neglect is merited. Such men not only feel most acutely disparagement and contempt, but they are pleased and elevated in their own estimation, more than they would willingly allow, by any little token of admiration or respect on the part of the public, not so much from any value which they attach to the opinion of the public in itself, as from the sort of countenance which it lends them, when oppressed by their own misgivings. They need, as Hazlitt says in his Table Talk, a bolster to lean upon, a lining to their poor shivering, threadbare opinion of themselves." Yet they are sensible all the while of their own intellectual eminence, but even more strongly sensible of the worldly advantages of others; and even trying to set up the former, with some ostentation, as a counterpoise against the latter. These two failings are perfectly distinct in character, and, as it were, separate diseases of the mental frame. The one is a disfiguring but harmless freckle, the other an eating sore. QUARTERLY REVIEW, 1837. I BUT ask Of Nature that with which she will comply;— It is but in her summer's sun to bask, BYRON. DIM as the borrow'd beams of morn and stars, Is reason to the soul and as on high When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere ; DRYDEN. GOD is the first of all incorruptible Beings, eternal and unbegotten: He is not compounded of parts, there is nothing equal to him or like him. He is the author of all good, and entirely disinterested : the most excellent of all excellent beings, and the wisest of all intelligent authors: the father of equity, the parent of good laws, self-instructed, self-sufficient, and the first former of nature. ZOROASTER. SOONEST he speeds that most can lie and feign; SIR THOMAS WYATT. I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And mountains; and of all that we behold Nor perchance If I were not thus taught, should I the more For thou art with me here, upon the banks The language of my former heart, and read WORDSWORTH. ACTIVE minds can never be idle with impunity. OH grief, beyond all other griefs, when fate In the wide world, without that only tie How wonderful is Death, When throned on ocean's wave Must then that peerless form, Must putrefaction's breath Leave nothing of this heavenly sight But loathsomeness and ruin? Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it only a sweet slumber Stealing o'er sensation, Which the breath of roseate morning Chaseth into darkness? Will Ianthe wake again, And give that faithful bosom joy |