"Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious flame," remarked I,
"he might then consume the midnight oil to some good purpose."

"That is the very thing which modern poets have been too apt to do,
or at least to attempt," answered a critic. "The chief benefit to
be expected from this conflagration of past literature undoubtedly
is, that writers will henceforth be compelled to light their lamps
at the sun or stars."

"If they can reach so high," said I; "but that task requires a
giant, who may afterwards distribute the light among inferior men.
It is not every one that can steal the fire from heaven like
Prometheus; but, when once he had done the deed, a thousand hearths
were kindled by it."

It amazed me much to observe how indefinite was the proportion
between the physical mass of any given author and the property of
brilliant and long-continued combustion. For instance, there was
not a quarto volume of the last century--nor, indeed, of the
present--that could compete in that particular with a child's little
gilt-covered book, containing _Mother Goose's Melodies_. _The Life
and Death of Tom Thumb_ outlasted the biography of Marlborough. An
epic, indeed a dozen of them, was converted to white ashes before
the single sheet of an old ballad was half consumed. In more than
one case, too, when volumes of applauded verse proved incapable of
anything better than a stifling smoke, an unregarded ditty of some
nameless bard--perchance in the corner of a newspaper--soared up
among the stars with a flame as brilliant as their own. Speaking of
the properties of flame, methought Shelley's poetry emitted a purer
light than almost any other productions of his day, contrasting