themselves into a consequence we little dreamt of, before they depart.

Vincent took up a volume: it was Shelley's Posthumous Poems. "How fine,"
said he, "some of these are; but they are fine fragments of an
architecture in bad taste: they are imperfect in themselves, and faulty
in the school they belonged to; yet, such as they are, the master-hand is
evident upon them. They are like the pictures of Paul Veronese--often
offending the eye, often irritating the judgment, but redolent of
something vast and lofty--their very faults are majestic--this age,
perhaps no other will ever do them justice--but the disciples of future
schools will make glorious pillage of their remains. The writings of
Shelley would furnish matter for a hundred volumes: they are an admirable
museum of ill-arranged curiosities--they are diamonds, awkwardly set; but
one of them, in the hands of a skilful jeweller, would be inestimable:
and the poet of the future, will serve him as Mercury did the tortoise in
his own translation from Homer--make him 'sing sweetly when he's dead!'
Their lyres will be made out of his shell."

"If I judge rightly," said Clarendon, "his literary faults were these: he
was too learned in his poetry, and too poetical in his learning. Learning
is the bane of a poet. Imagine how beautiful Petrarch would be without
his platonic conceits: fancy the luxuriant imagination of Cowley, left to
run wild among the lofty objects of nature, not the minute peculiarities
of art. Even Milton, who made a more graceful and gorgeous use of
learning than, perhaps, any other poet, would have been far more popular
if he had been more familiar. Poetry is for the multitude--erudition for
the few. In proportion as you mix them, erudition will gain in readers,
and poetry lose."

"True," said Glanville; "and thus the poetical, among philosophers, are