With the noise of fountains wond'rous Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns ; Thus ye live on high, and then Thus ye teach us, every day, Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Double-liv'd in regions new! J. Keats. The Poet Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit), is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it; nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass farther. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness, but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you; with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner. Sir Philip Sidney. Reading S HALL I be thought fantastical, if I confess that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear-to mine, at leastthan that of Milton or of Shakespeare? It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley. Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queene for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. Winter evenings-the world shut out-with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloudto yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one-and it degenerates into an audience. Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. Charles Lamb. Old Books are Best OLD LD books are best! With what delight Of that old time, when on the stage And you, O friend, to whom I write, What though the print be not so bright, So lives again, we say of right: Beverly Chew. A Wish F two things one with Chaucer let me ride, OF And hear the Pilgrims' tales; or, that denied, Let me with Petrarch in a dew-sprent grove Ring endless changes on the bells of love. T. E. Brown. Chaucer A N old man in a lodge within a park ; The chamber walls depicted all around With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound, And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Rise odours of ploughed field or flowery mead. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne : Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : |