Of age, commenting on prodigious things.
For such the bounteous providence of heav'n,
In every breast implanting this desire240
Of objects new and strange,[O 1] to urge us on
With unremitted labour to pursue
Those sacred stores that wait the ripening soul,
In truth's exhaustless bosom. What need words
To paint its pow'r? For this, the daring youth245
Breaks from his weeping mother's anxious arms,
In foreign climes to rove: the pensive sage,
Heedless of sleep or midnight's harmful damp,
- ↑ this desire
Of objects new and strange] These two ideas are oft confounded; tho' it is evident the meer novelty of an object makes it agreeable, even where the mind is not affected with the least degree of wonder: whereas wonder indeed always implies novelty, being never excited by common or well-known appearances. But the pleasure in both cases is explicable from the same final cause, the acquisition of knowledge and inlargement of our views of nature: and on this account it is natural to treat of them together.
length perceive its own mistake, and be reconcil'd to what it had look'd on with aversion. In which case, a sort of instinctive justice naturally leads it to make amends for the injury, by running towards the other extreme of fondness and attachment.
Or lastly, tho' the object itself should always continue disagreeable, yet circumstances of pleasure or good fortune may occur along with it. Thus an association may a rise in the mind, and the object never be remember'd without those pleasing circumstances attending it; by which means the disagreeable impression it at first occasion'd will in time be quite obliterated.
