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whom in long after-years your name will come like a note of music, who will love and honour you because you have awakened within them thoughts and feelings which stir the loftiest dreams and sweetest pulses of their nature! The poet's life is one of want and suffering, and often of mortification; but far be it from me to say that it has not its own exceeding great reward. It may be late in coming, but the claim on universal sympathy is at last allowed. The future, glorious and calm, brightens over the grave; and then for the present the golden world of imagination is around it."
We must pass over a powerfully-written description of the first night's success of Walter Maynard's tragedy.
He gains acquaintance, money and popularity; but the vanity of trivial success led him from loftier pursuits, and induced habits of extravagance which soon involved him in debt, and he became poorer than ever. Bitterly did he feel the moral degradation of writing down to the taste or prejudices of a party, or flattering the self-love of his patrons. The eagerness of youthful hope was now gone, the enthusiasm of high endeavour had been disappointed, his idol of fancied gold had proved but clay in his hour of worship. In the next picture of him at his studies we have a contrast to the one formerly given.
"'I cannot help,' said Walter, one evening, as he gazed listlessly from the window, 'reading my fate in one of those little boats now rocking on the tide, only fastened by a rope scarcely visible to the passer by. So am I tossed on the ebbing tide of life,—now in sunshine,—now in shade; seemingly free, yet in reality fettered by the strong yet slight chain of circumstances. For a small sum any passenger may enter that boat, and direct its course; and here again is
