We ne'er shall look upon his like again, For panting time toils after him in vain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain; Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay! Leaving this great poet's samples of the mighty line, or, as it is sometimes called, the lofty rhyme, to "speak for themselves," we conclude with a word or two on a subject to which _one_ of his effusions here printed has (thanks to what are called the critics) unexpectedly led--we mean the subject of Literary Loans, or, as they are more familiarly and perhaps felicitously designated, Literary Thefts. A critic of high repute has said, "A man had better steal anything on earth, than the thoughts of another;" agreed, unless when he steals the thought, he steal the words with it. The economising trader in Joe Miller who stole his brooms ready made, carried on a prosperous business. Some authors steal only the raw material; or rather, they run away with another man's muse, but for fear of detection, and to avoid the charge of felony, leave the drapery behind--a practice which cannot be too severely reprehended. It is the same principle on which, according to Sheridan (Sir Fretful's _friend!_) gipsies disguise stolen children to make them pass for their own. Now Sir Fretful, alluding to Shakspeare in a poem which has never yet been published, says very nobly-- "Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not He wants that greatest art, the art to blot!" If we might dare to parody (Scott said it was a sin to parody--"We are seven") any one line sanctified by the genius of a Plagiary, we should say that too many of his descendants want that greatest art, the art to steal. They steal--but not with integrity. There may be, nay there is, such a thing as honest theft--equitable robbery--prigging with justice and honour. We hold that in all cases of literary borrowing, or robbery (for it comes to the same thing), it is ten million times better to rob or borrow without the least disguise, equivocation, or mutilation whatsoever. Take the line as you find it. Don't crack it as you would a nut, picking out the idea, appropriating it to your own purpose, and leaving only the husk behind. You will never get an artificial shell to grow round it; it will never be the nut it was before. Take it whole. Prudery in these cases is often worse than folly--it is shabbiness. It is folly, when, after stealing a fine symmetrical thought, a whole morning is spent in disguising, distorting, and deforming it, until at last all that remains of it merge into the unprofitable moral--"of no use to anybody but the owner." It is shabbiness, when, as is the practice of prose-writers, a splendid passage is purloined, and a bargain is struck with conscience; when, just for decency's sake, six words of the sentence are publicly attributed by inverted commas to the right owner, while all the rest assumes the character of originality. We may give an example