We had marked many other fine passages of "Saul" for quotation, but must be content with a few of those which are most readily separated from the context. "Ha! ha! the foe, Having taken from us our warlike tools, yet leave us The little scarlet tongue to scratch and sting with." "Here's lad's-love, and the flower which even death Cannot unscent, the all-transcending rose." "The loud bugle, And the hard-rolling drum, and clashing cymbals, Now reign the lords o' the air. These crises, David, Bring with them their own music, as do storms Their thunders." "Ere the morn Shall tint the orient with the soldier's color, We must be at the camp." "But come, I'll disappoint thee; for, remember, Samuel will not be roused for thee, although I knock with thunder at his resting-place." The lyrical portions, of the work--introduced in connection with the demoniac characters--are inferior to the rest. They have occasionally a quaint, antique flavor, suggesting the diction of the Elizabethan lyrists, but without their delicate, elusive richness of melody. Here most we perceive the absence of that highest, ripest intellectual culture which can be acquired only through contact and conflict with other minds. It is not good for a poet to be alone. Even where the constructive faculty is absent, its place may be supplied through the development of that artistic sense which files, weighs, and adjusts,--which reconciles the utmost freedom and force of thought with the mechanical symmetries of language,--and which, first a fetter to the impatient mind, becomes at length a pinion, holding it serenely poised in the highest ether. Only the rudiment of the sense is born with the poet, and few literary lives are fortunate enough, or of sufficiently varied experience, to mature it. Nevertheless, before closing the volume, we must quote what we consider to be the author's best lyrical passage. Zaph, one of the attendants of Malzah, the "evil spirit from the Lord," sings as follows to one of his fellows:-- "Zepho, the sun's descended beam Hath laid his rod on th' ocean stream, And this o'erhanging wood-top nods Like golden helms of drowsy gods. Methinks that now I'll stretch for rest, With eyelids sloping toward the west; That, through their half transparencies, The rosy radiance passed and strained, Of mote and vapor duly drained, I may believe, in hollow bliss, My rest in the empyrean is. Watch thou; and when up comes the moon, Atowards her turn me; and then, boon, Thyself compose, 'neath wavering leaves That hang these branched, majestic eaves: That so, with self-imposed deceit, Both, in this halcyon retreat, By trance possessed, imagine may We couch in Heaven's night-argent ray."