XXXIII.

Mr. Ais frequently spoken of as one of our most industrious writers; and in fact when we consider how much he has written, we perceive at once that he must have been industrious, or he could never (like an honest woman as he is) have so thoroughly succeeded in keeping himself from being "talked about."

XXXIV.

That a cause leads to an effect is scarcely more certain than that, so far as Morals are concerned, a repetition of effect tends to the generation of cause. Herein lies the principle of what we so vaguely term "Habit."

XXXV.

With the exception of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall,” I have never read a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with so much of the most delicate imagination as the "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" of Miss Barrett. I am forced to admit, however, that the latter work is a palpable imitation of the former, which it surpasses in thesis, as much as it falls below it in a certain calm energy, lustrous and indomitable-such as we might imagine in a broad river of molten gold.

XXXVI.

What has become of the inferior planet which Decuppis about nine years ago declared he saw traversing the disc of the sun?

XXXVII.

Ignorance is bliss"-but, that the bliss be real, the ignorance must be so profound as not to suspect itself ignorant. With this understanding, Boileau's line may be read thus: Le plus fou toujours est le plus satisfait,"

"toujours" in place of "souvent."

XXXVIII.

Bryant and Street are both essentially descriptive poets; and descriptive poetry even in its happiest manifestation is

not of the highest order. But the distinction between Bryant and Street is very broad. While the former, in reproducing the sensible images of Nature, reproduces the sentiments with which he regards them, the latter gives us the images and nothing beyond. He never forces us to feel what we feel he must have felt.

XXXIX.

In lauding Beauty, Genius merely evinces a filial affection To Genius Beauty gives life-reaping often a reward in Immortality.

XL.

! Well!-

And this is the " American Drama" ofthat "Conscience which makes cowards of us all" will permit me to say in praise of the performance, only that it is not quite so bad as I expected it to be. But then I always expect too much.

XLI.

What we feel to be Fancy will be found fanciful still, whatever be the theme which engages it. No subject exalts it into Imagination. When Moore is termed "a fanciful poet," the epithet is applied with precision. He is. He is fanciful in "Lalla Rookh," and had he written the "Inferno" in the "Inferno" he would have contrived to be still fanciful and nothing beyond.

XLII.

When we speak of “ a suspicious man," we may mean either one who suspects, or one to be suspected. Our language needs either the adjective "suspectful," or the adjective "suspectable."

XLIII.

"To love," says Spenser, "is

To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,

To speed, to give, to want, to be undone.

The philosophy here might be rendered more profound,

by the mere omission of a comma.

We all know the willing

blindness the voluntary madness of Love. We express this in thus punctuating the last line:

it.

To speed, to give-to want to be undone.

It is a case, in short, where we gain a point by omitting

XLIV.

Miss Edgeworth seems to have had only an approximate comprehension of "Fashion," for she says, "If it was the fashion to burn me, and I at the stake, I hardly know ten persons of my acquaintance who would refuse to throw on a fagot." There are many who, in such a case, would "refuse to throw on a fagot"-for fear of smothering out the fire.

XLV.

I am beginning to think with Horsley-that "the People have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them."

XLVI.

"It is not fair to review my book without reading it," says Mr. Mathews, talking at the critics, and as usual, expecting impossibilities. The man who is clever enough to write such a work, is clever enough to read it, no doubt; but we should not look for so much talent in the world at large. Mr. Mathews will not imagine that I mean to blame him. The book alone is in fault, after all. The fact is that, es lasst sich nicht lesen "-it will not permit itself to be read. Being a hobby of Mr. Mathews's and brimful of spirit, it will let nobody mount it but Mr. Mathews.

XLVII.

It is only to teach his children Geography, that G wears a boot, like the picture of Italy upon the map.

XLVIII.

In his great Dictionary, Webster seems to have had an idea of being more English than the English-" plus Arabe qu'en Arabie."*

*Count Anthony Hamilton.

That there were once

66

XLIX.

seven wise men " is by no means, strictly speaking, an historial fact; and I am rather inclined to rank the idea among the Kabbala.

L.

Painting their faces to look like Macaulay, some of our critics manage to resemble him, at length, as a Masaccian does a Rafaëllian Virgin; and, except that the former is feebler and thinner than the other-suggesting the idea of its being the ghost of the other-not one connoisseur in ten can perceive any difference. But then, unhappily, even the street lazzaroni can feel the distinction.

PINAKIDIA.

UNDER the head of "Random Thoughts," "Odds and Ends, "Stray Leaves," "Scraps," "Brevities," and a variety of similar titles, we occasionally meet, in periodicals and elsewhere, with papers of rich interest and value, the result in some cases of much thought and more research, expended, however, at a manifest disadvantage, if we regard merely the estimate which the public are willing to set upon such articles. It sometimes occurs that in papers of this nature may be found a collective mass of general but more usually of classical erudition, which, if dexterously besprinkled over a proper surface of narrative, would be sufficient to make the fortunes of one or two hundred ordinary novelists in these our good days, when all heroes and heroines are necessarily men and women of "extensive acquirements." But for the most part these "Brevities," etc., are either piecemeal cullings at second-hand from a variety of sources hidden or supposed to be hidden, or more audacious pilferings from those vast storehouses of brief facts, memoranda, and opinions in general literature, which are so abundant in all the principal libraries of Germany and France. Of the former species the Koran of Laurence Sterne is, at the same time, one of the most consummately impudent and silly, and it may well be doubted whether a single paragraph of any merit in the whole of it may not be found, nearly verbatim, in the works of some one of his immediate contemporaries. If the Lacon of Mr. Colton is any better, its superiority consists altogether in a deeper ingenuity in disguising his stolen wares, and in that prescriptive right of the strongest, which, time out of mind, has decided upon calling every