poetry, and they become doubly offensive when brought into relation with the beauty and majesty of nature. It is neither pleasant nor profitable to hear the sun's rays described as
It is still less satisfactory to have the universe addressed in this convivial and burlesque fashion:—
"Earth, you seem to look for something at my hands;
Say, old Topknot, what do you want?"
There is a kind of humorousness which a true sense of humor would render impossible; there is a species of originality from which the artist shrinks aghast; and worse than mere vulgarity is the constant employment of words indecorous in themselves, and irreverent in their application,—the smirching of clean and noble things with adjectives grossly unfitted for such use, and repellent to all the canons of good taste. This is not the "gentle pressure" which Sophocles put upon common words to wring from them a fresh significance; it is a deliberate abuse of terms, and betrays a lack of that fine quality of self-repression which embraces the power of selection, and is
