190 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 



into which all were admitted who gave proof of a certain 

 feebleness of character which rendered them superior to 

 their grosser fellow-men. It was a society of cripples 

 undertaking to teach the new generation how to walk. 

 Meanwiiile, the object of their generous solicitude, what 

 with clinging to Mother Past's skirts, and helping itself 

 by eveiy piece of household furniture it could lay hands 

 on, learned, after many a tumble, to get on its legs, and 

 to use them as other generations had done before it. 

 Percival belonged to this new order of bards, weak in the 

 knees, and thinking it healthy exercise to climb the peaks 

 of Dreamland. To the vague and misty views attaina- 

 ble from those sublime summits into his own vast in- 

 terior, his reports in blank verse and otherwise did ample 

 justice, but failed to excite the appetite of mankind. He 

 spent his hfe, like others of his class, in proclaiming him- 

 self a neglected Columbus, ever ready to start on his 

 voyage when the public would supply the means of 

 building his ships. Meanwhile, to be ready at a moment's 

 warning, he packs his mind pellmell like a carpet-bag, 

 wraps a geologist's hammer in a shirt with a Byron coUar, 

 does up Volney's " Ruins " with an odd volume of Words- 

 worth, and another of Bell's " Anatomy " in a loose sheet 

 of Webster's Dictionary, jams Moore's poems between the 

 leaves of Bopp's Grammer, — and forgets only such small 

 matters as combs and brushes. It never seems to have 

 entered his head that the gulf between genius and its 

 new world is never too wide for a stout swimmer. Like 

 all sentimentalists, he reversed the process of nature, 

 which makes it a part of greatness that it is a simple 

 thing to itself, however much of a marvel it may be to 

 other men. He discovered his own genius, as he sup- 

 posed, — a thing impossible had the genius been real. 

 Donne never wrote a profoimder verse than 



" Wlio knows his virtue's name and place, hath none." 



