_Alliteration_ (Vol. iii., p. 165.)--Your correspondent H. A. B., in
quoting the seventh stanza from Phineas Fletcher's _Purple Island_,
observes, that the second line,
"A life that lives by love, and loves by light,"
is "noticeable" for its _alliteration_. But the best specimen that I have
met with in English--after having read much verse, and published a volume,
which my partial friends call poetry--will be found in Quarles' _Divine
Emblems_, book ii. emblem ii. Beyond all question, Quarles was a poet that
needed not "apt alliteration's artful aid" to add to the vigour of his
verse, or lend liquidity to his lines. Quarles is often queer, quaint, and
querulous, but never prolix, prosey, or puling.
"We sack, we ransack to the utmost sands
Of native kingdoms, and of foreign lands:
_We travel sea and soil; we pry, we prowl,_
_We progress, and we prog from pole to pole_."
Verily, old Francis must have had a prophetic peep at the effects of _free
trade_, and the growing greatness of Great Britain, in the gathering of the
Nations under a huge GLASS CASE in Hyde Park, in the present year 1851!