me so much service by keeping up my shuttlecock with
their battledores, and so much honour by placing me prominently among
the defamed worthies of the world, would in their charity (for they have
some) pity the victim of such excruciating praise, if he failed hereby
to repudiate it.

Not but that poor human nature delights in adulation. I well remember
the joy wherewith I first greeted the following from a Cincinnati paper;
so hearty too, and generous, and obviously sincere.

"The author of this book will rank, we are free to say, with the very
first spirits of the British world. It will live, in our judgment, as
long as the English language, and be a text-book of wisdom to the young
of all generations of America and England both. We would rather be the
author of it, than hold any civil or ecclesiastical office in the globe.
We would rather leave it as a legacy to our children, than the richest
estate ever owned by man. From our heart we thank the young author for
this precious gift, and, could our voice reach him, would pronounce a
shower of heartfelt blessings on his soul. When we began to read it with
our editorial pencil in hand, we undertook to mark its beautiful
passages, should we find any worthy of distinction; but, having read to
our satisfaction--indeed to our amazement--we throw down the pencil,
and, had we as much space as admiration, we would quote the whole of it.
It is one solid, sparkling, priceless gem."

I may as well add a few more such extracts, as strictly within the text
of "My Lifework."

"The author of 'Proverbial Philosophy' is a writer in whom beautiful
extremes meet,--the richness of the Orient, and the strength of the
Occident--the stern virtue of the North and the passion of the South. At
times his genius seems to possess creative power, and to open to our
gaze things new and glorious, of which we have never dreamed; then again
it seems like sunlight, its province not to create, but to vivify and
glorify what before was within and around us. Aspirations, fancies,
beliefs we have long folded in our hearts as dear and sacred things,
yet never had the power or the courage to reveal, bloom out as naturally
in his pages as wild flowers when the blossoming time is come. We are
not so much struck by the grandeur of his conceptions, or fascinated by
the elegance of his diction, as warmed, ennobled, and delighted by the
glow of his enthusiasm, the purity of his principles, and the continuous
gush