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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