blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner.  There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. [Ruskin.]

  [56] Inferno, 3. 112.

  [57] Christabel, 1. 49-50.

  [58] “Well said, old mole! can’st work i’ the ground so
  fast?”—­[Ruskin.]

  [59] Odyssey, 11. 57-58.

  [60] It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put
  by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:—­

    He wept, and his bright tears

Went trickling down the golden bow he held. 
Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood;
While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by
With solemn step an awful goddess came,
And there was purport in her looks for him,
Which he with eager guess began to read
Perplex’d, the while melodiously he said,
"How cam’st thou over the unfooted sea?"

Hyperion, 3. 42.—­[Ruskin.]

[61] See Wordsworth’s Peter Bell, Part I:—­

A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.

[62] Jude 13.

[63] Kings xxiii, 18, and Hosea x, 7.

[64] Iliad, 3. 243.  In the MS. Ruskin notes, “The insurpassably tender irony in the epithet—­’life-giving earth’—­of the grave”; and then adds another illustration:—­“Compare the hammer-stroke at the close of the [32d] chapter of Vanity Fair—­’The darkness came down on the field and city, and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.  A great deal might have been said about it.  The writer is very sorry for Amelia, neither does he want faith in prayer.  He knows as well as any of us that prayer must be answered in some sort; but those are the facts.  The man and woman sixteen miles apart—–­one on her knees on the floor, the other on his face in the clay.  So much love in her heart, so much lead in his.  Make what you can of it.” [Cook and Wedderburn.]

[65] The poem may be crudely paraphrased as follows:—­

“Quick, Anna, quick! to the mirror!  It is late,
And I’m to dance at the ambassador’s ... 
I’m going to the ball ...

                            “They’re faded, see,
  These ribbons—­they belong to yesterday. 
  Heavens, how all things pass!  Now gracefully hang
  The blue tassels from the net that holds my hair.