we know them only in their active mental states,—­in their triumphs; we do not see them when sluggishness has succeeded the effort which was delight.  The statue does not come to her white limbs all at once.  It is the bronze wrestler, not the flesh and blood one, that stands forever over a fallen adversary with pride of victory on his face.  Of the labour, the weariness, the self-distrust, the utter despondency of the great writer, we know nothing.  Then, for the attainment of mere happiness or contentment, any high faculty of imagination is a questionable help.  Of course imagination lights the torch of joy, it deepens the carmine on the sleek cheek of the girl, it makes wine sparkle, makes music speak, gives rays to the rising sun.  But in all its supreme sweetnesses there is a perilous admixture of deceit, which is suspected even at the moment when the senses tingle keenliest.  And it must be remembered that this potent faculty can darken as well as brighten.  It is the very soul of pain.  While the trumpets are blowing in Ambition’s ear, it whispers of the grave.  It drapes Death in austere solemnities, and surrounds him with a gloomy court of terrors.  The life of the imaginative man is never a commonplace one:  his lights are brighter, his glooms are darker, than the lights and gloom of the vulgar.  His ecstasies are as restless as his pains.  The great writer has this perilous faculty in excess; and through it he will, as a matter of course, draw out of the atmosphere of circumstance surrounding him the keenness of pleasure and pain.  To my own notion, the best gifts of the gods are neither the most glittering nor the most admired.  These gifts I take to be, a moderate ambition, a taste for repose with circumstances favourable thereto, a certain mildness of passion, an even-beating pulse, an even-beating heart.  I do not consider heroes and celebrated persons the happiest of mankind.  I do not envy Alexander the shouting of his armies, nor Dante his laurel wreath.  Even were I able, I would not purchase these at the prices the poet and the warrior paid.  So far, then, as great writers—­great poets, especially—­are of imagination all compact—­a peculiarity of mental constitution which makes a man go shares with every one he is brought into contact with; which makes him enter into Romeo’s rapture when he touches Juliet’s cheek among cypresses silvered by the Verona moonlight, and the stupor of the blinded and pinioned wretch on the scaffold before the bolt is drawn—­so far as this special gift goes, I do not think the great poet,—­and by virtue of it he is a poet,—­is likely to be happier than your more ordinary mortal.  On the whole, perhaps, it is the great readers rather than the great writers who are entirely to be envied.  They pluck the fruits, and are spared the trouble of rearing them.  Prometheus filched fire from heaven, and had for reward the crag of Caucasus, the chain, the vulture; while they for whom he stole it cook their suppers upon it, stretch out benumbed hands towards it, and see its light reflected in their children’s faces.  They are comfortable:  he, roofed by the keen crystals of the stars, groans above.