may crowded with common places, and their thoughts expanded into tediousness. But with the true poet every thing is terse, touching, or brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He illustrates them by every thing that he sees most striking in nature and art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing before him. His writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which inclose within a small compass the wealth of the language-its family jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be renewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long reach of literary history. What vast valleys of dulness, filled with monkish legends and academical controversies. What bogs of theological speculations; what dreary wastes of metaphysics. Here and there only we behold the heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beacons on their widely separated heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical intelligence from age I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the day, when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It was the verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close the library. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome was silent; the clasps were closed, and it looked perfectly unconscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library two or three times since, and en * Thorow earth, and waters deepe, The vertu and the vice Of every wight alyve; The honey combe that bee doth make, Is not so sweete in hyve, As are the golden leves That drops from poet's head: Which doth surmount our common talke As farre as dros doth lead. Churchyard. deavoured to draw it into farther conversation, but in vain. And whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place, or whether it was another of those odd day dreams, to which I am subject, I have never, to this moment, been able to discover. |