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By Root 16825 0

connexion with poetry in the abstract, and also with the particular poems in question, must not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the writers of the poems. Almost every devout reader of the old English bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and, he would perhaps say, undefinable delight. Upon being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and of the grotesque in rhythm. And this quaintness and grotesqueness are, as we have elsewhere endeavored to show, very powerful, and, if well managed, very admissible adjuncts to ideality. But in the present instance they arise independently of the author’s will, and are matters altogether apart from his intention.

­ CLXII. [[CLXIII]]

As to this last term (”high-binder”) which is so confidently quoted as modern (”not in use, certainly, before 1819,”) I can refute all that is said by referring to a journal in my own possession — “The Weekly Inspector,” for Dec. 17, 1806 — published in New York:

On Christmas Eve, a party of banditti, amounting, it is stated, to forty or fifty members of an association, calling themselves “High-Binders,” assembled in front of St. Peter’s Church, in Barclay-street, expecting that the Catholic ritual would be performed with a degree of pomp and splendor which has usually been omitted in this city. These ceremonies, however, not taking place, the High-Binders manifested great displeasure. In a subsequent number, the association are called “High-Binders.” They were Irish.

­ CLXIII. [[CLXIV]]

Perhaps Mr. Barrow is right after all, and the dearth of genius in America is owing to the continual teasing of the musquitoes. ­

­ CLXIV. [[CLXV]]

The title of this book deceives us. It is by no means “talk” as men understand it — not that true talk of which Boswell has been the best historiographer. In a word it is not gossip, which has been never better defined than by Basil, who calls it “talk for talk’s sake,” nor more thoroughly comprehended than by Horace Walpole and Mary Wortley Montague, who made it a profession and a purpose. Embracing all things, it has neither beginning, middle, nor end. Thus of the gossipper it was not properly said that “he commences his discourse by jumping in medias res. “ For, clearly, your gossipper commences not at all. He is begun. He is already begun. He is always begun. In the matter of end he is indeterminate. And by these extremes shall ye know him to be of the Cæsars — porphyrogenitus — of the right vein — of the true blood — of the blue blood — of the sangre azula. As for laws, he is cognizant of but one, the invariable absence of all. And for his road, were it as straight as the Appia and as broad as that “which leadeth to destruction,” nevertheless would he be malcontent without a frequent hop-skip-and-jump, over the hedges, into the tempting pastures of digression beyond. Such is the gossipper, and of such alone is the true talk. But when Coleridge asked Lamb if he had ever heard him preach, the answer was quite happy — “I have never heard you do anything else.” The truth is that “Table Discourse” might have answered as a title to this book; but its character can be fully conveyed only in “Post-Prandian Sub-Sermons,” or “Three-Bottle Sermonoids.”

­ CLXV. [[CLXVI]]

A rather bold and quite unnecessary plagiarism — from a book too well known to promise impunity.

It is now full time to begin to brush away the insects of literature, whether creeping or fluttering, which have too long crawled over and soiled the intellectual ground of this country. It is high time to shake the little sickly stems of many a puny plant, and make its fading flowerets fall. — Monthly Register — p. 243 — Vol. 2, New York, 1807.

On the other hand —

I have brushed away the insects of Literature, whether fluttering or creeping; I have shaken the little stems of many a puny plant, and the flowerets have fallen. — Preface to the Pursuits of Literature. ­

­ CLXVI.