Ah, what a wealth of Life there is In that large-laughing page of his! What store and stock of Common-Sense, Wit, Wisdom, Books, Experience! How his keen Satire flashes through, And cuts a sophistry in two! How his ironic lightning plays Around a rogue and all his ways! Ah, how he knots his lash to see That ancient cloak, Hypocrisy! Whose are the characters that give Such round reality?--that live With such full pulse? Fair SOPHY yet Sings _Bobbing Joan_ at the spinet; We see AMELIA cooking still That supper for the recreant WILL; We hear Squire WESTERN'S headlong tones Bawling "Wut ha?--wut ha?" to JONES. Are they not present now to us,-- The Parson with his _AEschylus_? SLIPSLOP the frail, and NORTHERTON, PARTRIDGE, and BATH, and HARRISON?-- Are they not breathing, moving,--all The motley, merry carnival That FIELDING kept, in days agone? He was the first who dared to draw Mankind the mixture that he saw; Not wholly good nor ill, but both, With fine intricacies of growth. He pulled the wraps of flesh apart, And showed the working human heart; He scorned to drape the truthful nude With smooth, decorous platitude! He was too frank, may be; and dared Too boldly. Those whose faults he bared, Writhed in the ruthless grasp that brought Into the light their secret thought. Therefore the TARTUFFE-throng who say "_Couvrez ce sein_," and look that way,-- Therefore the Priests of Sentiment Rose on him with their garments rent. Therefore the gadfly swarm whose sting Plies ever round some generous thing, Buzzed of old bills and tavern-scores, Old "might-have-beens" and "heretofores";-- Then, from that garbled record-list, Made him his own Apologist. And was he? Nay,--let who has known Nor Youth nor Error, cast the stone! If to have sense of Joy and Pain Too keen,--to rise, to fall again, To live too much,--be sin, why then, This was no pattern among men. But those who turn that later page, The Journal of his middle-age, Watch him serene in either fate,-- Philanthropist and Magistrate; Watch him as Husband, Father, Friend, Faithful, and patient to the end; Grieving, as e'en the brave may grieve, But for the loved ones he must leave: These will admit--if any can-- That 'neath the green Estrella trees, No Artist merely, but a MAN, Wrought on our noblest island-plan, Sleeps with the alien Portuguese. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. "_Nec turpem senectam Degere, nec cithara carentem._" --Hor. i. 31. "Not to be tuneless in old age!" Ah! surely blest his pilgrimage, Who, in his Winter's snow, Still sings with note as sweet and clear As in the morning of the year When the first violets blow!