POETIC PROMISE.
In the present age it is next to impossible to predict from specimens, however favourable, that a young man will turn out a great poet, or rather a poet at all. Poetic taste, dexterity in composition, and ingenious imitation, often produce poems that are very promising in appearance. But genius, or the power of doing something new, is another thing. Mr. Tennyson's sonnets, such as I have seen, have many of the characteristic excellencies of those of Wordsworth and Southey.
April 19. 1830.
It is a small thing that the patient knows of his own state; yet some things he does know better than his physician.
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I never had, and never could feel, any horror at death, simply as death.
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Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.
April 30. 1830.