We have thought it expedient to point out briefly the peculiar beauty of some of our author's lines; but it cannot be necessary to point out the one peculiar and exclusive quality of his writings--his perspicacity--his connectedness. His verse "flows due on to the Propontic, nor knows retiring ebb." You are never at a loss to know what he means. In his sublimest passages he is intelligible. This is his great beauty. No poet perhaps is so essentially _logical_. We close our specimens with another short poem; it is entitled,
Know then this truth, enough for man to know: Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Retreating lightly with a lovely fear From grave to gay, from lively to severe, To err is human, to forgive divine, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine Like quills upon the fretful porcupine. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
We ne'er shall look upon his like again, For panting time toils after him in vain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain; Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay!
Leaving this great poet's samples of the mighty line, or, as it is sometimes called, the lofty rhyme, to "speak for themselves," we conclude with a word or two on a subject to which _one_ of his effusions here printed has (thanks to what are called the critics) unexpectedly led--we mean the subject of Literary Loans, or, as they are more familiarly and perhaps felicitously designated, Literary Thefts. A critic of high repute has said, "A man had better steal anything on earth, than the thoughts of another;" agreed, unless when he steals the thought, he steal the words with it. The economising trader in Joe Miller who stole his brooms ready made, carried on a prosperous business. Some authors steal only the raw material; or rather, they run away with another man's muse, but for fear of detection, and to avoid the charge of felony, leave the drapery behind--a practice which cannot be too severely reprehended. It is the same principle on which, according to Sheridan (Sir Fretful's _friend!_) gipsies disguise stolen children to make them pass for their own. Now Sir Fretful, alluding to Shakspeare in a poem which has never yet been published, says very nobly--