142 TO A STREAMLET. 



An eye like Mars, to threaten and command ; 



A station like the herald Mercury, 



New lighted on a heaven-kissing- hill ; 



A combination and a form, indeed, 



Where every god did seem to set his seal, 



To give the world assurance of a man. 



This was your husband. Look you now, what follows : 



Here is your husband ; like a mildew'd ear* 



Blasting his wholesome brother." 



In the brief sketch of the several characters of the author, to which 

 we are necessarily confined in the progress of these "papers" we are 

 prevented from embracing all the points of this personage : sufficient 

 has, perhaps, been said to wrest it in some respects from the mis- 

 representations of erroneous criticism, and to point the way to those 

 who may wish to prosecute the enquiry. 



Hence those points of character which are by many adduced as 

 contradictions, will be found to be genuine and natural traits, exam- 

 ples of which we are every hour presented with in the varied and 

 complicated maze of human existence; and far from allowing 

 Hamlet to be that mass of discordant materials to which some would 

 persuade us, a due reflection upon the whole construction of the 

 character, in its multiplied relations with the other parts of the 

 tragedy, discovers to us the "corner-stone" of a superb edifice, 

 whose elegant proportions remain engraven upon our minds in all 

 the beautiful exactitude of intellectual sublimity, conveying a deep 

 moral impression which the imagination, retraces with pleasure, and 

 to which the mind loves to recur again and again. 



T. 



TO A STREAMLET. 



ONWARD, onward, limpid rill, 

 Thou art ever flowing : 



Music making at thy will, 

 Balmy life bestowing. 



Beautifier of the vale 

 Adorner of the plain ; 



Never wert thou known to fail 

 In thy flow or strain. 



Centuries have passed away 

 Since thy course began ; 



Still thou knowest not decay 

 Like ennobled man. 



* The figure of the mildew'd ear is evidently borrowed from the Bible 

 Gen. xliv. 6, 7. 



