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quarter, I would ask, where is the advantage of drilling words for verses, when the knees of those verses are so weak that they cannot march from the parade?

Southey.-Flatnesses are more apparent to us in our language than in another, especially than in Latin and Greek. Beside, we value things proportionally to the trouble they have given us in the acquisition. Hence, in some measure, the importance we assign to German poetry. The meaning of every word, with all its affinities and relations, pursued with anxiety and caught with difficulty, impresses the understanding, sinks deep into the memory, and carries with it more than a column of our own, in which equal thought is expended and equal fancy is displayed. The Germans have among them many admirable poets; but if we had even greater, ours would seem smaller, both because there is less haziness about them, and because, as I said before, they would have given less exercise to the mind. He who has accumulated by a laborious life more than a sufficiency for its wants and comforts, turns his attention to the matter gained, oftentimes without a speculation at the purposes to which he might apply it. The man who early in the day has overcome, by vigilance and restraint, the strong impulses of his blood toward intemperance, falls not into it after, but stands composed and complacent upon the cool clear eminence, and hears within himself, amid the calm he has created, the tuneful pean of a godlike victory. Yet he loves the Virtue more because he fought for her, than because she crowned him. The scholar who has deducted from adolescence many hours of recreation, and instead of indulging in it, has embarked in the depths of literature; he who has left his own land far behind him, and has carried off rich stores of Greek, not only values it superlatively, as is just, but places all those who wrote in it too nearly on a level one with another, and the inferior of them above some of the best moderns. Porsm.-Dignity of thought arose from the Athenian form of government, propriety of expression from the genius of the language, from the habitude of listening daily to the most elaborate orations and dramas, and of contemplating at all hours the exquisite works of art, invited to them by gods and heroes. These environed the aspiring young poet, and their chasteness allowed him no swerving.

Southey.-Yet weakly children were born to genius in Attica as elsewhere.

Porson. They were exposed and died. The Greek poets, like nightingales, sing

"in shadicst covert hid ;" you rarely catch a glimpse of the person, unless at a funeral or a feast, or where the occasion is public. Mr. Wordsworth, on the contrary, strokes down his waistcoat, hems gently first, then hoarsely, then impatiently, rapidly and loudly. You turn your eyes, and see more of the showman than of the show. I do not complain of this; I only make the remark.

Southey. I dislike such comparisons and similes. It would have been better had you said he stands forth in sharp outline, and is, as the moon was said to be, without an atmosphere.

He

Porson.-Stop there. I discover more atmosphere than moon. You are talking like a poet; I must talk like a grammarian. And here I am reminded I found in his grammar but one pronoun, and that is the pronoun I. He can devise no grand character, and, indeed, no variety of smaller; his own image is reflected from floor to roof in every crystallization of his chilly cavern. shakes us with no thunder of anger-he leads us into no labyrinth of love; we lament on the stormy shore no Lycidas of his ; and even the Phillis who meets us at her cottage-gate, is not Phillis the neat-handed. Byron has likewise been censured for egotism, and the censure is applicable to him nearly in the same degree. But so laughable a story was never told of Byron as the true and characteristical one related of your neighbor, who being invited to read in company a novel of Scott's, and finding at the commencement a quotation from himself, totally forgot the novel, and recited his own poem from beginning to end, with many comments and more commendations. Yours are quite gratuitous: for it is reported of him that he never was heard to commend the poetry of any living author.

Southey. Because he is preparing to discharge the weighty debt he owes posterity. Instead of wasting his breath in extraneous praises, we never have been seated five minutes in his company, before he regales us with those poems of his own, which he is the most apprehensive may have slipt from our memory; and he delivers them with such a summer murmur of fostering modulation as would perfectly delight you.

Porson. My horse is apt to shy when I hang him at any door where he catches the sound of a ballad, and I run out to seize bridle and mane, and grow the alerter at mounting.

Southey-Wordsworth has now turned from the ballad style to the philosophical. Porson. The philosophical, I suspect, is antagonist to the poetical.

Southey. Surely never was there a spirit | but we value that fruit more highly which more philosophical than Shakspeare's. requires some warmth to swell, and some Porson-True, but Shakspeare infused science and skill to cultivate it. To de

it into living forms, adapted to its recep- scend from metaphor, that is the best poettion. He did not puff it out incessantly ry which, by its own powers, produces the from his own person, bewildering you in greatest and most durable emotion on genthe mazes of metaphysics, and swamping erous, well-informed and elevated minds. you in sententiousness. After all our argu- It often happens, that what belongs to the mentation, we merely estimate poets by subject is attributed to the poet. Tendertheir energy, and not extol them for a con- ness, melancholy, and other affections of geries of piece on piece, sounding of the the soul, attract us towards him who rephammer all day long, but obstinately un-resents them to us; and while we hang upmalleable into unity and cohesion.

Southey. I cannot well gainsay it. But pray remember the subjects of that poetry in Burns and Scott which you admire the most. What is martial must be the most soul-stirring.

Porson. Sure enough, Mr. Wordsworth's is neither martial nor mercurial. On all subjects of poetry, the soul should be agitated in one way or other. Now did he ever excite in you any strong emotion? He has had the best chance with me; for I have soon given way to him, and he has sung me asleep with his lullabies; it is in our dreams that things look brightest and fairest, and we have the least control over our affections.

Southey. You cannot but acknowledge that the poetry which is strong enough to support, as his does, a wide and high superstructure of morality, is truly beneficial and admirable. I do not say that utility is the first aim of poetry; but I do say that good poetry is none the worse for being useful; and that his is good in many parts, and useful in nearly all.

Porson.-An old woman, who rocks a cradle in a chimney-corner, may be more useful than the joyous girl who wafts my heart before her in the waltz, or holds it quivering in the bonds of harmony; but I happen to have no relish for the old woman, and am ready to dip my fork into the little well-garnished agro-dolce. It is inhumane to quarrel with ladies and gentlemen who are easily contented-that is, if you will let them have their own way; it is inhumane to snatch a childish book from a child, for whom it is better than a wise one. If diffuseness is pardonable anywhere, we will pardon it in Lyrical Ballads, passing over the conceited silliness of the denomination; but Mr. Wordsworth has got into the same habit on whatever he writes. Whortleberries are neither the better nor the worse for extending the hard slenderness of their fibres, at random and riotingly, over their native wastes; we care not how much of such soil is covered with such insipidities;

on his neck, we are ready to think him stronger than he is. No doubt, it is very unnatural that the wings of the Muse should seem to grow larger the nearer they come to the ground! Such is the effect, I presume, of our English atmosphere! But if Mr. Wordsworth should at any time become more popular, it will be owing in great measure to your authority and patronage; and I hope that, neither in health nor in sickness, he will forget his benefactor.

Southey. However that may be, it would be unbecoming and base in me to suppress an act of justice toward him, withholding my testimony in his behalf, when he appeals to the tribunal of the public. The reader who can discover no good, or indeed no excellent poetry in his manifold produc. tions, must have lost the finer part of his senses.

Porson. And he who fancies he has found it in all or most of them, is just as happy as if his senses were entire. A great portion of his compositions is not poetry, but only the plasma or matrix of poetry, which has something of the same color and material, but wants the brilliancy and solidity.

Southey-Acknowledge at least, that what purifies the mind elevates it also; and that he does it.

Porson. Such a result may be effected at a small expenditure of the poetical faculty, and indeed without any. But I do not say that he has none, or that he has little; I only say, and I stake my credit upon it, that what he has is not of the higher order. This is proved beyond all controversy by the effect it produces. The effect of the higher poetry is excitement; the effect of the inferior is composure. I lay down a general principle, and I leave to others the application of it, to-day, to-morrow, and in time to come. Little would it benefit me or you to take a side; and still less to let the inanimate raise animosity in us. There are partisans in favor of a poet, and oppositionists against him; just as there are in regard to candidates for a seat in Par

liament; and the vociferations of the critics and of the populace are equally loud, equally inconsiderate, and insane. The unknown candidate and the unread poet has alike a mob at his heels, ready to swear and fight for him. The generosity which the political mob shows in one instance, the critical mob shows in the other; when a man has been fairly knocked down, it raises him on the knee, and cheers him as cordially as it would the most triumphant. Let similar scenes be rather our amusement than our business: let us wave our hats, and walk on without a favor in them.

Southey. Be it our business, and not for one day, but for life, "to raise up them that fall" by undue violence. The beauties of Wordsworth are not to be looked for among the majestic ruins and under the glowing skies of Greece: we must find them out, like primroses, amidst dry thickets, rank grass, and withered leaves: but there they are; and there are tufts and clusters of them. There may be a chilliness in the air about them, there may be a faintness, a sickliness, a poverty in the scent; but I am sorry and indignant to see them trampled on.

Porson. He who tramples on rocks is in danger of breaking his shins; and he who tramples on sand or sawdust, loses his labor. Between us, we may keep up Mr. Wordsworth in his right position. If we set any thing on an uneven basis, it is liable to fall off; and none the less liable for the thing being high and weighty.

Southey. The axiom is sound. Porson.-Cleave it in two, and present the first half to Mr. Wordsworth. Let every man have his due: divide the mess fairly; not according to the voracity of the laborer, but according to the work. And (God love you) never let old women poke me with their knitting-pins, if I recommend them, in consideration of their hobbling and wheezing, to creep quietly on by the level side of Mr. Wordsworth's leadmines, slate quarries, and tarns, leaving me to scramble as I can among the Alpine inequalities of Milton and of Shakspeare. Come now; in all the time we have been walking together at the side of the lean herd you are driving to market,

"Can you make it appear The dog Porson has taken the wrong sow by the ear?"

Southey. It is easier to show that he has bitten it through, and made it unfit for curing. He may expect to be pelted for it.

Porson. In cutting up a honeycomb, we are sure to bring flies and wasps about

us; but my slipper is enough to crush fifty at a time, if a flap of the glove fails to frighten them off. The honeycomb must be cut up, to separate the palatable from the unpalatable; the hive we will restore to the cottager; the honey we will put in a cool place for those it may agree with; and the wax we will attempt to purify, rendering it the material of a clear and steady light to our readers. Well! I have rinsed my mouth of the poetry. This is about the time I take my ptisan. Be so kind, Mr. Southey, as to give me that bottle which you will find under the bed. Yes, yes; that is it; there is no mistake. Southey. It smells like brandy.

-

Porson. (Drinks twice.)-I suspect you may be in the right, Mr. Southey. Let me try it against the palate once more-just one small half glass. Ah! my hand shakes sadly! I am afraid it was a bumper. Really now, I do think, Mr. Southey, you guessed the right reading. I have scarcely a doubt left upon my mind. But in a fever, or barely off it, the mouth is wofully out of taste. If ever your hand shakes, take my word for it, this is the only remedy. The ptisan has done me good already. Albertus Magnus knew most about these matters. I hate those houses, Mr. Southey, where it is as easy to find the way out as the way in. Curse upon the architect who contrives them!

Southey. Your friends will be happy to hear from me that you never have been in better spirits, or more vivacious and prompt in conversation.

Porson. Tell them that Silenus can still bridle and mount an ass, and guide him gloriously. Come and visit me when I am well again; and I promise you the bottles shall diminish and the lights increase, before we part.

THE ROBBER'S DEATH BED.
'Unknown, untended, and alone,
Beneath the damp cave's dripping stone,
On his low bed the robber lay,
Watching the sun's departing ray,
As slowly, faintly, faded all
The dim light on that cavern's wall,
Alone, alone, and death was near,
And that stern man, unused to fear,
Whose shout had led the battle's strife,
Whose arm had bared the bloody knife,
Whose soul would neither spurn nor yield,
In secret way, or open field."

That giant frame, of sinewy make,
Why does each nerve and fibre quake?
Why glares around that eagle eye?

Can he, the dauntless, fear to die?

Yes! fear, a stranger-guest, has come
To fill that cave's mysterious gloom
With visions dire, and monsters fell,
And some remembered-all too well.
Dim pictures of the far-off past,
All hideous now, and all defaced.
What form is that advancing slow?
His mother wipes his misty brow,
He feels her breath, so gently warm,
His head rests on her feeble arm;
Kind words once more are heard, and felt,
A mother's knee in prayer has knelt.
'Tis all a dream! That form has gone,
The friendless one remains alone.
Yet something still sounds in his ear,
'Tis not the ocean-waves, though near;
It is the still small voice, which speaks
When nought beside the silence breaks.
That voice which neither wind nor wave
Nor aught can stifle, but the grave;
A still small voice, yet louder far
To him who hears, than din of war;
And deep, and clear, the warning cry,
When sickness comes, and death is nigh.

At early morn there sought that cave,
On high behest, two warriors brave;
Commissioned by their prince to find
That lawless man-to guard and bind,
At safety's risk, that iron hand,
And from its terrors rid the land.

Behold he sleeps! the veriest child
Might sport beside that ruffian wild:
So still, so fix'd, so moveless now,
The marble of that fearful brow.
No passion stirs his fluttering breath,
He sleeps the long cold sleep of death.
He sleeps! but who the tale shall tell
Of that lone robber's last farewell?
When earth, and sky, and sea, and air,
And all they held of rich or fair;
When all his greedy hands had gained,
And all his hold would have retained,
Were passing swiftly, surely by,
And fading from his drooping eye;
While nought but horror, guilt, and gloom,
Remained beside his opening tomb.
Yes; then, even then, that holy book,
With trembling hand the robber took;
And such the lessons learned in youth,
And such the force of heavenly truth,
That while condemned, the page he read,
Some hope of mercy o'er it shed

A ray more bright than earth could yield;
And feeling, all too long concealed,
Burst forth, o'ermastered by his fate.
But hark! that call,- One moment wait,'
He drops the book-it is too late!

you may obtain a very handsome library for nothing.

Do you not perceive, too, that by merely borrowing a volume at every possible opportunity, you are obtaining for yourself the reputation of a reading man; you are interesting in your studies dozens of people who, otherwise, would care not whether you knew A, B, C, or not? With your shelves thronged with borrowed volumes, you have an assurance that your hours of literary meditation frequently engage the thoughts of, alike, intimate and casual acquaintance. To be a good borrower of books is to get a sort of halo of learning about you not to be obtained by laying out money upon printed wisdom. For instance, you meet Huggins. He no sooner sees you than pop, you are associated with all the Cæsars; he having-simple Huggins!-lent you his Roman History bound in best historic calf. He never beholds you but he thinks of Romulus and Remus, the Tarpeian Rock, the Rape of the Sabines, and ten thousand other interesting and pleasurable events. Thus, you are doing a positive good to Huggins by continually refreshing his mind with the studies of his thoughtful youth; whilst, as I say, your appearance, your memory, is associated and embalmed by him with things that "will not die."

Consider the advantage of this. To one man you walk as Hamlet; why? you have upon your shelves that man's best edition of Shakspeare. To another you come as the archangel Michael. His illustrated Paradise Lost glitters among your borrowings. To this man, by the like magic, you are Robinson Crusoe; to this, Telemachus. I will not multiply instances: they must suggest themselves. Be sure, however, on stumbling upon what seems a rare and curious volume, to lay your borrowing hands upon it. The book may be Sanscrit, Coptic, Chinese: you may not understand a single letter of it; for which reason, be more sternly resolved to carry it away with you. The very act of borrowing such a mysterious volume implies that you are in some respects a deep fellow-invests you

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF BORROWING.- with a certain literary dignity in the eyes

HOPKINS'S UMBRELLA.

From the London Charivari.

You ask me to supply you with a list of books, that you may purchase the same for your private delectation. My dear boy, receive this, and treasure it for a truth: no wise man ever purchases a book. Fools buy books, and wise men-borrow them. By respecting, and acting upon this axiom,

of the lending. Besides, if you know not Sanscrit at the time you borrow, you may before you die. You cannot promise your self what you shall not learn; or, having borrowed the book, what you shall not forget.

There are three things that no man but a fool lends-or having lent, is not in the most hopeless state of mental crassitude if

he ever hope to get back again. These England, to shelter him from the rain? three things, my son, are-BOOKS, UMBRELLAS, Well, to return such a portable tent to the and MONEY! I believe, a certain fiction of hospitable soul who lent it,-what is it but the land assumes a remedy to the borrower; to offer the Arab payment for shelter; what but I know no case in which any man, being is it but to chaffer with magnanimity, to resufficiently dastard to gibbet his reputation duce its greatness to a mercenary lodgingas plaintiff in such a suit, ever fairly suc- housekeeper? Umbrellas may he "hedged ceeded against the wholesome prejudices about" by cobweb statutes; I will not swear of society. it is not so; there may exist laws that make such things property; but sure I am that the hissing contempt, the loud-mouthed indignation of all civilized society, would sibilate and roar at the bloodless poltroon, who should engage law on his side to obtain for him the restitution of a-lent umbrella!

In the first place, books being themselves but a combination of borrowed things, are not to be considered as vesting even their authors with property. The best man who writes a book, borrows his materials from the world about him, and therefore, as the phrase goes, cannot come into court with We now come to-MONEY. I have had, clean hands. Such is the opinion of some in my time, so little of it, that I am not of our wisest law-makers; who, therefore, very well informed on monetary history. I give to the mechanist of a mouse-trap, a think, however, that the first Roman coin more lasting property in his invention than was impressed with a sheep. A touching if he had made an Iliad. And why? The and significant symbol, crying aloud to all mouse-trap is of wood and iron: trees, men," Children, fleece one another." My though springing from the earth, are pro- son, it is true, that the sheep has vanished perty; iron, dug from the bowels of the from all coin: nevertheless, it is good to earth, is property: you can feel it, hammer respect ancient symbols: therefore, whatit, weigh it but what is called literary ge-ever the gold or silver may bear-whatever nius is a thing not ponderable, an essence the potentate, whatever the arms upon the (if indeed, it be an essence) you can make obverse, see with your imaginative eye nonothing of, though put into an air-pump. The thing but the sheep; listen with your fancy's mast, that falls from beech, to fatten hogs, ear to nought but-" fleece"-" fleece!" is property; as the forest laws will speedily let you know, if you send in an alien pig to feed upon it; but it has been held, by wise, grave men in Parliament, that what falls from human brains to feed human souls, is no property whatever. Hence, private advantage counsels you to borrow all the books you can; whilst public opinion abundantly justifies you in never returning

them.

I am aware, that a prejudice exists amongst the half-educated, that borrowed money is as money obtained by nothing; that, in fact, it is not your own; but is only trusted in your hands for such and such a time. My son; beware of this prejudice; for it is the fruit of the vilest ignorance. On the contrary, look upon all borrowed money, as money dearly, richly earned by your ingenuity in obtaining it. Put it to I have now to speak of UMBRELLAS. Would your account as the wages of your intellect, you, my son, from what you have read of your address, your reasoning or seductive Arab hospitality-would you think of count-powers. Let this truth, my son, be ening out so many penny-pieces, and laying graven upon your very brain-pan. To borthem in the hand of your Arab host, in re- row money is the very highest employment turn for the dates and camel's milk that, of the human intellect; to pay it back again, when fainting, dying with thirst, hunger, is to show yourself a traitor to the genius and fatigue, he hastened to bestow upon that has successfully worked within you. you? Would you, I say, chink the copper coin in the man's ear, in return for this kindly office, which the son of the desert thinks an "instrumental part of his religion?" If, with an ignorance of the proper usages of society, you would insult that high-souled Arab by any tender of money, then, my son-but no! I think you incapa ble of the sordidness of such an act, then would you return a Borrowed Umbrella!

Consider it. What is an umbrella but a tent that a man carries about with himin China, to guard him from the sun,-in

You may, however, wish to know how to put off your creditor-how to dumbfound him, should the idiot be clamorous. One answer will serve for books, umbrellas, and money. As for books, by the way, you may always have left them in a hackney-coach. (This frequent accident of book-borrowers, doubtless, accounts for the literary turn of most hackney-coachmen.) Still, I will supply you with one catholic answer.

Hopkins once lent Simpson, his next-door neighbor, an umbrella. You will judge of the intellect of Hopkins, not so much from

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