curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's
portraits of them. But who could paint Shakspeare?"--"Ay," retorted A----,
"there it is; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton
instead?"--"No," said B----, "neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare
on the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantlepieces,
that I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton's
face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it is
too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some of the
manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the precisian's
band and gown."--"I shall guess no more," said A----. "Who is it, then,
you would like to see 'in his habit as he lived,' if you had your choice
of the whole range of English literature?" B---- then named Sir Thomas
Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two
worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the
floor of his apartment in their night-gown and slippers, and to exchange
friendly greeting with them. At this A---- laughed outright, and conceived
B---- was jesting with him; but as no one followed his example, he thought
there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state
of whimsical suspense. B---- then (as well as I can remember a
conversation that passed twenty years ago;--how time slips!) went on as
follows. "The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their
writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of
personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints
and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them the meaning of what no
mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson,
I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him: he and Boswell
together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed through
his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently explicit: my
friends, whose repose I should be tempted to disturb, (were it in my
power) are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.

"And call up him who left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold."

"When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition (the
_Urn-burial_) I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the bottom of
which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is like a stately labyrinth
of doubt and withering speculation, and I woul