It is the privilege of authors and artists to see and to describe; to "see
clearly and describe vividly" gives the pass on all state occasions. It is
the "cap of darkness" and the _talaria_, and wafts them whither they will.
The doors of boudoirs and senate-chambers open quickly, and close after
them,--excluding the talentless and staring rabble. I, who am one of the
humblest of the seers,--a universal admirer of all things beautiful and
great,--from the commonwealths of Plato and Solon, severally, expulsed, as
poet without music or politic, and a follower of the great,--I, from my
dormitory, or nest, of twelve feet square, can, at an hour's notice, or
less, enter palaces, and bear away, unchecked and unquestioned, those
_imagines_ of Des Cartes which emanate or are thrown off from all forms,--
and this, not in imagination, but in the flesh.
Whether it was the "tone of society" which pervaded my "Florentine
letters," or my noted description of the boudoir of Egeria Mentale, I
could not just now determine; but these, and other humble efforts of mine,
made me known in palaces as a painter of beauty and magnificence; and I
have been in demand, to do for wealth what wealth cannot do for itself,--
namely, make it live a little, or, at least, spread as far, in fame, as
the rings of a stone-plash on a great pond.
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