is professional fame. Numerous
critics have laughed at it; but apart from the shorter poems, the main
theme showed much aptitude of poetic imagery, invention, and harmony of
expression. Glance at the following lines, which contain much of the
genuine spark:

"Till nature's self the Vandal torch should raise,
And the vast alcove of creation blaze."

Or this--

"Blaze the vast domes inwrought with fretted gold,
The sumptuous pavements veins or pearl unfold,
Arch piled on arch with columned pride ascend,
Grove linked to grove their mingling shadows blend."

Or this--

"Let narrow prudence boast its grovelling art
To chill the generous sympathies of heart,
Teach to subdue each thought sublimely wild,
And crush, like Herod, fancy's new-born child."

It is highly probable that the learned Justice, knowing his taste for the
poetical and fanciful, and his aptitude at the harmony of language, often
erred in his judicial writings and treatises, by avoiding beauty of
expression, in fear lest the dignity of his subject should be injured by
too much association with the creatures of fancy. We have known most
accomplished lawyers err through this same caution. Our biographer himself
(Mr. William W. Story) has certainly done himself great injustice as a
writer in his work on "Contracts," when, in the pages before us, he
presents us with so much delicacy of fancy and rhetorical finish.
Blackstone in his "Commentaries," Jones in his "Bailment" treatise,
Stephens in his essay upon "Pleading," time-honored Fearne in his
"Contingent Remainders," have shown how grateful and how suitable it is
for the legal readers to find brilliancy of rhetoric adorning the most
profound learning.

But certainly Judge Story possessed to a remarkable degree the faculty of
condensation in his poetical works. His rhyme was not reason run mad; but
reason in modest holiday attire. Where are lines at once so compact and so
searching in their wisdom as the following, penned in 1832, as matters of
advice to a young law student:

"Whene'er you speak, remember every cause
Stands not on eloquence, but stands on laws--
Pregnant in matter, in expression brief,
Let every sentence stand in bold relief;
On trifling points nor time nor talents waste,
A sad offence to learning and to taste;
Nor deal with pompous phrase; nor e'er suppose
Poetic flights belong to reasoning prose,
Loose declamation may deceive the crowd,
A