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Essays in a series of letters to a friend
Essays in a series of letters to a friend Author:John Foster Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a man fliould confider his mind as either unfortunately conftrutled, or unwifely difci- plined. The latter indeed is, probably, true in every fuch inftance. L... more »etter n. " He afcendancy of imagination operates in various forms j I will endeavour to diftin- guifh thofe which may juflly be called romantic. The extravagance of imagination in romance has very much confided in the dif- play of a dePuny and courfe of life totally unlike the common condition of mankind. And you may have obferved in living individuals, that one of the effects fometimes produced by the predominance cf this faculty is, a perfuafion in a perfon's own mind that he is born to fome peculiar and extraordinary deftiny, while yet there are no extraordinary indications in the petfon or hiscircumftances. There was fomething rational in the early prefentiment which fome diftinguifhed men have entertained of their future career. When a celebrated general of the prefent times exclaimed, after performing the common military exercife in, a company of juvenile volunteers, " I (hall be a Commander in Chief," a fagacious ob- ferver of the figns of yet undeveloped powers, might have thought it indeed a rather fanguine, but probably would not have pronounced it an abfurd, anticipation. An elder and intelligent afTociate of Milton's youth might, without much difficulty, have believed himfelf Mening to an oracle, when fo powerful a genius avowed to him, that he regarded himfelf as deftined to produce a work which mould diftinguifh the nation and the age. The opening of uncommon faculties may be fometimes attended with thefe anticipations, and may be allowed-to exprefs them, perhaps even, as a ftimulus, encouraged to indulge them. Bur, in moft inltances, thefe magnificent pre- fumptions form, in the obferver's eye, a lu...« less