Read it through once

In prosecuting this plan, the principal difficulty which presented itself was, that the language of men in a state of vivid sensation, and of strong emotion, is proverbial and metaphorical. Among men, in proportion as intellectual activity is in a state of successive awakening, the same thought or the same feeling recurs perpetually under similar expressions. A language, therefore, which is habitually chosen for common life, will, when tried by the severer laws of poetry, be found to abound with what are called common-places; it will abound with trite phraseology and images; and while it may be the more natural, on that very account it may be the less fit for becoming the vehicle of lofty or deep feeling.