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finis coronat opus : and we are travelling back towards Paradise Regained . But there is plenty in the book more in our way . It is a natural history of the year . It abounds in descriptions ; lively , graphic , and racy . It is in fact a work of education . It touches
on various points of moral philosophy . It tells us much ,, and suggests more . Here we find ourselves at home , this is our field—our garden ; and we shall straightway go to work in it . These are such sunny spots as we love to cultivate . ' The first thing we will do , shall be to dig up this bed under the south wall ; to sow in it our peas , beans , radishes , onions , and mustard and cress . ' Let little Adam come to us , and we will 5
soon show him , ' how thick it is proper to sow the seed . Moreover we must teach him to sort the articles in Mr . Clarke ' s intellectual green-grocery ; for while some are very good , others are very bad ; like Jeremiah ' s figs .
To give our readers a general notion of this book , we will take a month by way of specimen . And the better to ensure the application of the maxim Ex uno disce omnes > the month shall be selected simply because it is that of our present number , February .
The chapter is headed by a motto from Thomson , with whom several other bards , of very different degrees of celebrity , arc employed , as priests of Nature , to say grace before the twelve successive feasts which the author serves up from her rich store of provisions for the senses , and , through them , for the soul . This is * meet and right / And pleasant it is to see them , like the
priests of old in the temple of Jerusalem , ' ministering in their courses , ' and enhancing the . enjoyment of the guests by their gracious presence . They are there in their orders , from Milton , the high-priest of the poetical profession , to Cornelius Webbe , who , if he be only a simple deacon in nature ' s temple , yet wants not his authentic diploma . Indeed Mr . Clarke is too acute a trier
of the spirits to let in any one altogether unworth y of that goodly fellowship ; and when , in plain terms , we praise his selection oi mottoes for his chapters , we ascribe to him a faculty for g iving pleasure which is often not appreciated so highly as it ought to be . Walter Scott set a bad example in his alterations and fabrications of passages for this purpose . The detection of his falsifications was a positive annoyance . The fetching from far , even
from the ends of the earth , a quotation which is not only germane to tho matter , but which aptly , and poetically , and as it were prophetically , prefigures or shadows forth the beings , action , and scenery , of the coming chapter , is rightly called a felicitous adaptation . The unexpected association ; the recollections , not distinct perhaps , but unconsciously-revived sensations , called vip , by the words or the mere name of a favourite author ; the dim expectancy , as to the external material , and yet the defi niteness
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140 Adam the Gardener *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 140, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/56/
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