252 Familiarities— Anonymous. [Sepr. 
poet sings about the bee, in verses that will last as long as the Iliad, 
“of ancestry 
Mysteriously remote and high ;” 
falith ‘older than “the tiger’s paws, the lion’s mane.” It is anterior to 
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mountains and valleys, to forests and flowers, to the winds and oceans. 
Tt Was, ere a tongue had spoken or an ear heard; ere the live cataracts 
whléw their'trumpets from the ‘steeps,” or the young nightingale had 
whispered its first love-notes to a rose-bud ; before vulgar and inharmo- 
. 
hious names were given to the gentlest and most beautiful of nature's 
family, or harsh and rugged objects received their appellations from the 
lips of music. It is the elder brother of the Universe—the ancestor 
of Earth; it nestled with Chaos in his cradle, and was contemporary 
with old ‘Time before he was christened. It was originally employed to 
denote the absence of a name: at the present day it signifies a variety 
of things; on the one hand—indigence, inability, and the questioners of 
human right divine ; on the other—opulence, intellect; and Sir Walter 
Scott. Methinks its genealogy would puzzle a society of antiquaries. 
The “(rarer monsters” of the world, the giants and genii, are so im- 
possibly remote, .so undateably ancient, that we are reduced to the 
necessity of doubting whether they ever existed at all; and having no 
parish registers to refer to, we should, from its pre-adamite antiquity, 
be sceptical as to the extraction of Anonymous itself, and might suspect 
that every thing grew up originally with a natural label appended to it, 
specifying its name and qualifications ; but that at this moment a name- 
less spirit, like those which erst inhabited rings and sword-knots, holds 
me by| the button of imagination, vaults into my pen as its chariot, and 
flies along the sheet, raining as it goes such a shower of vital ink, that 
an article springs up anonymously, words vegetate and blossom under 
my hand— ; 
“ Here buds an.A, and there a B, 
Here sprouts a V, and there a T, 
And all the flourishing letters stand in rows,” 
pressly fashioned .to fit into poetry—to sigh upon the) breast of\senti- 
MIBUDDE 
