thing. Old Father Jacob Cats--(we beg to apologize for his unhappy
name--and know not why, like the rest of his countrymen, he did not
euphonize it into some well-sounding epithet, taken from Greece
or Rome--Elouros, for example, or Felisius; Catsius was ventured
upon by his contemporaries, but the honest grey-beard stuck to his
paternities)--was a man of practical wisdom--great experience--much
travel--considerable learning--and wonderful fluency. He had occupied
high offices of state, and retired a patriarch amidst children and
children's children, to that agreeable retreat which we mentioned
as not far from The Hague, where we have often dreamed his sober
and serious--but withal cheerful and happy, spirit, might still
preside. His moralities are sometimes prolix, and sometimes rather
dull. He often sweeps the bloom away from the imaginative anticipations
of youth--and in that does little service. He will have everything
substantial, useful, permanent. He has no other notion of love than
that it is meant to make good husbands and wives, and to produce
painstaking and obedient children.

"His poetry is rhymed counsel--kind, wise, and good. He calculates
all results, and has no mercy for thoughts, or feelings, or actions,
which leave behind them weariness, regret or misery. His volumes
are a storehouse of prudence and worldly wisdom. For every state
of life he has fit lessons, so nicely dovetailed into rhyme, that
the morality seems made expressly for the language, or the language
for the morality. His thoughts--all running about among the duties
of life--voluntarily move in harmonious numbers, as if to think
and to rhyme were one solitary attribute. For the nurse who wants
a song for her babe--the boy who is tormented by the dread of the
birch--the youth whose beard begins to grow--the lover who desires a
posey for his lady's ring--for the husband--father--grandsire--for