Why are Italians at this day generally so good poets and painters? Because every man of any fashion amongst them hath his mistress

He is only fanastical that is not in fashion.

No Centaurs here, or Gorgons look to find,
My subject is of man, and human kind.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times

One fine day, Says Mister Mucklewraith to me, says he. "So! you're a poet in your house," and smiled. "A Poet? God forbid," I cried; and then It all came out: how Andrew slyly sent Verse to the paper; how they printed it In Poet's Corner.

The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."