Have wrought in line that aye shall last,—
E’en I, with Shakspere’s self beside me,
And one whose tender talk can guide me
Through fears and pains and troublous themes,
Whose smile doth fall upon my dreams
Like sunshine on a stormy sea,******”
Proctor slights the world’s love for his wife and books, and, as might be expected, the world only plies him the more with its caresses. He is now and then seen in the choicest circles of London, where, though love and attention mark most flatteringly the rare pleasure of his presence, he plays a retired and silent part, and steals early away. His library is his Paradise. His enjoyment of literature should be mentioned as often in his biography as the “feeding among the lilies” in the Songs of Solomon. He forgets himself, he forgets the world in his favorite authors, and that, I fancy, was the golden link in his friendship with Lamb. Surrounded by exquisite specimens of art, (he has a fine taste, and is much beloved by artists,) a choice book in his hand, his wife beside him, and the world shut out, Barry is in the meridian of his true orbit. Oh, then, a more loving and refined spirit is not breathing beneath the stars! He reads and muses; and as something in the pages stirs some distant association, suggests some brighter image than its own, he half leans over to the table, and scrawls it in unstudied but inspired verse. He thinks no more of it. You might have it to light your cigar. But there sits by his side one who knows its value, and it is treasured. Here, for instance, in the volume I have spoken of before, are some forty pages of “fragments”—thrown in to eke out the volume of his songs. I am sure, that when he was making up his book, perhaps expressing a fear that there would not be pages enough for the publisher’s design, these fragments were produced from their secret hiding-place to his great surprise. The quotations I have made were all from this portion of his volume, and, as I said before, they are worthy of Shakspere. There is no mark of labor in them. I do not believe there was an erasure in the entire manuscript. They bear all the marks of a sudden, unstudied impulse, immediately and unhesitatingly expressed. Here are several fragments. How evident it is that they were suggested directly by his reading:—
“She was a princess—but she fell; and now
Her shame goes blushing through a line of kings.
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