The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

'Step in some afternoon,' he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper-whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Fra tutti il primo Arnaldo Daniello Gran maestro d'amor; ch'a la sua terra Ancor fa onor col suo dir strano e bello.

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still.

They say my verse is sad: no wonder. Its narrow measure spans Rue for eternity, and sorrow Not mine, but man's. This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and …