For
instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry. Dwell on
your own feelings; and doings:--and you will soon think yourselves
Tenth Muses; but forget your own feeling; and try, instead, to
understand a line or two of Chaucer or Dante: and you will soon
begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls--which is much like
the fact.
So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune,--you
meditate over its effects on you personally: and begin to think
that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the
other of profound significance; and that all the angels in heaven
have left their business for a little while, that they may watch
its effects on your mind. But give up this egotistic indulgence of
your fancy; examine a little what misfortunes, greater a thousand-
fold, are happening, every second, to twenty times worthier
persons: and your self-consciousness will change into pity and
humility; and you will know yourself so far as to understand that
"there hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man."
Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any person
of sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which relate to the
inner evil of the heart were as many, and as prominent, as they
are often supposed to be by careless readers.
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