversation or correspondence of another. My obligations to Mr.
Bowles were indeed important, and for radical good. At a very
premature age, even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself
in metaphysics, and in theological controversy. Nothing else pleased
me. History, and particular facts, lost all interest in my mind.

Poetry--(though for a school-boy of that age, I was above par in English
versification, and had already produced two or three compositions
which, I may venture to say, without reference to my age, were
somewhat above mediocrity, and which had gained me more credit than
the sound, good sense of my old master was at all pleased with,)
--poetry itself, yea, novels and romances, became insipid to me. In my
friendless wanderings on our leave-days [4], (for I was an orphan, and
had scarcely any connections in London,) highly was I delighted, if any
passenger, especially if he were dressed in black, would enter into
conversation with me. For I soon found the means of directing it to my
favourite subjects
Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will,
fore-knowledge absolute, And found no end in wandering mazes lost.
This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt, injurious both to my
natural powers, and to the progress of my education. It would perhaps
have been destructive, had it been continued; but from this I was
auspiciously withdrawn, partly indeed by an accidental introduction to
an amiable family, chiefly however, by the genial influence of a style
of poetry, so tender and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so
dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets and other early poems of Mr.
Bowles. Well would it have been for me, perhaps, had I never relapsed
into the same mental disease; if I had continued to pluck the flower and
reap the harvest from the cultivated surface, instead of delving in the
unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic lore. And if in after
time I have sought a refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged
sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised the strength and
subtilty of the understanding without awakening the feelings of the
heart; still there was a long and blessed interval, during which my
natural faculties were allowed to expand, and my original tendencies to
develop themselves;--my fancy, and the love of nature, and the sense of
beauty in forms and sounds.
The second advantage, which I owe to my early perusal, and admiration
of these poems, (to which let me add,) though known to me at a
somewhat later period, the Lewesdon Hill of Mr. Crowe bears more

immediately on my