_NOTES_
NOTE to THE THORN--This Poem ought to have been preceded by an
introductory Poem, which I have been prevented from writing by never
having felt myself in a mood when it was probable that I should
write it well.--The character which I have here introduced speaking
is sufficiently common. The Reader will perhaps have a general
notion of it, if he has ever known a man, a Captain of a small
trading vessel for example, who being past the middle age of life,
had retired upon an annuity or small independent income to some
village or country town of which he was not a native, or in which he
had not been accustomed to live. Such men having little to do become
credulous and talkative from indolence; and from the same cause, and
other predisposing causes by which it is probable that such men may
have been affected, they are prone to superstition. On which account
it appeared to me proper to select a character like this to exhibit
some of the general laws by which superstition acts upon the mind.
Superstitious men are almost always men of slow faculties and deep
feelings; their minds are not loose but adhesive; they have a
reasonable share of imagination, by which word I mean the faculty
which produces impressive effects out of simple elements; but they
are utterly destitute of fancy, the power by which pleasure and
surprize are excited by sudden varieties of situation and by
accumulated imagery.
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