human
What say you to that wish? If you have a germ of poetry in you such verse ought to bring it into flower.
gpt
Ay, answered I, though not exactly in accordance with the truth;
human
Yes, and how industrious the good gentlemen are in debasing themselves! Their ingenuity is never half so much shown in a simile as in a compliment; I know nothing in nature more melancholy than the discovery of any meanness in a great man. There is so little to redeem the dry mass of follies and errors from which the materials of this life are composed, that anything to love or to reverence becomes, as it were, the sabbath for the mind. It is better to feel, as we grow older, how the respite is abridged, and how the few objects left to our admiration are abased. What a foe not only to life, but to all that dignifies and ennobles it, is Time! Our affections and our pleasures resemble those fabulous trees described by Saint Oderic: the fruits which they bring forth are no sooner ripened into maturity than they are transformed into birds and fly away. But these reflections cannot yet be familiar to you. Let us return to Cowley. Do you feel any sympathy with his prose writings? For some minds they have a great attraction.
gpt
They have for mine, answered I:
human
The world, answered St. John, with a melancholy smile,