He would keep his energies for a great work; poetry was, after all, his forte: he would not fritter himself away on prose and periodicals, but would win for himself, etc.etc.If he made a mistake, it was at least a pardonable one.
But Elsley became not only a more idle, but a more morose man.

He began to feel the evils of solitude.

There was no one near with whom he could hold rational converse, save an antiquarian parson or two; and parsons were not to his taste.

So, never measuring his wits against those of his peers, and despising the few men whom he met as inferior to himself, he grew more and more wrapt up in his own thoughts and his own tastes.

His own poems, even to the slightest turn of expression, became more and more important to him.