es of a northern tribe; and in his
life-time he never rhymed upon his unattainable lady, or if rhyme he did,
the accents never carried her name to the ears of the vulgar. Look
there.'

"She pointed to the river at our feet, and I knew the mounted figure that
was riding the ford, with a green-mantled lady beside him like the Fairy
Queen.

"Surely I had read of her, and knew her--

"'She whose blue eyes their secret told,
Though shaded by her locks of gold.'

"'They are different; I know not why. They are constant,' said Laura,
and rising with an air of chagrin, she disappeared among the boughs of
the trees that bear her name.

"'Unhappy hearts of poets,' I mused. 'Light things and sacred they are,
but even in their Paradise, and among their chosen, with every wish
fulfilled, and united to their beloved, they cannot be at rest!'

"Thus moralising, I wended my way to a crag, whence there was a wide
prospect. Certain poets were standing there, looking down into an abyss,
and to them I joined myself.

"'Ah, I cannot bear it!' said a voice, and, as he turned away, his brow
already clearing, his pain already forgotten, I beheld the august form of
Shakespeare.

"Marking my curiosity before it was expressed, he answered the unuttered
question.

"'That is a sight for Pagans,' he said, 'and may give them pleasure. But
my Paradise were embittered if I had to watch the sorrows of others, and
their torments, however well deserved. The others are gazing on the
purgatory of critics and commentators.'

"He passed from me, and I joined the 'Ionian father of the rest'--Homer,
who, with a countenance of unspeakable majesty, was seated on a throne of
rock, between the Mantuan Virgil of the laurel crown, Hugo, Sophocles,
Milton, Lovelace, Tennyson, and Shelley.

"At their feet I beheld, in a vast and gloomy hall, many an honest
critic, many an erudite commentator, an army of reviewers. Some were
condemned to roll logs up insuperable heights, whence they descended
thundering to the plain. Others were set to impositions, and I
particularly observed that the Homeric commentators were obliged to write
out the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' in their complete shape, and were always
driven by fiends to the task when they prayed for the bare charity of
being permitted to leave out the 'interpolations.' Others, fearful to
narrate, were torn into as many fragments as they had made of these
immortal epics. Others, such as Aristarc