ividuals, more than we can learn from
their writings, and yet are 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 mantle-pieces, 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 nightgown 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 li