was as sore as a boil about that sonnet;" he not knowing that I was
myself the author of it.




CHAPTER II

Supposed irritability of men of genius brought to the test of facts--
Causes and occasions of the charge--Its injustice.


I have often thought, that it would be neither uninstructive nor
unamusing to analyze, and bring forward into distinct consciousness,
that complex feeling, with which readers in general take part against
the author, in favour of the critic; and the readiness with which they
apply to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon the scribblers of
his time

------genus irritabile vatum.

A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent
necessity of reliance on the immediate impressions of the senses, do,
we know well, render the mind liable to superstition and fanaticism.
Having a deficient portion of internal and proper warmth, minds of
this class seek in the crowd circum fana for a warmth in common, which
they do not possess singly. Cold and phlegmatic in their own nature,
like damp hay, they heat and inflame by co-acervation; or like bees
they become restless and irritable through the increased temperature
of collected multitudes. Hence the German word for fanaticism, (such