BIRDS AND POETS, 165 



Falstaff, Bardolph, Shallow, Nym, et ii omnes with Puck, 

 Ariel, Titania and Oberon thrown in stand like chiselled 

 laughter upon the monumental front of Time. Our feath- 

 ered Shakspeare can, in its sphere, contend for nothing so 

 sublimely fixed but that it is a practical, habitual humorist 

 of the rarest water, as we have already shown. 



We will here dismiss this particular contrast. We are 

 fully prepared to expect, that in this instance as well as in 

 those which are to follow our " Similitudes " our whole 

 Philosophy indeed will appear to many surface-glancing 

 minds, 



" Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain 

 Like aught that is which wraps what is to be!" 



We are smilingly content to rest all upon this interpreta- 

 tion, so that in the Poetical sense, it include the pregnant 

 meaning of 



u The infantine familiar clasp of things divine." 



And then, again, who but Milton, " blind Thamyris " among 

 the "Prophets old" should be a type of the Nightingale? 

 Who does not remember that delicate and touching compar- 

 ison instituted by himself in allusion to his blindness ? 

 Who, other than he, could under such circumstances of blank, 

 rayless desolation poised on his own supreme spiritual^ 

 have loftily fed 



" On thoughts that voluntary move 



Harmonious numbers as the wakeful bird 

 Sings darkling, and in shadiest covers hid, 

 Tunes her nocturnal note." 



All minds must be impressed by the strange excelling appo- 

 siteness of the similitude in this case. Ah, Soul of the beau- 

 tiful! thy 



