I have heard it remarked, that the study of our early poets was like a
journey through a country of rich groves and pleasant gardens. There
surely _is_ something pleasing in the study of old poetry. A ripeness
of feeling meets us on the yellow and stained page, which, gradually
mingling with the legitimate feelings of our own hearts, "makes us to
glow with a rich fervor."
But this pleasure, like all other exquisite pleasures, is rather of
the inexpressible kind. To impart it, condensation is necessary: and
to condense it, is like bottling fragrance, or gathering foam into a
beaker.
The reader may therefore prepare himself for nothing more than a
straight forward story--broken in upon at intervals, by such rambling
episodes of "remark" as I may think suitable.