Let Whoever May Have Attained

I Dare Affirm That Any Artist... Who Has Nothing Singular, Eccentric, Or At Least Reputed To Be So, In His Person, Will Never Become A Superior Talent.

Led By Long Years To My Last Hours, Too Late, O World, I Know Your Joys For What They Are. You Promise A Peace Which Is Not Yours To Give And The Repose That Dies Before It Is Born. The Years Of Fear And Shame To Which Heaven Now Set A Term, Renew Nothing In Me But The Old Sweet Error In Which, Living Overlong A Man Kills His Soul With No Gain To His Body. I Say And I Know Having Put It To The Proof, That He Has The Better Part In Heaven Whose Death Falls Nearest His Birth.

The Best Artist Has That Thought Alone Which Is Contained Within The Marble Shell; The Sculptor's Hand Can Only Break The Spell To Free The Figures Slumbering In The Stone.

I Live In Sin, To Kill Myself I Live; No Longer My Life My Own, But Sin's; My Good Is Given To Me By Heaven, My Evil By Myself, By My Free Will, Of Which I Am Deprived.

And Who Is So Barbarous As Not To Understand That The Foot Of A Man Is Nobler Than His Shoe, And His Skin Nobler Than That Of The Sheep With Which He Is Clothed.