trifles, swell
themselves into a consequence we little dreamt of, before they depart.

Vincent took up a volume: it was Shelley's Posthumous Poems. "How
fine," said he, "some of these are; but they are fine fragments of an
architecture in bad taste: they are imperfect in themselves, and faulty
in the school they belonged to; yet, such as they are, the master-hand
is evident upon them. They are like the pictures of Paul Veronese--often
offending the eye, often irritating the judgment, but redolent of
something vast and lofty--their very faults are majestic--this age,
perhaps no other will ever do them justice--but the disciples of future
schools will make glorious pillage of their remains. The writings
of Shelley would furnish matter for a hundred volumes: they are an
admirable museum of ill-arranged curiosities--they are diamonds,
awkwardly set; but one of them, in the hands of a skilful jeweller,
would be inestimable: and the poet of the future, will serve him as
Mercury did the tortoise in his own translation from Homer--make him
'sing sweetly when he's dead!' Their lyres will be made out of his
shell."

"If I judge rightly," said Clarendon, "his literary faults were these:
he was too learned in his poetry, and too poetical in his learning.
Learning is the bane of a poet. Imagine how beautiful Petrarch would
be without his platonic conceits: fancy the luxuriant imagination of
Cowley, left to run wild among the lofty objects of nature, not the
minute peculiarities of art. Even Milton, who made a more graceful and
gorgeous use of learning than, perhaps, any other poet, would have
been far more popular if he had been more familiar. Poetry is for
the multitude--erudition for the few. In proportion as you mix them,
erudition will gain in readers, and poetry lose."

"True," said Glanville; "and thus the poetical, among philosophers, are
the most popular of their time; and the philosophical among poets, the
least popular of theirs."

"Take care," said Vincent, smiling, "that we are not misled by the point
of your deduction; the remark is true, but with a certain reservation,
viz. that the philosophy which renders a poet less popular, must be
the philosophy of learning, not of wisdom. Wherever it consists in
the knowledge of the plainer springs of the heart, and not in abstruse
inquiry into its metaphysical and hidden subtleties, it necessarily
increases the popularity of the poem; because, instead of being limited
to t