All dumb with grief, at first transfix'd I stood, Nor knew of aught I saw, or heard ; 'But soon my bursting heart felt all the load That death alone could e'er remove. • All night I roam'd along the barren coast, This dreadful tide of all-consuming grief 'But eager sought in death a kind relief For sorrows deep, none else could share. And now though prone on earth I bleeding lie, One thought there is that comfort brings; For her alone I liv'd, for her I die; And this I wish my Mary knew.' ‹ And mark- "He paus'd! for death's eternal shades "Now swum around his closing eyes, "While o'er his cheeks one livid hue pervades ; "And now a stiffen'd corpse he lies. "To yonder spot, where humble flow'rets grow, "And where the mournful willows hang, "I bore his corse with tott'ring steps and slow, "And there perform'd his fun'ral rites." "Oh, Edward dear!" now cried the weeping maid, "All broken is my faithless heart; "But soon I meet thy dear departed shade, "In realms of peace no more to part." And now her beauteous form on earth's green bed Was seen to fall and breathless lie, No more her azure eyes their lustre shed, For gone was life's last heavy sigh. CONCLUSION ΤΟ THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE WANDERER. ARRAIGN not, O reader, these my congratulations upon thy safe arrival at this bourn of thy toilsome pilgrimage. Thou hast now wandered, or perhaps in thy opinion rather waded, through the shallows and depths of this volume; and I cannot suffer thee to depart from hence on thy route to the next, without venturing to submit a few remarks for thy consideration. In the inestimable works of the immortal Johnson are the following passages. "To exact of every man who writes, that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile genius to say only what is new, would be to contract his volumes to a few pages. Yet, C surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition; libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated." Now, my dear reader, I am, as I hope thou art, precisely of this opinion. An author is miserably out of his calculations if he supposes himself able to produce immediately from his brain a commodious volume of original matter. It is not pos sible to resist the current of borrowed knowledge from flowing in upon any work a man may be engaged in; because nine-tenths of his ideas are imbibed intuitively from others, and consequently not originally of his own creating. As our great literary leviathan hath justly observed, the original matter, even of the most fertile genius, may be comprised in a very few pages. But he who searches after knowledge will be glad to stipulate for many pages of ascertained facts, in order to be furnished with one new idea or fresh combination of images. On the commencement of this work, I could not but be aware of this difficulty, and also of the disgrace attending an uninteresting or unuseful work. In order therefore as much as possible to substitute something in the place of original matter, |