others this labour, if I knew how without it to present an
intelligible statement of my poetic creed,--not as my opinions, which
weigh for nothing, but as deductions from established premises
conveyed in such a form, as is calculated either to effect a
fundamental conviction, or to receive a fundamental confutation. If I
may dare once more adopt the words of Hooker, "they, unto whom we
shall seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in
their own hands to spare that labour, which they are not willing to
endure." Those at least, let me be permitted to add, who have taken so
much pains to render me ridiculous for a perversion of taste, and have
supported the charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other
authority than their own conjectures, owe it to themselves as well as
to me not to refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory
which I do acknowledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining the
grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments which I offer in its
justification.




CHAPTER V

On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotle to
Hartley.


There have been men in all ages, who have been impelled as by an
instinct to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote
their attempts to its solution. The first step was to construct a
table of distinctions, which they seem to have formed on the principle