and shrewd saying of Horace Walpole, that arch epicure in all intellectual luxuries, that "he preferred books in fructu rather than in folio." We heartily agree with him, save in the case of journals and maps. Poets and essayists should always be in neat pocket form, if they are to be read; if merely to be looked at, they may as well be in folio or quarto. Histories, philosophical dissertations, sermons, &c., read best in octavo; novels and travels in duodecimo. We assent to Johnson's judgment, that "books that can be held in the hand, and carried to the fire, are the best after all!"

Fine bindings are fit only for centre-table books.

Hazlitt, in his modern Pygmalion, has painted the poet and the scholar in a line. All he seeks is " Books, Venus, Books;"-Learning and Love.

XXI.

THE LITERATURE OF QUAKERISM.

THE Society of Friends has been so useful a body of reformers and citizens-practical philanthropists and worthy neighbors, after the fashion of the good Samaritan, despite all the satiric sneers, from Hubidras downwards, that their literary character has not been much regarded. Indeed, up to quite a late period, Literature and Quakerism were considered by the public as quite incompatible, and, we doubt not, within the penetralia of the sect, the sister arts are still considered vain, worldly, and almost heathenish. We will not recount the great benefit society has received from the zealous labors of some of these true friends of humanity. It were sufficient merely to mention the names of a few; of Clarkson and Mrs. Fry, and Jonas Hanway. The abolition of the slave trade; the apostolic love and charity manifested in the reform of prison discipline; the abolition of capital punishment these three glorious reforms are sufficient to cast a halo around any sect or society out of which the advocates for them have come; advocates indeed, practically acting upon their doctrines; men not afraid to promulgate truth, and to execute their own convictions in living up to them.

Peace the atmosphere of heaven-the gift of that Holy

Spirit, one of whose noblest attributes it is-is the mission (so to speak) of the sect of Quakers; one which they have unfalteringly upheld, and never once swerved from. These are some of the noble features of this sect-the most zealous, yet temperate the most reasonable, and yet sincerely Christian (as it appears to us) of any of the numerous sects that have sprung from the Church of England, their common mother.

It is unnecessary, and apart from our present subject, to enter into any disquisition of the philosophy of the Quaker doctrine-its spirituality and metaphysical character-the serious and the ridiculous sides of the subject. All this, and more has been done by Bancroft, in his admirable chapter on the Quakers, in the settlement of Pennsylvania; for which reason we shall restrict ourselves to the topics which naturally fall within the province of the present paper.

The Quakers are indebted to Charles Lamb for his exquisite sketches of them, which must be familiar to the readers of Elia. Lamb's correspondence, too, with Bernard Barton, is equally an honorable bequest to the society, and shows him the kindly friend he was, no less than the delightful humorist.

Hazlitt (in one of his essays, in the Round Table,) says, "A Quaker poet would be an anomaly." He must have forgotten the Spleen, whose author, Green, was a Quaker, though he discarded his early faith. The critic, too, probably knew nothing of Bernard Barton, and had lost sight of Milton's Quaker friend, Ellwood, who, though he has left (we believe) no verses, was yet "the proximate cause of Milton's writing Paradise Regained. The anecdote is told in all the Lives of Milton, and as we are not endeavoring to swell out this sketch, by superfluous quotations, (a common

method of making long magazine papers,) we shall merely refer to it. The Howitts had not then commenced their literary partnership, and Whittier had not probably penned a line of verse. The philosophy of Hazlitt's remarks is doubtless correct; yet there have been exceptions to their general application.

The first of these, we believe to have been Green, of whom Hunt has given a pleasant sketch, in his Wit and Humor. The Spleen of this author is a perfect jeu d'esprit, and the sole effort, after Butler's manner, worthy of comparison with Hudibras, in regard to fertility of ideas, wit, facility of rhymes, and sterling sense. The author was troubled with lowness of spirits, and wrote his poem for the same reason that Burton compiled his Anatomy. Like Lamb, he was a clerk in one of the public offices in London, a pleasant companion and a worthy man. This poem is in Aikins' Selections, and, if we are not mistaken, in the Elegant Extracts. Hazlitt has strangely omitted it. Hunt has selected but a small portion of the rare beauties of this admirable poem. Almost every couplet is as good as the following lines, we write from memory, not having the book by us :

And, in whose gay, red letter'd face,

We read good living more than grace.

Here are a few of his innumerable felicities of language:

the

His remarks on the various remedies for the spleen ; mode of passing a rainy day agreeably; and his persuasions

to cheerfulness and good humor, are as delightful as they are full of true wisdom.

Melmoth, the translator and author of Fitzosborne's letters, used to say, he could not easily find anywhere so many ideas in the same number of lines as in the Spleen.

Dr. Aikin has edited a delightful edition of Green's poems, illustrated by Stothard, a gem for the reader and hypochondriac.

How happens it this capital poem is so little known? A lively writer, but by no means a master of his native literature, on Green's poem being highly praised, sneeringly exclaimed; "Oh, yes! he is. quoted by Rush!" as if the sensible Philadelphia physician gave fame to a sterling English wit.

Barton is a pleasing, religious versifier, with little or no force or character as a poet. Lamb's correspondence with him will probably preserve his name long after his verses are forgotten.

The poems of the Howitts fall under the same category as those of Barton, with more of variety, and perhaps more of poetic spirit. It is not probable that they will be long read.

But Whittier's is a name that will last, if only for a single poem he has written on a print of Raphael, which is now hanging or did hang, last summer, in a quiet parlor in Newburyport. The verses are in the Estray. If the very finest of our Quaker poet's poetic efforts were selected from the mass of his writings, he would rank much higher than he does at present. This poem, and the fine ballad of the New Wife and the Old, Hampton Beach, Randolph of Roanoke, etc., would, with some score of spirited lyrics, fill a volume of American poetry to last. Like the leaders of