on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave
speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell--by distance
made more sweet--inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is
like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at
least to do so--for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of
poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's conversation.--I
should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them,
by mingling in their pastime.

I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of very
superior capacity to my own--not, if I know myself at all, from any
considerations of jealousy or self-comparison, for the occasional
communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of
my life--but the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above
you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent doses of
original thinking from others, restrain what lesser portion of that
faculty you may possess of your own. You get entangled in another
man's mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. You
are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to
lassitude. The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce
me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive thoughts from
others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are
cast, must be your own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's
intellectual frame.--

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, as
little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards
by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its
loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.