account books brought in evidence by the respective litigants. Like the Puseyite logomachists, they were great sticklers for the ipse dixit' of patristic evidence. They seemed to think that the dogmas of theology were to be established by the weight of precedent authority, and he was thought to have gained the victory, who had arrayed on his side the greatest number of decisions passed by former judges. A rather tedious, but very convenient mode of argument, to be sure, where erudition usurps the throne of reason, and authority asserts the vantage-ground of fact!

The great Jeremy Taylor, whose sermons are among the most elegantly-imaginative compositions in the world, was a lavish quoter, but on a different system. Those quaint and glorious discourses, rich with all the hues of fancy, and warm with all the fire of pathos, should then have been preached, and should now be read, only in some grand old cathedral, where the sun's 'westering beams' stream through stained windows on the paintings of Raphael or of Claude Lorraine. Every one of those opulent pages is replete with allusions to the incidents, the facts, the fables of the elder world; and each incident, each fact, each fable, touched by his magic finger, is ennobled, is beautified, is alchemized into his own mind's essence, and flows forth a stream of molten gold. And then, not satisfied with all this display of beautiful allusive learning, he quotes at the foot of the page all the more famous passages of the Greek tragedians, by way of illustrating his tenets and enforcing his admonitions. Doubtless all this erudition is absurdly out of place, even in sermons addressed to the courtiers of St. James', and to crowned heads, who rule by 'divine right,' and who, of course, understand Greek, as well as every thing else, by instinct but is it not beautiful, beautiful beyond all comparison, and above all rivalry?

But of all quoters, commend me to old Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy.' In this most singular of works, to which not even Southey's 'Doctor' can be compared in learning and quaintness, the author has accumulated enough rare erudition to establish the reputation of any twenty authors for extensive reading, and to make any one author melancholy to look at it. The eccentric character and immense number of its citations are the very things which constitute the character and value of the work, and therefore one is not here, as in some cases, tempted to cry out, Oh, monstrous! Three-penny 'orth of bread to this intolerable quantity of sack! (Shakspeare meant pillage.')

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If the writers of the present day appear to quote less largely than their predecessors, it is to be ascribed more to their dishonesty than to their self-dependence, or originality. They borrow less, and steal more. A diminution of their apparent capital would be an increase of their real credit, or, as I once dreamed an Irishman said to a wide-mouthed Scotchman, The larger the subtraction from his mouth the greater would be the addition to his face!' Tom Moore, not content with his natural stores of wit and elegant thought, has been shown by accurate research to be a perfect corsair. As, however, the Moors, ever since their expulsion from Spain, have been incorrigible pirates, the amorous Lalla Rookh, in privateering on the literary seas, pursued only his patronymical or rather his patrial vocation. A few years since commenced the contraband trade in German, Coleridge leading the van of

the lawless company; and there has already been introduced for home consumption a very large amount of that singular manufacture, a woof of beautiful contemplations, and a warp of unintelligible mysticism. Much of these unlawful importations was detected, and this secret commerce is now almost impossible for all but the pettiest of pedlars. Every school-boy studies German, and as all the scribbling mystagogues of the nation are becoming illicit dealers in the foreign article, equally in the cobwebs, and the cloth of gold, they will soon organize themselves into a body of custom-house officers, and each contrabandist will inform against his brother-in-trade as having entered, under a false invoice, goods which he himself had intended to smuggle.

Let us proceed. I do not like a shirt all ruffles, nor a book all citations; yet I am much in favor of quotations judiciously and sparingly introduced; not such, of course, as may be gathered from a Dictionary of Quotations,' and which have been worn so long that they may better be called hackneyed slang. However beautiful and striking originally, they have degenerated into cant, and should never be employed by writer or speaker, except when they are peculiarly forceful and appropriate. Some fellows employ these phrases apropos of every thing, thus destroying all their pith and significance. They interlard with them every dish, conversational or scriptural, and whatever else may be the meal, these are always a component part, like the indispensable bacon and cabbage of a Virginia housewife. Does some closefisted millionaire, who has coined the tears of the widow into eagles, or some luxurious worldling, who has expended his yearly thousands on his own frail person, bequeath at his death to some asylum the hoarded treasures, in the possession or use of which he can no longer revel, but which may purchase for his name the posthumous renown of a lying monumental slab? He was 'open as day to melting charity,' and all those other golden inscriptions which Genius once consecrated to living or departed worth, and which Virtue would fain sanctify and appropriate to herself and her votaries forever. Out upon the profanation! The beautiful gems of poetry and fancy are soiled by the touch and sullied by the breath of the vulgar, till they lose all their lustre, and become every-day pebbles of the sea-shore, colloquialized, disenchanted; a talisman, that has lost its mystic charm. Even when seen again in their old connection, re-linked in the sparkling chain whence they were drawn, they seem less beautiful, less dear, less precious than they did in days of yore. It would not be thus, were they cited only by sensible minds, and on appropriate occasions.

After all, then, quoting is like every thing else. Its merit depends on the who and the how that is, on who the quoter is, and how he quotes. The same good sense, whether natural or adscititious, which is requisite to all just thought or correct writing, is equally necessary to discern what is elegant or energetic in others, and to know when and how to introduce it with pertinency and effect. But he who thinks like a dolt will assuredly write like a blockhead, and he who writes like a blockhead must quote of course like an ass. And who, when he sees a stupid fellow run off with a splendid expression in his mouth, and the hangdog expression of a detected sheep-stealer in his face, would not shout

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lustily, Stop thief!' I hate the sight of a mere animal, with not a single idea of his own in all his leaden cranium, sporting a sparkling thought, which hangs upon the cheek of his intellectual night, like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.' He reminds me of a ragged 'prentice boy stealing his master's best coat to wear of Sundays. I should be very much transported, if Mercury would transport all these wordthieves to some Botany-Bay, marked out and set apart for light-fingered and heavy-headed scribblers. There they might rob and vilify one another. But the vulgarly-selected and ill-assorted finery I spoke of a line or two above, differs widely from a gentleman's borrowing an occasional neck-cloth from some of his polished acquaintances, or exhibiting here and there a memento of his departed friends, such as a seal or a breast-pin. Writers with no capital of their own, are compelled to subsist by beggary or theft, while those of original and opulent resources have no necessity to filch, but can afford to borrow. Their reciprocal loans merely prove the presence of good feeling and the absence of envy, and do not involve a confession of poverty, or a renunciation of independence. But when I see one wretched author steadying his footsteps on the broken crutches of another, I reverse the stinging lines Englished by Dennis from Boileau :

"Thus one fool lolls his tongue out at another,
And shakes his empty noddle at his brother.'

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Quoting is doubtless of great advantage to the poor writer, or at least to his book. He can hardly find any thing inferior to his own manufacture; his quotations are all that can add dignity and value to the work ; and therefore the more he quotes, the better for him. I have seen books, of which the sole merit consisted in their clippings,' and which, without these, would resemble that leathery and fibrous beef-steak, of which the more a man eats, the leaner and weaker he becomes, because the exhausting labor expended in its mastication more than neutralizes the aliment it yields! Such authors are at once philanthropists and martyrs. While providing for the enjoyment of their readers, they inspire merely contempt for themselves; and, self-sacrificed to the welfare of their works, every quotation, which adds lustre and dignity to them, only deepens their own insignificance. But they are of great prejudice to the superior members of the same irritable tribe,' the masters, and grand-masters of the goose-quill fraternity. For if the remark of Erasmus, Laudari a laudatis viris est vera laus,' be true, the reverse is equally undeniable, that to be eulogized or quoted by a blockhead is a flagrant insult.

I have sometimes wished, therefore, that the Republic of Letters would pass an insolvent act of uniform and universal application, compelling every literary debtor to hand in his assets, liquidate all his just obligations, make four-fold restitution of all he stole, and indemnify his creditors to the extent in which he has damaged what he borrowed. All the improvements made should be adjudged his own, as being the fair earnings of his skill and industry. At all events, they might pass a banking-bill, and enact a sumptuary law, the former providing that no author should negotiate a literary loan except from capitalists of his own means

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and standing in the commonwealth, the latter prohibiting any writer from coming forth on holidays, or other days, decorated in a style above his visible resources, or his fair and legitimate credit. Then it would no longer be with men's spiritual, as it is with their bodily clothing. The mental robes and jewelry of our intellectual princes would no longer become the livery of their footmen, and descend from the lackeys to set off the apish antics and coarse buffoonery of Jack Puddings in the circus, till, at their lowest point of degradation, soiled, patched, and tawdry, they envelop with their faded splendor' the smutched limbs of the chimney-sweeps and scavengers of Grub-street. Were the man of talents to be robbed of any of his elegant attire, he would not as now perspire with terror lest it should disgrace its former wearer by appearing on the person of a small-beer guzzler in a hedge-tavern. He would not shudder lest his blameless vest, his Ultima-Thule' of a hat, or his comme-il-faut' and perfect coat should grace some rum one' among the groundlings,' who, over a two-penny cold-cut,' and inspired by a glass of half-and-half,' woos his dozy' muse in the dialect of 'flash.' His gold-headed cane would not wave jauntily in the hand of a beggarly literary swell,' nor his diamond snuff-box, tapped by unpared finger-nails, awake the sternutations of a vulgar pedant. The scriblerian menials, the mobocrats among the literati, would revert to their natural and proper level, and, associating among themselves, and living upon each other, would fear to grasp heartily by the hand, and slap familiarly on the shoulder, the autocracy of mind. Then quotations would resume their legitimate office, tallying in some degree with the context, and a worthless book would not so often resemble a linsey-woolsey coat embroidered with gold-lace. Could a poor goose of an author then peep into the future, and see how he would be plucked by the geese among posterity, he might be reasonably content; for his starveling plumage would grow on cacklers of the same silly feather. With a soothing foreknowledge of its fulfilment, he might put up the malicious prayer of the limping Demonides, (recorded by Plutarch in his tractate 'De Audiendis Poëtis,) who, on having his sandals stolen, hoped they might fit the feet of the thief: and so they did; for the thief was a club-foot too.

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Under the prevalence of the law proposed above, if a good author should choose to quote, his citations would match well with his own thoughts, and appear like apples of gold in pictures of silver.' If the writer were one of surpassing brilliancy, and his own conceptions were superior to all he could borrow, he might still exert a magnanimous charity in adducing occasionally the sentiments and words of his inferiors, thus adding value to the valueless, and raising the lowly to the level of his own exaltation.

'What! Mr. Polygon! you would fence in the mind with harsh, illiberal restrictions? You would establish a monopoly of the flowers and the sunshine? You would forbid the free, sweet breezes to blow on all alike ?' No, Mr. Caviller! and I will wager my life you are a thievish author. We will forge no fetters. Your spiritual wings are free to fan and flutter in whatever airs beneath the canopy they will. You are privileged to catch upon your canvass whatever beautiful or awful hues yet unobserved by your rivals, may be cast by the light of

genius on the landscape of human history, the clouds of human passion or the sky of human thought. You are welcome to go herbalizing over all the world, and find whatever little flower you can yet lurking unseen and lovely in the nooks and by-ways of our nature. Nor will I address you, in the words of Horace, with the chilling counsel - itself a perfect flower:

'Mitte sectari rosa quo locorum

Sera moretur.'

For, doubtless, many such undiscovered flowers there are, of exquisite texture, and many such hues, of delicate or gorgeous tint. All these you are permitted to appropriate to yourself, and to preserve 'cum privilegio.' But the great Garden of the Hesperides, planted ages ago, and every year enlarged and beautified with cost, and care, and warmth,' till it is full of golden fruitage and flowers of every hue, is still open for the enjoyment of the whole human race, and over it and through it flow all the breezes of Araby the blest.' This garden is the property of universal man, and the visitors who linger enchanted in its walks, are warned 'not to injure or purloin the flowers.' You, Sir Author, are requested to tie up none of that breeze in your Æolian bags for the benefit of your little wind-mill; to steal none of those flowers to adorn your little nursery; and to turn none of that sun-glow through your refracting-glass to focalize on your little hot-bed. Because, unless you have the genius to embellish what almost superhuman genius could alone create, you will take the beauty from the blossom, the warmth from the sunshine, and the freshness from the breeze, and will in so far subtract from the loveliness of earth, and lessen the happiness of her children.

Ladies, particularly the single, should be very careful how they quote. Passages of great power and splendor are often found in juxtaposition with foulness, flanked on each side by profligate sentiments and immoral scenes. In quoting such paragraphs, the fair authoress will be thought to have eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree,' and to have become familiar with knowledge inhibited by the conventional inquisition of society. She has peeped behind the Eleusinian curtain, and is of course too knowing to be perfectly innocent in thought. Does a lady cite those lines, so beautiful, so affecting, and I am afraid, so true:

'Man's love is of man's life a thing apart:
"Tis woman's whole existence ?' etc., etc.

Is she not straightway supposed to have read all the flagrantly immoral. descriptions preceding and following that touchingly natural epistle, in a poem of manifold and most masterly genius, it is true, yet of sentiments highly incorrect throughout, and of course outlawed by the canons of feminine propriety? It is true we have our expurgated' editions of the poets, and our Anthologies,' and 'Beauties,' where the sweet and modest sex may find passion winnowed from vice, and poetry apart from poison. The fair quoter may, in some cases, be supposed to have plucked her flowers from these purified boquets, and not to have inhaled the mingled fragrance of the whole garden; a 'wilderness of sweets,' whose diversified blossoms send forth noxious and wholesome odors till,