AUTHORS see Books, Critics, Poems, Reading.
How many great ones may remember'd be,
Which in their days most famously did flourish,
Of whom no word we hear, nor sign now see,
But as things wip'd out with a sponge do perish.
234
Spenser: Ruins of Time.
Look, then, into thine heart, and write!

235

St. 52

Longfellow: Voices of the Night. Prelude

Gay: Fables. Elephant and Bookseller.

No author ever spared a brother;
Wits are gamecocks to one another.

236

In every work regard the writer's end,

Since none can compass more than they intend.

237

Pope: E. on Criticism. Pt. ii. Zine 55

An author! 'tis a venerable name!
How few deserve it, and what numbers claim!
Unbless'd with sense above their peers refined,
Who shall stand up, dictators to mankind?
Nay, who dare shine, if not in virtue's cause,
That sole proprietor of just applause?

238

Young: Epis. to Pope. Bk. ii. Line 15.

Some write, confin'd by physic; some, by debt;
Some, for 'tis Sunday; some, because 'tis wet;
Another writes because his father writ,
And proves himself a bastard by his wit.

239

Young: Epis. to Pope. Bk. i. Line 75

Great is the dignity of authorship. 240

Tupper: Proverbial Phil. Of Authorship.

Rare is the worthiness of authorship.
241
Tupper: Proverbial Phil. Of Authorship
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from letters to be wise,
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail;
See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,

To buried merit raise the tardy bust.

242 Dr. Johnson: Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 157 We that live to please, must please to live.

243 Dr. Johnson: Pro. on Opening Drury Lane Theatre, Some write a narrative of wars and feats,

Of heroes little known, and call the rant

A history. Describe the man, of whom

His own coevals took but little note,

And paint his person, character and views,

As they had known him from his mother's womb.

244

Cowper: Task. Bk. iii. Line 139

None but an author knows an author's cares, Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears. 245

Cowper: Prog. of Error. Line 516.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

246 Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire: Essay on Poetry.
Sometimes an author, fond of his own thought,
Pursues its object till 'tis overwrought:

If he describes a house, he shows the face,
And after, walks you round from place to place;
Here is a vista, there the doors unfold,
Balconies here are balustred with gold;
Then counts the rounds and ovals in the halls,
The festoons, friezes, and the astragals:
Tired with his tedious pomp, away I run,

And skip o'er twenty pages to be gone.

247

Dryden: Art of Poetry. Canto i. Line 49.

I never dare to write

As funny as I can.

248 Oliver Wendell Holmes: Height of Ridiculous. St. 8.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;

A book's a book, although there's nothing in't. 249

Byron: English Bards. Line 51.

One hates an author that's all author, fellows
In foolscap uniform turn'd up with ink;
So very anxious, clever, fine and jealous,
One don't know what to say to them, or think,
Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows;

Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs, e'en the pink
Are preferable to these shreds of paper,
These unquench'd snuffings of the midnight taper.
250
Byron: Beppo.

But every fool describes, in these bright days,
His wondrous journey to some foreign court,
And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise, –
Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport.

251

St. 75.

Byron: Don Juan. Canto v. St. 52

At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
Tis wise to learn; 'tis god-like to create!
252

J. G. Saxe: The Library ·

AUTUMN - see October, November.

Thrice happy time, Best portion of the various year, in which Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works. Lovely, to full perfection wrought!

John Phillips: Cider. 2

253
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.

254

Keats: To Autumn.

Divinest autumn! who may paint thee best,
Forever changeful o'er the changeful globe?
Who guess thy certain crown, thy favorite crest,
The fashion of thy many-colored robe?

Sometimes we see thee stretched upon the ground,
In fading woods where acorns patter fast,
Dropping to feed thy tusky boars around,
Crunching among the leaves the ripened mast;
Sometimes at work where ancient granary-floors
Are open wide, a thresher stout and hale,
Whitened with chaff up-wafted from thy flail,
While south winds sweep along the dusty floors;
And sometimes fast asleep at noontide hours,
Pillowed on sheaves, and shaded from the heat,
With Plenty at thy feet,

Braiding a coronet of oaten straw and flowers.
255

R. H. Stoddard: Autumn.

Pale in her fading bowers the summer stands,
Like a new Niobe with clasped hands,
Silent above the flowers, her children lost,
Slain by the arrows of the early frost.
The clouded Heaven above is pale and gray,
The misty Earth below is wan and drear,
The baying winds chase all the leaves away,
As cruel hounds pursue the trembling deer;
It is a solemn time, the Sunset of the Year.
256

The Wind moans in the Wood,

The Leaf drops from the Tree;

R. H. Stoddard: Ode.

The cold Rain falls on the graves of the Good,
The cold Mist comes up from the Sea.

Byron Forceythe Willson: Autumn Song.

257 Autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

258

Robert Browning: Paracelsus. Sc.i

Earth is all in splendor drest;
Queenly fair, she sits at rest,
While the deep, delicious day
Dreams its happy life away.

259

Margaret E. Sangster: An Autumn Day. St. 4

With all the autumn blaze of Golden Rod;
And everywhere the Purple Asters nod
And bend and wave and flit.

262

Helen Hunt: Asters and Golden Roc

That beautiful season

the Summer of All-Saints!

Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape

Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood. Peace seemed to reign upon earth, and the restless heart of

the ocean

Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in harmony blended.

And the great sun

Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors

around him;

While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest

Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels.

263

Longfellow: Evangeline. Part i. ii. Line 11.

Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips
The days, as through the sunset gates they crowd.
And Summer from her golden collar slips

And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud,
Save when by fits the warmer air deceives,
And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower,
She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves,
And tries the old tunes over for an hour.

264

Alice Cary: Autumr

This sunlight shames November where he grieves
In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
The day, though bough with bough be overrun.
But with a blessing every glade receives
High salutation.

265

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Autumn Idleness.

Summer is gone on swallows' wings,
And earth has buried all her flowers:

No more the lark, the linnet sings,
But Silence sits in faded bowers.
There is a shadow on the plain
Of Winter ere he comes again.
266

Hood: Departure of Summer.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn.

267

Hood: Autumn.

Ho bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fied!
Hues of all flow'rs that in their ashes lie,
Trophied in that fair light whereon they fed,
Tulip, and hyacinth, and sweet rose red,
Like exhalations from the leafy mould,
Look here how honor glorifies the dead,

And warms their scutcheons with a glance of gold.
268
Hood: Written in a vol. of Shakespeare.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.

269 William Cullen Bryant: Death of the Flowers Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in their freshest green. Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.

270

William Cullen Bryant: Third of November