LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 291 



gnage. Truly, as compared with the present, these old 

 voices seem to come from the morning fields and not the 

 paved thoroughfares of thought. 



Even the " Retrospective Review " continues to be 

 good reading, in virtue of the antique aroma (for wine 

 only acquires its bouquet by age) which pervades its pages. 

 Its sixteen volumes are so many tickets of admission to 

 the vast and devious vaults of the sixteenth and seven 

 teenth centuries, through which we wander, tasting a 

 thimbleful of rich Canary, honeyed Cyprus, or subacidu- 

 lous Hock, from what dusty butt or keg our fancy 

 chooses. The years during which this review was pub 

 lished were altogether the most fruitful in genuine ap 

 preciation of old English literature. Books were prized 

 for their imaginative and not their antiquarian value 

 by young writers who sate at the feet of Lamb and Cole 

 ridge. Rarities of style, of thought, of fancy, were 

 sought, rather than the barren scarcities of typography. 

 But another race of men seems to have sprung up, in 

 whom the futile enthusiasm of the collector predomi 

 nates, who substitute archaeologic perversity for fine- 

 nerved scholarship, and the worthless profusion of the 

 curiosity-shop for the sifted exclusiveness of the cabinet 

 of Art. They forget, in their fanaticism for antiquity, that 

 the dust of never so many centuries is impotent to trans 

 form a curiosity into a gem, that only good books absorb 

 mellowness of tone from age, and that a baptismal register 

 which proves a patriarchal longevity (if existence be life) 

 cannot make mediocrity anything but a bore, or garrulous 

 commonplace entertaining. There are volumes which 

 have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering expe 

 rience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have 

 sucked color and ripeness from the genial autumns of all 

 the select intelligences that have steeped them in the 

 sunshine of their love and appreciation ; those quaint 



