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 do we behold the
heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beacons on their
widely-separated heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical
intelligence from age to 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
have endeavored to draw it into further conversation, but in
vain; and whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place,
or whether it was another of those old day-dreams to which I am
subject, I have never, to this moment, been able to discover.
* Thorow earth and waters deepe,
The pen by skill doth passe:
And featly nyps the worldes abuse,
And shoes us in a glasse,
The vertu and the vice
Of every wight alyve;
The honey comb that bee doth make
Is not so sweet in hyve,
As are the golden leves
That drops from poet's head!
Which doth surmount our common talke
As farre as dross doth lead.
Pages:
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223