For thought shall strengthen thinking, and imagery speed imagination, Until thy spiritual inmate shall have swelled to the giant of Otranto.

Nevertheless, heed well, that this Athlete, growing in thy brain,
Be a wholesome Genius, not a cursed Afrite:

And see thou discipline his strength, and point his aim discreetly;
Feed him on humility and holy things, weaned from covetous desires;
Hour by hour, and day by day, ply him with ideas of excellence,
Dragging forth the evil but to loathe, as a Spartan's drunken Helot :
And win, by gradual allurements, the still expanding soul,
To rise from a contemplated universe, even to the Hand that made it.

A common mind perceiveth not beyond his eyes and ears :
The palings of the park of sense enthral this captured roebuck:
And still, though fettered in the flesh, he doth not feel his chains,
Externals are the world to him, and circumstance his atmosphere.
Therefore, tangible pleasures are enough for the animal-man ;

He is swift to speak and slow to think, dreading his own dim conscience;
And solitude is terrible, and exile worse than death,

He cannot dwell apart, nor breathe at a distance from the crowd;
But minds of nobler stamp, and chiefest the mint-marked of heaven,
Walk independent by themselves, freely manumitted of externals:
They carry viands with them, and need no refreshment by the way,
Nor drink of other wells than their own inner fountain.

Strange shall it seem how little such a man will lean upon the accidents of life,

He is winged, and needeth not a staff; if it break,—he shall not fall.
And lightly perchance doth he remember the stale trivialities around him,
He liveth in the realm of thought, beyond the world of things:
These are but transient Matter, and himself enduring Spirit:
And worldliness will laugh to scorn that sublimated wisdom.

His eyes may open on a prison-cell, but the bare walls glow with imagery; His ears may be filled with execration, but are listening to the music of sweet thoughts;

He

may dwell in a hovel with a hero's heart, and canopy his penury with

peace,

For mind is a kingdom to the man, who gathereth his pleasure from Ideas.

ADAM gave

OF NAMES.

the name, when the Lord had made his creature,

For God led them in review, to see what man would call them:

As they struck his senses, he proclaimed their sounds,

A name for the distinguishing of each, a numeral by which it should be known:

He specified the partridge by her cry, and the forest prowler by his

roaring,

The tree by its use, and the flower by its beauty, and every thing according to its truth.

There is an arbitrary name, whereunto the idea attacheth;
And there is a reasonable name, linking its fitness to idea:
Yet shall these twain run in parallel courses,

Neither shalt thou readily discern the habit from the nature.
For mind is apt and quick to wed ideas and names together,

Nor stoppeth its perception to be curious of priorities;

And there is but little in the sound, as some have vainly fancied.

The same tone in different tongues shall be suitable to opposite ideas;
Yea, take an ensample in thine own; consider similar words:
How various and contrary the thoughts those kindred names produce :
A house shall seem a fitting word to call a roomy dwelling,
Yet there is a like propriety in the small smooth sound, a mouse:
Mountain, as if of a necessity, is a word both mighty and majestic,-
What heed ye then of fountain ?-flowing silver in the sun.

Many a fair flower is burdened with preposterous appellatives,
Which the wiser simplicity of rustics entitled by its beauties:
And often the conceit of science, loving to be thought cosmopolite,
Shall mingle names of every clime, alike obscure to each.

There is wisdom in calling a thing fitly; name should note particulars
Through a character obvious to all men, and worthy of their instant

acceptation.

The herbalist had a simple cause for every word upon his catalogue,
But now the mouth of Botany is filled with empty sound;

And many a peasant hath an answer on his tongue, concerning some vexed

flower,

Shrewder than the centipede phrase wherewithal philosophers invest it.

For that, the foolishness of pride, and flatteries of cringing homage,
Strew with chaff the threshing-floors of science; names perplex them all:
The entomologist, who hath pried upon an insect, straightway shall endow
it with his name ;

It had many qualities and marks of note,-but in chief, a vain observer: The geographer shall journey to the pole, through biting frost and desolation,

And, for some simple patron's sake, shall name that land, the happy:

The fossilist hath found a bone, the rib of some huge lizard,

And forthwith standeth to it sponsor, to tack himself on reptile immor

talities:

The sportsman, hunting at the Cape, found some strange-horned antelope,
The spots are new, the fame is cheap, and so his name is added.
Thus, obscurities encumber knowledge, even by the vanity of men,
Who play into each other's hand the game of giving names.

Various are the names of men, and drawn from different wells;
Aspects of body, or characters of mind, the creature's first idea:
And some have sprung of trades, and some of dignities or office;
Other some added to a father's, and yet more growing from a place :
Animal creation, with sciences and things,—their composites, and near

associations,

Contributed their symbolings of old, wherewith to title men:

And heraldry set upon its cresture the figured attributes as ensigns

By which, as by a name concrete, its bearer should be known.

Egypt opened on the theme, dressing up her gods in qualities;
Horns of power, feathers of the swift, mitres of catholic dominion,
The sovereign asps, the circle everlasting, the crook and thong of justice,
By many mystic shapes and sounds displayed the idol's name.
Thereafter, high-plumed warriors, the chieftains of Etruria and Troy,
And Xerxes, urging on his millions to the tomb of pride, Thermopylæ,
And Hiero with his bounding ships all figured at the prow,
And Rome's Prætorian standards, piled with strange devices,
And stout crusaders pressing to the battle, locked in shining steel,—
These all in their speaking symbols, earned, or wore, a name.
Eve, the mother of all living, and Abraham, father of a multitude,

Jacob, the supplanter, and David the beloved, and all the worthies of old

time,

Noah, who came for consolation, and Benoni, son of sorrow,

Kings and prophets, children of the East, owned each his title of signifi

cance.

There be names of high descent, and thereby storied honours ;
Names of fair renown, and therein characters of merit :

But to lend the lowborn noble names, is to shed upon them ridicule and evil;
Yea, many weeds run rank in pride, if men have dubbed them cedars.
And to herald common mediocrity with the noisy notes of fame,
Tendeth to its deeper scorn; as if it were to call the mole a mammoth.
Yet shall ye find the trader's babe dignified with sounding titles,
And little hath the father guessed the harm he did his child:

For either may they breed him discontent, a peevish repining at his station,

Or point the finger of despite at the mule in the trappings of an elephant: And it is a kind of theft to filch appellations from the famous,

A soiling of the shrines of praise with folly's vulgar herd.

Prudence hath often gone ashamed for the name they added to his father's, If minds of mark and great achievements bore it well before;

For he walketh as the jay in the fable, though not by his own folly, Another's fault hath compassed his misfortune, making him a martyr to his name.

Who would call the tench a whale, or style a torch, Orion?
Yet many a silly parent hath dealt likewise with his nursling.

Give thy child a fit distinguishment, making him sole tenant of a name,
For it were a sore hindrance to hold it in common with a hundred ;

In the Babel of confused identities fame is little feasible,

The felon shall detract from the philanthropist, and the sage share honours with the simple :

Still, in thy title of distinguishment, fall not into arrogant assumption, Steering from caprice and affectations; and for all thou doest, have a rea

son.

He that is ambitious for his son, should give him untried names,

For those that have served other men, haply may injure by their evils; Or otherwise may hinder by their glories; thorefore set him by himself, To win for his individual name some clear specific praise.

There were nine Homers, all goodly sons of song; but where is any record of the eight?

One grew to fame, an Aaron's rod, and swallowed up his brethren: (20) Who knoweth ? more distinctly titled, those dead eight had lived;

But the censers were ranged in a circle, to mingle their sweets without a difference.

Art thou named of a common crowd, and sensible of high aspirings?

It is hard for thee to rise,-yet strive: thou mayst be among them a Musæus.

Art thou named of a family, the same in successive generations?

thee:

It is open to thee still to earn for epithets, such an one, the good or great.
Art thou named foolishly? show that thou art wiser than thy fathers,
Live to shame their vanity or sin by dutiful devotion to thy sphere.
Art thou named discreetly? it is well, the course is free;
No competitor shall claim thy colours, neither fix his faults upon
Hasten to the goal of fame between the posts of duty,
And win a blessing from the world, that men may love thy name;
Yea, that the unction of its praise, in fragrance well deserving,
May float adown the stream of time, like ambergris at sea;

So thy sons may tell their sons, and those may teach their children,
He died in goodness, as he lived ;-and left us his good name.
And more than these: there is a roll whereon thy name is written;
See that, on the Book of Doom, that name is fixed in light:

Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles are not found,
God will give thee his new Name, and write it on thy heart:
A Name, better than of sons, a Name dearer than of daughters,
A Name of union, peace, and praise, as numbered in thy God.

OF THINGS.

ABSTRACTED from all substance, and flying with the feathered flock of thoughts,

The idea of a thing hath the nature of its Soul, a separate seeming es

sence:

Intimately linked to the idea, suggesting many qualities,

The name of a thing hath the nature of its Mind, an intellectual recorder: And the matter of a thing, concrete, is a Body to the perfect creature,