and the reading of Mr. Keats's _Eve of St. Agnes_ lately made me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up, 'come like shadows--so depart.' The 'tiger-moth's wings', which he has spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me 'blushes' almost in vain 'with blood of queens and kings'. I know how I should have felt at one time in reading such passages; and that is all. The sharp luscious flavour, the fine _aroma_ is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is left.--W. HAZLITT. _On Reading Old Books._ READING FOR LOVE'S SAKE If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rime, Exceeded by the height of happier men. O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: 'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.' W. SHAKESPEARE. _Sonnet XXXII._ VALEDICTION TO HIS BOOK I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us; How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus, And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sibyl's glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name. Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have passed 'twixt thee and me; Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love's subliming fire invades Rule and example found; There the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees how Love this grace to us affords, To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records. This book, as long-lived as the elements, Or as the world's form, this all-gravèd tome In cypher writ, or new-made idiom; We for Love's clergy only are instruments; When this book is made thus, Should again the ravenous Vandals and the Goths invade us, Learning were safe; in this our universe, Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse.