Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to
his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully
vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of
the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must
all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for every
idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or
religious truth, and he who knows most will have most power of
diversifying his scenes and of gratifying his reader with remote
allusions and unexpected instruction.

"All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study,
and every country which I have surveyed has contributed something
to my poetical powers."

"In so wide a survey," said the Prince, "you must surely have left
much unobserved. I have lived till now within the circuit of the
mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of
something which I had never beheld before, or never heeded."

"This business of a poet," said Imlac, "is to examine, not the
individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large
appearances. He does not number the streaks of the tulip, or
describe the different shades of the verdure of the forest. He is
to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking
features as recall the original to every mind, and must neglect the
minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked and another
have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious
to vigilance and carelessness.

"But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he