The Republic of Letters Volume 4; A Selection, in Poetry and Prose, from the Works of the Most Eminent Writers, with Many Original Pieces

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: shock the taste of my reader by quoting Shenstone on this occasion; the old poets, however, had a pretty notion of things in general, and, when celebrating the influence of romantic scenery in disposing the heart to the tender passion, they drew as largely, I doubt not, upon their experience as on their imagination. For my own part, had I forsworn matrimony, i would confine myself to the metropolis, and plunge fearlessly into society, under the conviction that a man may carry his heart, like his purse, in safety through a crowd, and yet be robbed of it in a retired lane, a shady copse, or a lonely common. Arthur Worthington, however, had not taken the vow of celibacy, and was well content to lose his own heart, provided he could obtain another in exchange. I know not the particular spot, or the precise terms, in which he made a declaration of the sentiments with which Clara Stanley had inspired him -. I only know, that he sustained his reputation as an eloquent pleader, and gained a verdict from one whose gratitude and admiration he had previously excited by the generous and disinterested manner in which he had undertaken her cause, at a time when he believed her to be the betrothed of another. SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my eight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyea as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn j A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay. 1 saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman to ! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as...