—he never tried and succeeded in writing himself laboriously
down
.
The only books which should gain permanent reputation are those which supply materials for thought, and are studded with moveable gems of expression. We think we may divide the poems of the past and present into two classes, which we may discriminate into
buildings
and
quarries
. Many works to which you can hardly deny the character of works of genius may be likened to elegant and splendid edifices, the structure of which you cannot but admire, although the secret of their architecture you do not understand, and although from them you neither do nor can extract a single stone. They stand up before the view, dazzling and confounding,—
"Distinct but distant, clear, but ah! how cold."
Other books, less magnificent in aspect and rougher in style, are yet so full of suggestive and germinating thought, that we must liken them to quarries, surrounded it may be by thorns and briars, and precipices, but containing the richest of matter, and communicating with the very depths of the earth. Not to enter on the vexed questions connected with more celebrated poets, we may name Darwin and Dr Thomas Brown as two specimens of the building, and Robert Blair as an admirable example of the quarry. In household words and sententious truths, he yields (taking his space into consideration), not even to Young, or Pope, or Cowper, but to Shakspeare alone. His poem is a tissue of texts; many of his expressions might pass and have passed for bits of