The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed."

This is the dream of a poet, and does not end with the question of a philosopher. We do not pretend to determine why we should have any pains at all. It is enough for us, in our attempt to diminish them, that there are more pleasant than painful excitements in the world, and that many pains are the causes of pleasure. But what if these pains are for the same end? What if all this heaping and war of agonies were owing to the author's having taken too little exercise, or eaten a heavier supper than ordinary? But then the proportion! What proportion, it may be asked, is there between the sin of neglected exercise and such infernal visitations as these? We answer,— the proportion, not of the particular offence, but of the general consequences. We have before observed, but it cannot be repeated too often, that nature, charitable as any poet or philosopher can be upon the subject of merit and demerit, &c., seems to insist, beyond anything else, upon our taking care of the mould in which she has cast us; or, in other words, of that ground-work of all comfort, that box which contains the jewel of existence, our health. On turning to the preceding poem in the book, entitled “ Kubla Khan,” we perceive that in his introduction to that pleasanter vision the author speaks of the present one as the dream of pain and disease. "Kubla Khan,” which was meditated under the effects of opium, he calls "a psychological curiosity." It is so; but it is also, and still more, a somatological or bodily one; for body will effect these things upon the mind, when the mind can do no such thing upon itself; and therefore the shortest, most useful, and most philosophical way of proceeding, is to treat the phenomenon in the manner most serviceable to the health and comfort of both. We subjoin the conclusion of " Kubla Khan," as beginning with

an exquisite piece of music, and ending with a most poetical

phantasm :

"A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.

"Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me.
That with music loud and long

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware, Beware,
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread;

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise."

If horrible and fantastic dreams are the most perplexing, there are pathetic ones perhaps still more saddening. A friend dreaming of the loss of his friend, or a lover of that of his mistress, or a kinsman of that of a dear relation, is steeped in the bitterness of death. To wake and find it not true,-what a deliciou sensation is that! On the other hand, to dream of a friend o a beloved relative restored to us, to live over again the hours of childhood at the knee of a beloved mother, to be on the eve of marrying an affectionate mistress, with a thousand other joys snatched back out of the grave, and too painful to dwell upon, —what a dreary rush of sensation comes like a shadow upon us when we wake! How true, and divested of all that is called conceit in poetry, is that termination of Milton's sonnet on dreaming of his deceased wife !

"But oh, as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked; she fled; and day brought back my night."

We wonder that so good and cordial a critic as Warton should think this a mere conceit on his blindness. An allusion to his

blindness may or may not be involved in it; but the sense of returning shadow on the mind is quite true to nature on such occasions, and must have been experienced by every one who has lost a person dear to him. There is a beautiful sonnet by Camoens on a similar occasion; a small canzone by Sanazzaro, which ends with saying, that although he waked and missed his lady's hand in his, he still tried to cheat himself by keeping his eyes shut; and three divine dreams of Laura by Petrarch, Sonnet 34, vol. ii., Son. 79, ib., and the canzone beginning—

"Quando il soave mio fido conforto."

But we must be cautious how we even think of the poets on this most poetical subject, or we shall write three articles instead of one. As it is, we have not left ourselves room for some very agreeable dreams, which we meant to have taken between these our gallant and imaginative sheets. They must be interrupted, as they are too apt to be, like the young lady's in “The Adventures of a Lap Dog," who, blushing divinely, had just uttered the words, "My Lord, I am wholly yours," when she was awaked by the jumping up of that officious little puppy、

ON COMMENDATORY VERSES.

E must inform the reader of a very particular sort of dis

WE tress, to which we agreeable writers are subject. We

mean the not knowing what to do with letters of approbation. During the first æra of our periodical flourishing, we used to sink them entirely, comforting ourselves in private with our magnanimity, and contrasting it with the greedy admission which some of our brethren gave to all panegyrical comers. We had not yet learnt that correspondents have delicate feelings to be consulted as well as editors. When this very benignant light was let in upon us, we had to consider the natures of our several correspondents, and to try and find out which of them wrote most sincerely, which would be hurt or otherwise by non-insertion, and which we ought to give way to, as a matter of right on their own parts, as well as of pleasure on ours. We found our scruples wonderfully apt to be done away in proportion to the intelligence and cordiality of the writer. Mere good-nature, with all our esteem for it, we could seldom admit, for obvious reasons; but good-nature and wit in unison, especially if joined with the knowledge of any generous action performed by the possessor, we always found irresistible to our modesty.

"In fact, the more honour it did you, Mr Indicator, the more you were inclined to consult the delicacy of your correspon

dent?"

Just so. Now if our faculties are anything at all, they are social; and we have always been most pleased on these occasions, when we have received the approbation of those friends whom we are most in the habit of thinking of when we write. There are multitudes of readers whose society we can fancy ourselves enjoying, though we have never seen them; but we are more particularly apt to imagine ourselves in such and such company, according to the nature of our articles. We are accustomed to say to ourselves, if we happen to strike off any thing that pleases us,-K. will like that:-There's something for M. or R. :-C. will snap his finger and slap his knee-pan at this-Here's a crow to pick for H.--Here N. will shake his shoulders:-There B., ditto, his head :--Here S. will shriek with satisfaction:-L. will see the philosophy of this joke, if nobody else does. As to our fair friends, we find it difficult to think of them and our subject together. We fancy their countenances looking so frank and kind over our disquisitions, that we long to have them turned towards ourselves instead of the paper.

Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, we have felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a writer, who of all other men, knows how to extricate a common thing from commonness, and to give it an underlook of pleasant consciousness and wisdom. We knew him directly, in spite of his stars. His hand as well as heart betrayed him.*

TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR.

Your easy essays indicate a flow,

Dear friend, of brain, which we may elsewhere seek;

And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe

That Wednesday † is the sweetest of the week.

Such observation, wit, and sense are shown,

We think the days of Bickerstaff return'd;

And that a portion of that oil you own,
In his undying midnight lamp which burn'd.
I would not lightly bruise old Priscian's head,
Or wrong the rules of grammar understood;

*It is almost needless to tell the reader that the verses are Charles Lamb's.-ED. The original day of publication of the Indicator.-ED.