hirling
scene of ever-changing incidents! what a store-house for thoughts! what
a land of marvels! what untrodden heights, what unexplored depths of an
ever-undiscovered country! That strange world hath a structure and a
furniture all its own; its chalcedonic rocks are painted with rare
creatures floating in their liquid-seeming hardness; forms of other
spheres lie buried in its lias cliffs; seeds of unknown plants, relics
of unlimned reptiles, fragments of an old creation, the ruins of a
fanciful cosmogony, lie hid until the day of their requiral beneath its
fertile soil: and then its lawless botany; flowers of glorious hue hung
upon the trees of its forests; luscious fruits flung liberally among the
mosses of its banks; air-plants sailing in its atmosphere; unanchored
water-lilies dancing in its bright cascades; and this, too, a world, an
inner secret world, peopled with unthought images, specimens of a
peculiar creation; outlandish forms are started from its thickets, the
dragon and the cherub are numbered with its winged inhabitants, and
herds of uncouth shape pasture on its meadows. Who can sound its seas,
deep calling unto deep? who can stand upon the hill-tops, height
beckoning unto height? who can track its labyrinths? who can map its
caverns? A limitless essence, an unfailing spring, an evergreen
fruit-tree, a riddle unsolved, a quaint museum, a hot-bed of inventions,
an over-mantling tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a
full, independent, generous--a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly,
such--bear witness--is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos
of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or
imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier;
"for the time present"--I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on
that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law--"hereof let this little
taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant,
a mercenary purveyor of learning and invention, of religion and
philosophy, of instruction, or even of amusements, for the sole
consideration of value received, as one would use a stalking-horse for
getting near a stag? this, too, when ten to one some cormorant on the
tree of knowledge, some staid-looking publisher in decent mourning, is
complacently pocketing the profits, and modestly charging you with loss?
and this, moreover and more poignantly, when the flame of responsibility
on some high sub