office, its means and ends; and to
have made known how much and how little we agreed on these points with
such worthies as Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter,
Petronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von Huetten and Boileau,
Hurdis and Hurd, Dr. Arnold and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his
famous uncle, Burke and "John Buncle," Montesquieu and Sir Philip
Sidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons, George Gascoyne and Spenser's
friend Gabriel Harvey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and George
Sand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius Caesar Scaliger, Pontanus
and Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt and Quinctilian, or Tacitus (whichever of
the two wrote the Dialogue _De Oratoribus_, in which there is so much of
the best philosophy, criticism, and expression), Lords Bacon and Buchan
and Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart and John Dryden, Charles Lamb and
Professor Wilson, Vinet of Lausanne and John Foster, Lord Jeffrey and
the two brothers Hare, Drs. Fuller and South, John Milton and Dr. Drake,
Dante and "Edie Ochiltree," Wordsworth and John Bunyan, Plutarch and
Winkelman, the Coleridges, Samuel, Sara, Hartley, Derwent, and Henry
Nelson, Sir Egerton Bridges, Victor Cousin and "the Doctor," George Moir
and Madame de Stael, Dr. Fracastorius and Professor Keble, Martinus
Scriblerus and Sir Thomas Browne, Macaulay and the Bishop of Cloyne,
Collins and Gray and Sir James Mackintosh, Hazlitt and John Ruskin,
Shakspeare and Jackson of Exeter, Dallas and De Quincey, and the six
Taylors, Jeremy, William, Isaac, Jane, John Edward, and Henry. We would
have had great pleasure in quoting what these famous women and men have
written on the essence and the art of poetry, and to have shown how
strangely they differ, and how as strangely at times they agree. But as
it is not related at what time of the evening our brisk young gentleman
got his answer regarding Dr. Channing, so it likewise remains untold
what our readers have lost and gained in our not fulfilling our somewhat
extensive desire.

It is with poetry as with flowers or fruits, and the delicious juices of
meats and fishes, we would all rather have them, and smell them, and
taste them, than hear about them. It is a good thing to know all about a
lily, its scientific ins and outs, its botany, its archaeology, its
aesthetics, even its anatomy and "organic radicals," but it is a better
thing to look at itself, and "consider" it how it grows--

"White, radiant, spotless, exqui