CHAPTER VII. 



ANALOGIES AND SIMILITUDES: 



BIRDS AND POETS ILLUSTRATING EACH OTHER. 



"We will entangle buds, and flowers, and beams, 

 Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make 

 Strange combinations out of common things." 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



"Oft on the dappled turf, at ease 

 I sit, and play with similies 

 Loose types of Things through all degrees." 



WORDSWORTH To A DAISY. 



WE love our own face in a mirror, and, like a second Nar- 

 cissus, we grow amorous over it, shadowed in the burnished 

 lapsing of a fountain we love the stars sleeping in deep 

 waters, too, (happy association !) and the pageantry of cloud, 

 and rock, and tree, reversed in a still, liquid sky in a word, 

 we love all similitudes ! 



Perhaps this is because they illustrate to us a power of re- 

 production external to ourselves, and this is such an ap- 

 proach to that creative faculty which belongs to the " big 

 imagination " in us, that, having no jealousy in our temper, 

 we are charmed to see, even in " dumb nature," something 

 like a rivalry of this " bright particular " gift we own. 



In truth, there is something worth following up in this 

 idea. We should like to see the painter or the poet who 

 could ever produce a landscape so cunningly, even to the 

 last minute tracery of its lines and shades, as we have seen 

 the unruffled surface of a lake do it some clear, calm morn- 



