the promise,--

"A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,
Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay;
And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment Day!"

How often, when one is roving through a library in search of adventures,
is he encountered by some inflated champion of huge proportions, who
turns out to be no better than a barber, after all! Gazing upon

"That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid,
Those ample clasps, of solid metal made,
The close-pressed leaves, unloosed for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-filled page,
On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled,
Where yet the title stands, in burnished gold,"--

what wisdom, what wit, what profundity, what vastness of knowledge,
what a grand gossip concerning all things, and more beside, did we
anticipate, only to find the promise broken, and a big impostor with no
more muscle than the black drone who fills the pipes and sentries the
seraglio of the Sophi or the Sultan! The big, burly beggars! For a
century nobody has read them, and therefore everybody has admitted them
to be great. They are bulky paradoxes, and find a good reputation in
neglect,--as some fools pass for philosophers by preserving a close
mouth and a grave countenance.

"Safe in themselves, the ponderous works remain."