te the following lines:--

"Reason, my soul's eye, still sees
Clearly, and clearer for the want of eyes,
For gazing through the windows of the body
It met such several, such distracting objects;
But now confined within itself it sees
A strange and unknown world, and there discovers
_Torrents of anger, mountains of ambition,
Gulfs of desire, and towers of hope, large giants_,
Monsters and savage beasts; to vanquish these
Will be a braver conquest, than the old
Or the new world."

Shortly after the appearance of "Sophy," he was admitted, by the form
then usual, Sheriff of Surrey, and appointed governor of Farnham Castle
for the king; this important post, however, he soon resigned, and
retreated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published his poem entitled
"Cooper's Hill." This instantly became popular, and many who might have
seen in "Sophy" greater powers than were disclosed in this new effort,
envied its fame, and gave out that he had bought it of a vicar for forty
pounds. For this there was, of course, no proof, and it is only worth
mentioning because it is one of a large class of cases, in which envious
mediocrity, or crushed dulness, or jealous rivalry, has sought to snatch
hard-won laurels from the brow of genius. As if these laurels were so
smooth, and so soothing, as always to invite ambition, or as if they
were so flexible as to suit every brow! As if FIRE lurked not sometimes
in their leaves, and as if there were not, besides, a nobler jealousy in
the public mind ready to watch and to avenge their misappropriation.
Certain it is that not only, as Johnson remarks, was the attempt made to
rob Addison of "Cato," and Pope of the "Essay of Criticism," but it has
a hundred times taken place in the history of poetry. Rolt, as we saw in
our late life of Akenside, tried to snatch the honour of writing "The
Pleasures of Imagination" from its author. Lauder accused Milton of
plundering the Italians wholesale. Scott's early novels have only the
other day been most absurdly claimed for his brother Thomas. And
notwithstanding Shakspeare's well-known lines over his sepulchre at
Stratford--

"Bless'd be the man who spares these stones,
But curs'd be he who moves my bones"--

a worse outrage has been recently committed on his memory, than were his
dust, like Wickliffe's, tossed out of his tomb into the Avon--his plays
have been, with as much stupidity as malice, attributed to Lord Bacon!
Homer,