to the slightest motive. Everlasting inconsequentiality marks all that he attempts. All his impulses are loose, airy, devious, casual. The strongest of his purposes is lighter than the gossamer, "that wantons in the idle summer-air:" the brightest of his schemes a bubble blown by an infant's breath, that rises, glitters, bursts in the same instant:—
"Or like the Borealis race,
That flit ere you can mark their place:
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white, then gone for ever."
His mind has infinite activity, which only leads him into numberless chimeras; and infinite resources, which not being under the guidance of his will, only distract and perplex him. His genius has angel's wings; but neither hands nor feet. He soars up to heaven, circles the empyrean, or dives to the centre of the earth, but he neither lays his hands upon the treasures of the one, nor can find a resting place for his feet in the other. He is no sooner borne to the utmost point of his ambition, than he is hurried away from it again by the same fantastic impulse, or his own specific levity. He has all the faculties of the human mind but one, and yet without that one, the rest only impede and interfere with each other—"Like to a man on double business bound who both neglects." He would have done better if he had known less. His imagination thus becomes metaphysical, his metaphysics fantastical, his wit heavy, his arguments light, his poetry prose, his prose poetry, his politics turned—but not to account. He belongs to all parties and is of service to none. He gives up his independence of mind, and yet does not acquire independence of fortune. He offends others without satisfying himself, and equally by his servility and singularity, shocks the prejudices of all about him. If he had had but common moral principle, that is, sincerity, he would have been a great man; nor hardly, as it is, appears to us—
"Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess
"Of glory obscur'd."
