I obtain, however, the whole effect of unexpectedness, when 1 write

Thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before. N.B. It is very commonly supposed that rhyme, as it now ordinarily exists, is of modern invention but see the "Clouds" of Aristophanes. Hebrew verse, however, did not include it - the terminations of the lines, where most distinct, never showing anything of the kind.

Talking of inscriptions how admirable was the one circulated at Paris, for the equestrian statue of Louis XV., done by Pigal and Bouchardon "Statua Statuæ."

In the way of original, striking, and well-sustained metaphor, we can call to mind few finer things than this to be found in James Puckle's " Gray Cap for a Green Head":"In speaking of the dead so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence."

Some Frenchman - possibly Montaigne

says:

People talk about thinking, but for my part I never think, except when I sit down to write.' It is this never thinking, unless when we sit down to write, which is the cause of so much indifferent composition. But perhaps there is something more involved in the Frenchman's observation than meets the eye. It is certain that the mere act of inditing, tends, in a great degree, to the logicalization of thought. Whenever, on account of its vagueness, I am dissatisfied with a conception of the brain, I resort forthwith to the pen, for

the purpose of obtaining, through its aid, the necessary form, consequence and precision.

How very commonly we hear it remarked, that such and such thoughts are beyond the compass of words! I do not believe that any thought, properly so called, is out of the reach of language. I fancy, rather, that where difficulty in expression is experienced, there is, in the intellect which experiences it, a want either of deliberateness or of method. For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it: as I have before observed, the thought is logicalized by the effort at (written) expression.

There is, however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language. I use the word fancies at random, and merely because I must use some word; but the idea commonly attached to the term is not even remotely applicable to the shadows of shadows in question. They seem to me rather psychal than intellectual. They arise in the soul (alas, how rarely!) only at its epochs of most intense tranquility—when the bodily and mental health are in perfection and at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking world blend with those of the world of dreams. I am aware of these "fancies" only when I am upon the very brink of sleep, with the consciousness that I am so. I have satisfied myself that this condition exists but for an inappreciable point of time-yet it is crowded with these shadows of shadows"; and for absolute thought there is demanded time's endurance.

These fancies" have in them a pleasurable ecstasy

as far beyond the most pleasurable of the world of wakefulness, or of dreams, as the Heaven of the Northman theology is beyond its Hell. I regard the visions, even as they arise, with an awe which, in some measure, moderates or tranquilizes the ecstasy I so regard them, through a conviction (which seems a portion of the ecstasy itself) that this ecstasy, in itself, is of a character supernal to the Human Nature — is a glimpse of the spirit's outer world; and I arrive at this conclusion - if this term is at all applicable to instantaneous intuition -- by a perception that the delight experienced has, as its element, but the absoluteness of novelty. the absoluteness for in these fancies - let me now term them psychal impressions- there is really nothing even approximate in character to impressions ordinarily received. It is as if the five senses were supplanted by five myriad others alien to mortality.

say

I

Now, so entire is my faith in the power of words, that, at times, I have believed it possible to embody even the evanescence of fancies such as I have attempted to describe. In experiments with this end in view, I have proceeded so far as, first, to control (when the bodily and mental health are good) the existence of the condition : that is to say, I can now (unless when ill) be sure that the condition will supervene, if I so wish it, at the point of time already described: of its supervention, until lately, I could never be certain, even under the most favorable circumstances. I mean to say, merely, that now I can be sure, when all circumstances are favorable, of the supervention of the condition, and feel even the capacity of inducing or compelling it: the favorable circumstances, however, are not the less rare else had I compelled, already, the Heaven into the Earth.

I have proceeded so far, secondly, as to prevent the lapse from the point of which I speak the point of blending between wakefulness and sleep—as to prevent at will, I say, the lapse from this border-ground into the dominion of sleep. Not that I can continue the condition not that I can render the point more than a point — but that I can startle myself from the point into wakefulness-and thus transfer the point itself into the realm of Memory· convey its impressions, or more properly their recollections, to a situation where (although still for a very brief period) I can survey them with the eye of analysis.

For these reasons

that is to say, because I have been enabled to accomplish thus much I do not altogether despair of embodying in words at least enough of the fancies in question to convey, to certain classes of intellect, a shadowy conception of their character.

In saying this I am not to be understood as supposing that the fancies, or psychal impressions, to which I allude, are confined to my individual selfare not, in a word, common to all mankind—for on this point it is quite impossible that I should form an opinion but nothing can be more certain than that even a partial record of the impressions would startle the universal intellect of mankind, by the supremeness of the novelty of the material employed, and of its consequent suggestions. In a word should I ever write a paper on this topic, the world will be compelled to acknowledge that, at last, I have done an original thing.

Mr. Hudson, among innumerable blunders, attributes to Sir Thomas Browne the paradox of Tertullian in his De Carne Christi – "Mortuus est Dei filius, credi

bile est quia ineptum est; et sepultus resurrexit, certum est quia impossibile est.'

Bielfeld, the author of "Les Premiers Traits de L'Erudition Universelle," defines poetry as l'art d'exprimer les pensées par la fiction." The Germans have two words, in full accordance with this definition, absurd as it is the terms Dichtkunst, the art of fiction, and Dichten, to feign-which are generally used for poetry and to make verses.

Diana's Temple at Ephesus having been burnt on the night in which Alexander was born, some person observed that "it was no wonder, since, at the period of the conflagration, she was gossiping at Pella." Cicero commends this as a witty conceit Plutarch condemns it as senseless and this is the one point in which I agree with the biographer.

Brown, in his "Amusements," speaks of having transfused the blood of an ass into the veins of an astrological quack—and there can be no doubt that one of Hugo's progenitors was the man.

VI.

[Text: Democratic Review, April, 1846.]

In general, our first impressions are true ones - the chief difficulty is in making sure which are the first. In early youth we read a poem, for instance, and are enraptured with it. At manhood we are assured by our reason that we had no reason to be enraptured. But some years elapse, and we return to our primitive ad