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Thus he addresses his mistress:

Thou who, in many a propriety,

So truly art the sun to me.

Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can,
And let me and my sun beget a man.

Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:

Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been
So much as of original sin,

Such charms thy beauty wears as might
Desires in dying confest saints excite.
Thou with strange adultery

Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
Awake, all men do lust for thee,
And some enjoy thee when they sleep.

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As that which from chaf'd musk-cat's pores doth trill,
As th' almighty balm of th' early East,

Such are the sweet drops of my mistress' breast.
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,

They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets:

Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles. Donne.

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Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be pathetic:

As men in hell are from diseases free,

So from all other ills am I.

Free from their known formality:

But all pains eminently lie in thee. — Cowley.

They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions.

It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke;
In vain it something would have spoke:
The love within too strong for 'twas,

Like poison put into a Venice-glass.- Cowley.

In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as follows:

Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
Time's dead low-water; when all minds divest
To-morrow's business, when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
Who when he opes his eyes, must shut them then
Again by death, although sad watch he keep,
Doth practise dying by a little sleep,

Thou at this midnight seest me.

It must be, however, confessed of these writers that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle, yet where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention:

Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is,
Alike if it succeed, and if it miss;
Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound.
Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite,
Both at full noon and perfect night!
The stars have not a possibility

Of blessing thee;

If things then from their end we happy call,
'Tis hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

Hope, thou bold taster of delight,

Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour'st it quite!

Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor,

By clogging it with legacies before!

The joys, which we entire should wed,
Come deflower'd virgins to our bed;
Good fortune without gain imported be,
Such mighty customs paid to thee:
For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste;
If it take air before, its spirits waste.

To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim:

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin-compasses are two,
Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th' other foot, obliquely run.
Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end where I begun. · Donne.

In all these examples it is apparent that whatever is improper or vicious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange, and that the writers fail to give delight by their desire of exciting admiration.

IV

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

(1800-1859)

MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS

[Appeared in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1830, as a criticism of the following books: 1. The Omnipresence of the Deity: a Poem. By ROBERT MONTGOMERY. Eleventh Edition. London: 1830. 2. Satan: a Poem. By ROBERT MONTGOMERY. Second Edition. London: 1830.]

THE wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the covering of apologue; and though this practice is generally` thought childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay.

A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow that on a certain day he would sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed morning he went forth to buy one. There lived in his neighbourhood three rogues who knew of his vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. The first met him and said, "Oh Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for sacrifice." "It is for that very purpose," said the holy man, "that I came forth this day." Then the impostor opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, "Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue; callest thou that cur a sheep?" "Truly," answered the other, "it is a sheep of the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Oh Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods." "Friend," said the Brahmin, "either thou or I must be blind.”

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Just then one of the accomplices came up. "Praised be the gods," said the second rogue, "that I have been saved the trouble of going to the market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as I

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wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it?" When the Brahmin heard this, his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the air at a holy festival. "Sir," said he to the newcomer, "take heed what thou dost; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur." "Oh Brahmin," said the newcomer, "thou art drunk or mad!"

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At this time the third confederate drew near. "Let us ask this man," said the Brahmin, "what the creature is, and I will stand by what he shall say. To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin called out, "Oh stranger, what dost thou call this beast?" “Surely, oh Brahmin," said the knave, "it is a fine sheep." Then the Brahmin said, "Surely the gods have taken away my senses;" and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints.

Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit Æsop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that is worth the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently means to caution us against the practices of puffers, a class of people who have more than once talked the public into the most absurd errors, but who surely never played a more curious or a more difficult trick than when they passed Mr. Robert Montgomery off upon the world as a great poet.

In an age in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot subsist on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man who has not an independent fortune can devote himself to literary pursuits, unless he is assisted by patronage. In such an age, accordingly, men of letters too often pass their lives in dangling at the heels of the wealthy and powerful; and all the faults which dependence tends to produce, pass into their character. They become the parasites and slaves of the great. It is melancholy to think how many of the highest and most exquisitely formed of human intellects have been condemned to the ignominious labour of disposing the commonplaces of adulation in new forms and brightening them into new splendour. Horace invoking Augustus in the most enthusiastic language of religious veneration; Statius flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of bread; Ariosto versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly patron; Tasso extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a madhouse: these are but a few of the instances which might easily be given of the degradation to which

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