462 Familiarities — Quotations. [May, 



emtilate " Sir Charles Grandison"), as will qualify him to give an opinion 

 in any coterie where inquiry is disciplined by a due politeness. 



But, whatever may be their use or ornament to chapters and title- 

 pages, the chief art as well as elegance of poetical quotations consists in 

 leading their quick and tender branches, like a Tuscan vine, over the 

 nakedness of prose, and clothing it in the blossoms and the fruit of 

 an inspired eloquence. It is in the world of words, amid the dull but 

 perhaps necessary detail of every-day events — that quotations come 

 with a warmth and a welcome upon memory, and, like Milton's fish, 



" Show to the sun their wav'd coats dropt with gold." 

 They shine ujyn us like "new snow on a raven's back :" they bring us a 

 season of flowers in the killing frost ; and whether strewn on the grave of 

 common-sense, or twined into a birth-day garland for the temples of 

 romance, the fragrance and the colours are the same, and are such 

 as spring only from the stem of poetry. History herself should not 

 disdain a snatch of fine verse; it wouLl shew on her like " a dew-drop on 

 a lion's mane." In the dry and labouring essay, amid the windings of 

 many words and the accumulation of antecedents, we hail their sudden 

 and familiar appearances as patches of Nature's gi-een to repose on by 

 the way ; their " dulcet and harmonious breath" animates a train of 

 associations that dwell in the most sylvan haunts of emotion and senti- 

 ment ; to their fountains of "loosened silver" we turn for a refreshing 

 and a pleasant abstraction. Perhaps the author cited is one of those, who, 

 shunning the practice of the world, have taught the world to shun in 

 return ! whose poetry is too finely spun, whose philosophy is too quaint 

 and mystified for popular demand : perhaps we have experienced the 

 feeling which Mr. Wordsworth alludes to, in a poem worthy of the 

 simplicity and loneliness of the sentiment — 



" Oflen have I sighed to measure 



By myself a lonely pleasure; 



Sighed to think I read a book 



Onlj/ read per/mps hy me /" 

 Two words of such a book, though possessing no peculiar signification, 

 if met with in the dullest sentence, are enough : they call up, what has 

 been finely termed, the " lightning of the mind." We feel an instan- 

 taneous kindness and reverence towards an author (together with a high 

 opinion of his discrimination) who cites as it were the very language of 

 our dreams — the secret converse of our own invisible spirit. We are 

 almost startled at its being made public, and fancy that we have been at 

 some time ovei-heard reading. He is forthwith admitted a member of 

 our heart's privy council. His hard words and bad reasoning are forgiven : 

 we shut our ears to his angular periods — remembering only that his 

 habits and desires, his sympathies, perceptions and enjoyments, are 

 under the same master-key as our own — that he has struck into the same 

 path, drank at the same brook, mused upon the same bank, and plucked 

 almost the same leaf with ourselves. 



These are some of the virtues, some of the advantages of quotations. 

 I have said nothing of the scarcely less important points of displaying 

 a various reading, filling up a voracious page, or helping out some idea, 



" Pawing to get free 



" Its hinder parts." 

 Think of it, gentlemen who write I Cultivate the art — for an art it is. 

 It is not enough to set a high-sounding line on commas, or as it were on 

 crutches, and leave it to its own strength. It should be introduced 



