an alien salt in the
neighbouring fountain of tears. How poor the world of fancy would be,
how 'dispeopled of her dreams,' if, in some ruin of the social system,
the books of Dickens were lost; and if The Dodger, and Charley Bates,
and Mr. Crinkle, and Miss Squeers, and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and
Dick Swiveller were to perish, or to vanish with Menander's men and
women! We cannot think of our world without them; and, children of
dreams as they are, they seem more essential than great statesmen,
artists, soldiers, who have actually worn flesh and blood, ribbons and
orders, gowns and uniforms. May we not almost welcome 'Free Education'?
for every Englishman who can read, unless he be an Ass, is a reader the
more for you.

III. To Pierre de Ronsard (Prince of Poets.)

Master and Prince of Poets,--As we know what choice thou madest of a
sepulchre (a choice how ill fulfilled by the jealousy of Fate), so we
know well the manner of thy chosen immortality. In the Plains Elysian,
among the heroes and the ladies of old song, there was thy Love with
thee to enjoy her paradise in an eternal spring.

La' du plaisant Avril la saison imortelle
Sans eschange le suit,
La terre sans labeur, de sa grasse mamelle,
Tout chose y produit;
D'enbas la troupe sainte autrefois amoureuse,
Nous honorant sur tous,
Viendra nous saluer, s'estimant bien-heureuse
De s'accointer de nous.

There thou dwellest, with the learned lovers of old days, with Belleau,
and Du Bellay, and Bai'f, and the flower of the maidens of Anjou. Surely
no rumour reaches thee, in that happy place of reconciled affections, no
rumour of the rudeness of Time, the despite of men, and the change which
stole from thy locks, so early grey, the crown of laurels and of thine
own roses. How different from thy choice of a sepulchre have been the
fortunes of thy tomb!

I will that none should break
The marble for my sake,
Wishful to make more fair
My sepulchre.

So didst thou sing, or so thy sweet numbers run in my rude English. Wearied
of Courts and of priories, thou didst desire a grave beside thine own
Loire, not remote from

The caves, the founts that fall
From the high mountain wall,
That fall and flash and fleet,
Wilh silver fret.

Only a laurel tree
Shall guard the grave of me;
Only Apollo's bough
Shall shade me now!

Far other has been thy sepulchre: not in the free air, among the field
flower