"Cæcubum, et prælo domitam Caleno Pocula Colles." L'un gagne l'autre perd. After all, the compensation balance in this world will invariably be found somehow exquisitely adjusted; and, what cannot always be returned equivalent in kind, we may often more than repay by other means in loyalty and loving kindness. Those, who only know what it is even to attempt the art of painting landscapes after nature, not only obtain a quicker eye for color, but acquire a keener admiration of the atmospherical influences acting upon the varicolored and ever changing beauties of earth and sky and sea. They soon learn to discover new sources of infinite worship, in the cloud thrown shadows on the wine-dark billows of the ocean, as Homer saw them, and in the ineffable blue emerald hues of its lucid depths; in the delicate pale green of early autumnal evening skies, or in the deep earthward purple shadowings of the westering sun, and myriad lesser shades of every tone and tinct. So he who has only tried his own feeble wing in a few flutterings in the different ranges of composition will have obtained a more perfect taste for all kinds of genuine poetry, whether serious, dramatic, erotic, witty, or humorous; and will necessarily have cultivated, in such essayings, not only a higher power of appreciating, but a larger capability for thoroughly enjoying the more perfect and loftier productions of superior and inspired minds. "Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum." Nor, on the other hand, does it befall every versifier to see his lines carved in the precious metals or occupying honored places in stone; or amid the lyrics of the day to own even one marked as a favorite by popular approval. The writer may also remember with satisfaction having been a contributor to the old series of "Colburn's New Monthly Magazine," a periodical now in the second half century of its existence, and with which have been associated some of the most illustrious names in contemporaneous English literature. |