through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens." If Collins had had a better constitution, I do not believe that he would have written his projected work upon the Restoration of Literature, fit as he was by scholarship for the task, but he would have been the greatest poet since the days of Milton. If his friend Thomas Warton had had a little more of his delicacy of organization, the love of books would almost have made him a poet. His edition of the minor poems of Milton is a wilderness of sweets. It is the only one in which a true lover of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation; though I confess I am inclined enough to pardon any notes that resemble it, however numerous. The "builded rhyme" stands at the top of the page, like a fair edifice with all sorts of flowers and fresh waters at its foot. The young poet lives there, served by the nymphs and fauns. Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades. Huc ades, o formose puer: tibi lilia plenis Among the old writers I must not forget Ben Jonson and Donne. Cowley has been already mentioned. His boyish love of books, like all the other inclinations of his early life, stuck to him to the last; which is the greatest reward of virtue. I would mention Izaak Walton, if I had not a grudge against him. His brother fishermen, the divines, were also great fishers of books. I have a grudge against them and their divinity. They talk much of the devil and divine right, and yet forget what Shakspeare says of the devil's friend Nero, that he is "an angler in the lake of darkness." Selden was called "the walking library of our nation." It is not the pleasantest idea of him; but the library included poetry and wit, as well as heraldry and the Jewish doctors. His Table Talk is equally pithy and pleasant, and truly worthy of the name, for it implies other speakers. Indeed it was actually what it is called, and treasured up by his friends. Selden wrote complimentary verses to his friends the poets, and a commentary on Drayton's Polyolbion. Drayton was himself a reader, addicted to all the luxuries of scholarship. Chapman sat among his books, like an astrologer among his spheres and altitudes. How pleasant it is to reflect, that all these lovers of books have themselves become books! What better metamorphosis could Pythagoras have desired! How Ovid and Horace exulted in anticipating theirs! And how the world have justified their exultation! They had a right to triumph over brass and marble. It is the only visible change which changes no farther; which generates, and yet is not destroyed. Consider: minds themselves are exhausted; cities perish; kingdoms are swept away, and man weeps with indignation to think that his own body is not immortal. Muoiono le città, muoiono i regni, E l' uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni. Yet this little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape of a book, has existed thousands of years, nor since the invention of the press can anything short of an universal convulsion of nature abolish it. To a shape like this, so small yet so comprehensive, so slight yet so lasting, so insignificant yet so venerable, turns the mighty activity of Homer, and so turning, is enabled to live and warm us for ever. To a shape like this turns the placid sage of Academus: to a shape like this the grandeur of Milton, the exuberance of Spenser, the pungent elegance of Pope, and the volatility of Prior. In one small room, like the compressed spirits of Milton, can be gathered together. The assembled souls of all that men held wise. May I hope to become the meanest of these existences? This is a question which every author who is a lover of books, asks himself some time in his life; and which must be pardoned, because it cannot be helped. I know not. I cannot exclaim with the poet, Oh that my name were number'd among theirs, For my mortal days, few and feeble as the rest of them may be, are of consequence to others. But I should like to remain visible in this shape. The little of myself that pleases myself, I could wish to be accounted worth pleasing others. I should like to survive so, were it only for the sake of those who love me in private, knowing as I do what a treasure is the possession of a friend's mind, when he is no more. At all events, nothing, while I live and think, can deprive me of my value for such treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last, and love them till I die; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my overbeating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy. CHAPTER LXIV. Bees, Butterflies, &c., with the consideration of a curious argument, drawn from the government of the hive. ALEXANDER said, that if he were not Alexander, he should wish to be Diogenes. Reader, what sort of animal would you be, if you were obliged to be one, and were not a man? Irish Reader :-A woman. Oh, ho! The choice is judicious, but not to the purpose, "you divil :”—we mean, out of the pale of the species. Consider the question, dear readers, and answer it to your friends and consciences. The pastime is pretty, and fetches out the character. Nor is there anything in it unworthy the dignity of your humanity, as that liberal term may show us, without farther reasons. Animals partake with us the gifts of song, and beauty, and the affections. They beat us in some things, as in the power of flight. The dove has the wings of the angel. The meanest reptile has eyes and limbs, as well as Nicholas, emperor of all the Russias. Sir Philip Sydney tells us of a riding-master at Vienna, who expatiated so eloquently on the qualities of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost persuaded our illustrious countryman to wish himself a horse. A year or two back, everybody in London that had a voice, was resolved upon being "a butterfly, born in a bower:" and Goldsmith had such a tendency to sympathize with the least sympathetic part of the creation, that he took a pleasure in fancying himself writing an autobiography of fish. It was the inconside rate laugh of Johnson, upon his mention of it, that produced that excellent retort on the Doctor's grandiosity of style: "If you were to describe little fish conversing, you would make them talk like great whales." How different from the sensations of mankind, with its delicate skin and apprehensive fingers, must be those of feathered and scaled animals, of animals with hoofs and claws, and of such creatures as beetles and other insects, who live in coats of mail, have twenty feet apiece, and hundreds of eyes! A writer who should make these creatures talk, would be forced, in spite of his imagination, to write parts of his account in a jargon, in order to typify what he could not express. What must be their sensations when they awake; when they spin webs; when they wrap themselves up in the chrysalis; when they stick for hours together on a wall or a pane of glass, apparently stupid and insensible? What may not the eagle see in the sky, beyond the capabilities of our vision? And on the other hand, what possibilities of visible existence round about them may they not realize; what creatures not cognisable by our senses. There is reason to believe in the existence of myriads of earthly creatures, who are not conscious of the presence of man. Why may not man be unconscious of others, even at his side? There are minute insects that evidently know nothing of the human hand that is close to them; and millions in water and in air that apparently can have no conception of us. As little may our five senses be capable of knowing others. But what, it may be asked, is the good of these speculatious! To enlarge knowledge, and vivify the imagination. The universe is not made up of hosiery and the three per cents. ; no, nor even of the Court Guide. Sir Thomas Browne would not have thought it beneath him to ask what all those innumerable little gentry (we mean the insects) are about, between our breakfast and dinner; how the time passes in the solitudes of America, or the depths of the Persian gulf; or what they are doing even, towards three in the afternoon, in the planet Mercury. Without going so far as that for an enlargement of our being, it will do us no harm to sympathize with as many creatures as we can. It gives us the privilege of the dervise, who could pitch himself into the animals he killed, and become a stag or a bird. We know not what sort of a fish Goldsmith could have made of himself. La Fontaine's animals are all La Fontaine, at least in their way of talking. As far as luxury goes, and a total absence from human cares, nobody has painted animal enjoyment better than the most luxurious of poets, Spenser, in the description of his Butter |