Devotion! daughter of astronomy!

An undevout astronomer is mad.

219 ATHEISM.

Young: Night Thoughts. Night ix. Line 772

By night an atheist half believes a God.

220

Young: Night Thoughts. Night v. Line 176.

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven,

Cries out,

221

Where is it?"

Coleridge: Fears in Solitude. Line 81

Eyes which the preacher could not school,
By wayside graves are raised;

And lips say, "God be pitiful,"

66

That ne'er said God be praised."

222

ATHENS.

Mrs. Browning: Cry of the Human

Ancient of days! august Athena! where,

Where are thy men of might, thy grand in soul?

Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that were First in the race that led to glory's goal,

They won, and pass'd away.

223

AUDIT.

Byron: Ch. Harold. Canto ii. St. 2

He took my father grossly, full of bread,

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
224
Shaks.: Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 3.

I can make my audit up, that all
From me do back receive the flour of all;
And leave me but the bran.

And lo! the sun is coming. Red as rust
Between the latticed blind his presence burns,
A ruby ladder running up the wall;

And all the dust, printed with pigeons' feet,
Is reddened, and the crows that stalk anear
Begin to trail for heat their glossy wings,
And the red flowers give back at once the dew,
For night is gone, and day is born so fast,
And is so strong, that, huddled as in flight,
The fleeting darkness paleth to a shade,

And while she calls to sleep and dreams" Core on,"
Suddenly waked, the sleepers rub their eyes,
Which having opened, lo! she is no more.

227

Jean Ingelow: Afternoon at a Parsonage Rejoice! ye fields, rejoice! and wave with gold, When August round her precious gifts is flinging; Lo! the crushed wain is slowly homeward rolled : The sunburnt reapers jocund lays are singing.

Man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep!

231

Shaks.: M. for M. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

And the creature run from the cur?

There thou might'st behold the great image of authority:

AUTHORS -see Books, Critics, Poems, Reading.
How many great ones may remember'd be,
Which in their days most famously did flourish,
Of whom no word we hear, nor sign now see,
But as things wip'd out with a sponge do perish.
234
Spenser: Ruins of Time.
Look, then, into thine heart, and write!

235

St. 52

Longfellow: Voices of the Night. Prelude

No author ever spared a brother;
Wits are gamecocks to one another.

236

Gay: Fables. Elephant and Bookseller

In every work regard the writer's end,

Since none can compass more than they intend.

237

Pope: E. on Criticism. Pt. ii. Zine 55

An author! 'tis a venerable name!
How few deserve it, and what numbers claim!
Unbless'd with sense above their peers refined,
Who shall stand up, dictators to mankind?
Nay, who dare shine, if not in virtue's cause,
That sole proprietor of just applause?

238

Young: Epis. to Pope. Bk. ii. Line 15

Some write, confin'd by physic; some, by debt;
Some, for 'tis Sunday; some, because 'tis wet;
Another writes because his father writ,
And proves himself a bastard by his wit.
239

Young: Epis. to Pope. Bk. i. Line 75

Great is the dignity of authorship. 240

Tupper: Proverbial Phil. Of Authorship.

Rare is the worthiness of authorship.
241
Tupper: Proverbial Phil. Of Authorship
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from letters to be wise,
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail;
See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,

To buried merit raise the tardy bust.

242 Dr. Johnson: Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 157 We that live to please, must please to live.

243 Dr. Johnson: Pro. on Opening Drury Lane Theatre Some write a narrative of wars and feats,

Of heroes little known, and call the rant

A history. Describe the man, of whom

His own coevals took but little note,

And paint his person, character and views,

As they had known him from his mother's womb.

244

Cowper: Task. Bk. iii. Line 139

None but an author knows an author's cares, Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears. 245

Cowper: Prog. of Error. Line 516

Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

246 Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire: Essay on Poetry
Sometimes an author, fond of his own thought,
Pursues its object till 'tis overwrought:

If he describes a house, he shows the face,
And after, walks you round from place to place;
Here is a vista, there the doors unfold,
Balconies here are balustred with gold;

Then counts the rounds and ovals in the halls,
The festoons, friezes, and the astragals:
Tired with his tedious pomp, away I run,

And skip o'er twenty pages to be gone.

247

Dryden: Art of Poetry. Canto i. Line 49.

I never dare to write

As funny as I can.

248

Oliver Wendell Holmes: Height of Ridiculous. St. 8.

"Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in't. 249

Byron: English Bards. Line 51.

One hates an author that's all author, fellows
In foolscap uniform turn'd up with ink;
So very anxious, clever, fine and jealous,
One don't know what to say to them, or think,
Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows;
Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs, e'en the pink
Are preferable to these shreds of paper,
These unquench'd snuffings of the midnight taper.
250
Byron: Beppo.

But every fool describes, in these bright days,
His wondrous journey to some foreign court,
And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise ̧·
Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport.
251

St. 75.

Byron: Don Juan. Canto v. St. 52

At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
'Tis wise to learn; 'tis god-like to create!
252

J. G. Saxe: The Library

AUTUMN - see October, November.

Thrice happy time, Best portion of the various year, in which Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works. Lovely, to full perfection wrought!

John Phillips: Cider. 2

253
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.

Keats: To Autumn

254
Divinest autumn! who may paint thee best,
Forever changeful o'er the changeful globe?
Who guess thy certain crown, thy favorite crest,
The fashion of thy many-colored robe?

Sometimes we see thee stretched upon the ground,
In fading woods where acorns patter fast,
Dropping to feed thy tusky boars around,
Crunching among the leaves the ripened mast;
Sometimes at work where ancient granary-floors
Are open wide, a thresher stout and hale,
Whitened with chaff up-wafted from thy flail,
While south winds sweep along the dusty floors;
And sometimes fast asleep at noontide hours,
Pillowed on sheaves, and shaded from the heat,
With Plenty at thy feet,

Braiding a coronet of oaten straw and flowers.
255

R. H. Stoddard: Autumn.

Pale in her fading bowers the summer stands,
Like a new Niobe with clasped hands,
'Silent above the flowers, her children lost,
Slain by the arrows of the early frost.
The clouded Heaven above is pale and gray,
The misty Earth below is wan and drear,
The baying winds chase all the leaves away,
As cruel hounds pursue the trembling deer;
It is a solemn time, the Sunset of the Year.
256

The Wind moans in the Wood,
The Leaf drops from the Tree;

R. H. Stoddard: Odc.

The cold Rain falls on the graves of the Good
The cold Mist comes up from the Sea.

Byron Forceythe Willson: Autumn Song

257 Autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

258

Robert Browning: Paracelsus. Sc.i