_Dies Irae:_ in Thirteen Original Versions. By Abraham Coles, M.D. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859. pp. xxxiv., 70.
It is pleasant to see how many wiles Nature employs to draw off into side
channels the enthusiasm which is always secreting itself and gathering in
the human brain. She knows what a dangerous clement it may become, if the
individual rills of it run together, and, with united forces, take for a
time a single direction. So she taps it at its sources, and leads it away
to various ends, useful because they are harmless. Bibliomania,
tulipomania, potichomania, squaring the circle, perpetual motion, a
religious epic, the northwest passage,--anything will serve the
purpose. _Divide et impera_ is her motto. The hobby is the safeguard of
society. Once mounted, every enthusiast ambles quietly off on some errand
of his own, caring little what direction he takes, provided only it be _the
other_. The Fifth-Monarchy men might have been troublesome, but for the
Beast in Revelation;--each insisted on a Beast to himself. Protestantism
might have become Democracy, had either Luther or Calvin been willing to
ride behind. The five points of the Charter are blunted to a Lancashire
weaver who is fattening a prize-gooseberry.
We sympathize heartily with such gentle enthusiasms as this of
Dr. Coles. It is the interest of all Grub Street that men should be
encouraged whose amiable weakness it is to fall in love with pieces of
poetry.
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