Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/149

 ing from a shallow egoism and tending nowhere in particular. Their only advantage seems to be that they leave no taste behind them; yet they counted as a 'gem' in an anthology of 1828. In these unenclosed domains of the feelings, however, the vice of vagueness hardly does its worst. It is more clearly observed when it is exercised upon some welldefined theme concerning fact, where precision, and therefore knowledge, are needed to convey any impression at all. This time we have a lady at the writing-table, and a bold one, an historic Muse who allows her fancy to flutter off to Xerxes:

This poem—also from a pre-Victorian anthology—un