[25]. What I mean is, that I have heard the best, as I believe, the last of the old century and the first of the new have shown.
[26]. ‘He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in half a dozen half-sentences as he does. His jests scald like tears: and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hare-brained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom!’
[27].
It filled the valley like a mist,
And still poured out its endless chant,
And still it swells upon the ear,
And wraps me in a golden trance,
Drowning the noisy tumult of the world.
. . . . . .
Like sweetest warblings from a sacred grove ...