Experience Informs Us That The First Defence

A Savage Place! As Holy And Enchanted/as E'er Beneath The Waning Moon Was Haunted/by Woman Wailing For Her Demon Lover!

Oh, The Difficulty Of Fixing The Attention Of Men On The World Within Them!

The Imagination ... That Reconciling And Mediatory Power, Which Incorporating The Reason In Images Of The Sense And Organizing (as It Were) The Flux Of The Senses By The Permanence And Self-circling Energies Of The Reason, Gives Birth To A System Of Symbols, Harmonious In Themselves, And Consubstantial With The Truths Of Which They Are The Conductors.

It Has Been Observed Before That Images, However Beautiful, Though Faithfully Copied From Nature, And As Accurately Represented In Words, Do Not Of Themselves Characterize The Poet. They Become Proofs Of Original Genius Only As Far As They Are Modified By A Predominant Passion; Or By Associated Thoughts Or Images Awakened By That Passion; Or When They Have The Effect Of Reducing Multitude To Unity, Or Succession To An Instant; Or Lastly, When A Human And Intellectual Life Is Transferred To Them From The Poet's Spirit.

Shakespeare Knew The Human Mind, And Its Most Minute And Intimate Workings, And He Never Introduces A Word, Or A Thought, In Vain Or Out Of Place; If We Do Not Understand Him, It Is Our Own Fault.