gle in his writings with a harmonizing
individuality; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with
choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, illustrate,
in one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it
from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of
sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tempered
sarcasm might charge it with conceit; know then that my humbler meaning
here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden-spoon;
for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old time
antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener: and so, while in extricating my
muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have candidly
avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this
avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may
ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic?

List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for
authorship

THE CATHEDRAL MIND.

Temple of truths most eloquently spoken,
Shrine of sweet thoughts veiled round with words of power,
The '_Author's Mind_,' in all its hallowed riches,
Stands a cathedral: full of precious things;
Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken,
Cloister, and aisle, dark crypt, and aery tower:
Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches,
And secret stores, and heap'd-up offerings,
Art's noblest gems, with every fruit and flower,
Paintings and sculpture, choice imaginings,
Its plenitude of wealth and praise betoken:
An ever-burning lamp portrays the soul;
Deep music all around enchantment flings;
And God's great Presence consecrates the whole.

Now at length, in all verity, I have said out my say: nor publisher nor
printer shall get more copy from me: neither, indeed, would it before
have been the case, for all that Damastic argument, were it not that
many beginnings--and you remember my proverbial preliminarizing--should,
for mere antithesis' sake, be endowed with a counterpoise of many
endings. So, in this second parting, let me humbly suggest to gentle
reader these: that nothing is at once more plebeian and unphilosophical
than--censure, in a world where nothing can be perfect, and where apathy
is held to be good-breeding; _item_, (I am quoting Scott,) that "it is
much more easy to destroy than to build, to criticise than to compose;