d the loftiest the most: nothing is at rest
within the compass of our view, except the grey moss on the
park-pales. Let it eat away the dead oak, but let it not be compared
with the living one.

Poets are in general prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty
hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration, to its composer,
than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian. A bottle of wine
bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not
unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases are confused and
perverted.

_Brooke._ Merciful Heaven! and for the fruition of an hour's
drunkenness, from which they must awaken with heaviness, pain, and
terror, men consume a whole crop of their kind at one harvest home.
Shame upon those light ones who carol at the feast of blood! and worse
upon those graver ones who nail upon their escutcheon the name of
great! Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked. God sometimes
sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the
chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration. Only
some cause like unto that which is now scattering the mental fog of
the Netherlands, and is preparing them for the fruits of freedom, can
justify us in drawing the sword abroad.

_Sidney._ And only the accomplishment of our purpose can permit us
again to sheathe it; for the aggrandizement of our neighbour is nought
of detriment to us: on the contrary, if we are honest and industrious,
his wealth is ours. We have nothing to dread while our laws are
equitable and our impositions light: but children fly from mothers who
strip and scourge them.

_Brooke._ We are come to an age when we ought to read and speak
plainly what our discretion tells us is fit: we are not to be set in a
corner for mockery and derision, with our hands hanging down
motionless and our pockets turned inside out.

* * * * *

But away, away with politics: let not this city-stench infect our
fresh country air!

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE:

[6] Censurable as that practice may appear, it belonged to the age of
Sidney. Amusements were permitted the English on the seventh day, nor
were they restricted until the Puritans gained the ascendancy.

SOUTHEY AND PORSON

_Porson._ I suspect, Mr. Southey, you are angry with me for the
freedom with which I have spoken of your poetry and Wordsworth's.

_Southey._ What could have induc