Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/20

 Many are the stars that shine in the firmament of poetic literature, and, though there are some of lesser magnitude than others, all are light-giving. The many minds that once were with us are now, with imperishable beauty, embalmed to us in their writings; "Therein the dead heart speaketh, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent;" "Their sound is gone into all lands, and their words to the end of the world." When we look at the shelves of our libraries, we are led to exclaim with Tupper, "Oh, books! ye monuments of mind; concrete wisdom of the wisest; sweet solaces of daily life; proofs and results of immortality; trees yielding all fruits, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations! groves of knowledge, where all may eat, nor fear a flaming sword; gentle comrades, kind advisers, friends, comforts, treasures; helps, governments, diversities of tongues, who can weigh your worth!" The literature of the present day is illustrated and adorned by numerous compilations from the writings of our best authors, and these are found to be of inestimable value to those who have not the leisure, means, or application to profit from the perusal of books in their original form. At the feast of reason, where we feed our minds from the stores of the great and grave; where we drink wine from the fountain of wisdom, and, like the giant in Homer, exclaim, "More! this is divine;" where we see many flowerets from the fields of literature adorning the table and delighting the eye; where we see the table overspread with the most savoury dishes, suiting every palate, teeming with the richest nutrition, that we exclaim like Burns over his haggis, "O what a glorious sight, warm-reekin', rich!" these compilations find their place at the festive board as silver baskets loaded with choice fruits, or we find them on the sideboards as golden caskets containing most precious jewels. Many times we refresh our lips with a grape from these silver baskets, and say, "This is delicious; from whose garden is it?" Many a time we take and examine a jewel from these golden caskets, and say, "This is a gem of sterling worth; from whose mine is it?" and on not a few sundry occasions we get the answer, "Anonymous." On coming across these gems—and many gems are truly of poetic worth—we have often said with Burns, when he heard Lapraik's song—

We sing the praises of the great masters, and not unworthily, who have by their works raised monuments amongst us more durablethan brass. We love to learn from all those master minds that have shone in the literary world from the Alfred the Great of the Anglo-Saxons to the Alfred the Great of the nineteenth century, Tennyson. We all have our favourite poets. We delight in Chaucer, the father "of