FALSEHOOD-TRUTH, &c.

It is not in the power

Of Painting or of Sculpture to express
Aught so divine as the fair form of Truth!
The creatures of their art may catch the eye,
But her sweet nature captivates the soul.

254

CUMBERLAND's Philemon.

Beyond all contradiction,

The most sincere that ever dealt in fiction.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

My smiles must be sincere, or not at all.

"Tis strange, but true; for truth is always strange,

Stranger than fiction. If it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold!

BYRON'S Don Juan.

I know the action was extremely wrong;
I own it, I deplore it, I condemn it;

But I detest all fiction, even in song,

And so must tell the truth, howe'er you blame it.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

I mean to show things as they really are,

Not as they ought to be; for I avow

That till we see what's what in fact, we 're far

From much improvement.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

First, I would have thee cherish truth,

As leading-star in virtue's train;

Folly may pass, nor tarnish youth,

But falsehood leaves a poison-stain.

MISS ELIZA COOK.

Truth, crush'd to earth, shall rise again,-
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.

W. C. BRYANT.

260

FAME NOTORIETY.

FAME

NOTORIETY.

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,
For now he lives in fame though not in life.

Talk not to me of fond renown, the rude,
Inconstant blast of the base multitude:
Their breaths ñor souls can satisfaction make,
For half the joys I part with for their sake.

I courted fame but as a spur to brave
And honest deeds; and who despises fame,
Will soon renounce the virtues that deserve it.

SHAKSPEARE

Knows he that mankind praise against their will,
And mix as much detraction as they can?
Knows he that faithless fame her whisper has,
As well as trumpet? That his vanity
Is so much tickled from not hearing all?

CROWN

MALLET

YOUNG'S Night Thoughts.

They, spider-like, spin out their precious all,
Their more than vitals spin in curious webs
Of subtle thought and exquisite design-
Fine networks of the brain-to catch a fly!
The momentary buzz of vain renown!

YOUNG'S Night Thoughts
With fame, in just proportion, envy grows;
The man that makes a character, makes foes.

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
To scorn delights, and live laborious days.

The whole amount of that enormous fame,
A tale that blends their glory with their shame.

YOUNG

MILTON

POPE'S Essay on Man.

FAME NOTORIETY.

What's fame? a fancied life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, even before our death.

POPE'S Essay on Mar

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down. enlarging as they go.

261

POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

A youth to fame, ere yet to manhood, known.

Absurd! to think to overreach the grave,
And from the wreck of names to rescue ours:
The best concerted schemes men lay for fame,
Die fast away; only themselves die faster.

POPE

BLAIR'S Grave.

He left a name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

DR. JOHNSON.

And glory long has made the sages smile;
'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind-
Depending more upon the historian's style

Than on the name a person leaves behind.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

What is the end of fame? "Tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:

Some liken it to climbing up a hill,

Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour. For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call "the midnight taper." BYRON'S Don Juan.

And blaze with guilty glare thro' future time,

Eternal beacons of consummate crime.

BYRON'S English Bards, &c.

Far dearer the grave or the prison,

Illumed by a patriot's name,

Than the trophies of all who have risen
On liberty's ruins to fame

MOORE.

We tell thy doom without a sigh,
For thou art freedom's now, and fame's-
One of the few, th' immortal names

That were not born to die!

FITZ GREEN HALLECK

FANCY-IMAGINATION.

Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December's snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?—
Oh no-the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling of the worse.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact.

SHAKSPEARE

SHAKSPEARE

FANCY-IMAGINATION.

This busy power is working day and night;
For when the outward senses rest do take,
A thousand dreams, fantastical and light,
With fluttering wings do keep her still awake.

DAVIES' Immortality of the Soul

Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new;
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting time toil'd after him in vain.

263

DR. JOHNSON, on Shakspeare.

Do what he will, he cannot realize
Half he conceives-the glorious vision flies;
Go where he may, he cannot hope to find
The truth, the beauty pictur'd in his mind.

Pleasant at noon, beside the vocal brook,
To lie one down and watch the floating cloud
And shape to fancy's wild imaginings,
Their ever-varying forms.

Woe to the youth whom Fancy gains,
Winning from Reason's hand the reins.

ROGERS

SOUTHEY.

SCOTT's Rokeby.

Where Fancy halted, weary in her flight,
an other men, his, fresh as morning, rose,
And soar'd untrodden heights, and seem'd at home
Where angels bashful look'd.

POLLOK'S Course of Time.

The beings of the mind are not of clay,

Essentially immortal, they create And multiply in us a brighter ray,

And more belov'd existence.

BYRON'S Childe Harold

Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams.

BYRON'S Childe Harold