My poor heart then break it must, my last hour -- I'm near it :
When you lay me in the dust, think, think how you will bear it.
"I will hope and trust in Heaven, Nancy, Nancy;

Strength to bear it will be given, my spouse Nancy."
Well, sir, from the silent dead still I'll try to daunt you;
Ever round your midnight bed horrid sprites shall haunt you.
"I'll wed another like my dear Nancy, Nancy;

Then all ghosts will fly for fear- my spouse Nancy."

Quotation marks are mechanical, and can show no degrees; but vocal expression must quote, and be able to suggest various degrees of representation. The voice must show delicate and indirect references and indications as well as the most direct quotations. There must be sympathetic assimilation of the spirit of the passage, and among the complex elements the most important are the persons who spoke the words. Truthful rendering must at all times show the direct participation of the reader in the thought and feeling of the original speaker; and at times his participation is so intense that indirect quotations become more important than direct ones, and even a clause which shows the effect of the direct quotation upon the reader or speaker becomes more important than either. In some poems or stories, where the sympathetic feeling is more or less lyric, the mind may be so intensely concerned with the universal truth, or the deep passion, that even direct quotations are placed in the background. No rule can be laid down; it is a matter of dramatic instinct, and different poems will be read differently on different occasions, and by different persons.

There is among our public readers an almost universal tendency to exaggerate quotations unduly. These are given great importance and emphasis, while clauses which are not quoted are rendered by the voice as something negative and neutral, without any definite coloring or character. But especially in the higher forms of vocal expression, such as the reading of the Scriptures, the epic, or the ballad, the result of this neutralizing of all but quotations is an artificial effect. In comedy and farce, the method tends to confine readers to the lower forms of literature.

Occasionally, explanatory clauses are intended by the author to be subordinate, as in Browning's "Ben Karshook's Wisdom."

This poem is essentially dramatic. The whole thought of the poem is centred in the speakers and the sentiments they utter, not in any event or in the effect of their words upon the listener. Such forms of literature, however, are unusual.

BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM.

I.

"WOULD a man 'scape the rod ?"

Rabbi Ben Karshook saith,

"See that he turns to God the day before his death."
"Ay, could a man inquire when it shall come !" I say.
The Rabbi's eye shoots fire-"Then let him turn to-day !"

II.

Quoth a young Sadducee, "Reader of many rolls,

Is it so certain we have, as they tell us, souls?".

"Son, there is no reply!" the Rabbi bit his beard :

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'Certain, a soul have I- We may have none," he sneered.

Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, the Right-Hand Temple column, Taught babes their grace in grammar, and struck the simple, solemn.

Browning.

WHEN.

SUN comes, moon comes, time slips away.

Sun sets, moon sets, love, fix a day.

99.66

"A year hence, a year hence, we shall both be gray."

"A month hence, a month hence."

"A week hence, a week hence."

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Far, far away."

"Wait a little, wait a little, you shall fix a day."

"To-morrow, love, to-morrow, and that's an age away."
Blaze upon her window, sun, and honour all the day.

TO-DAY my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish ; . . . thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
"Poor deer," quoth he,
"thou mak'st a testament

As worldings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which had too much;" then, being there alone,

Tennyson.

Left and abandoned of his velvet friends:
"'Tis right," quoth he, "thus misery doth part
The flux of company;" anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,

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And never stays to greet him: Ay," quoth Jaques,
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;

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'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?"
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse,
To fright the animals, and to kill them up,
In their assigned and native dwelling-place.

Shakespeare.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

It was the schooner Hesperus that sail'd the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter to bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds that ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm, his pipe was in his mouth,
And he watch'd how the veering flaw did blow the smoke now west, now south.
Then up and spake an old sailor, — had sail'd the Spanish main,

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I pray thee, put into yonder port, for I fear a hurricane.

“Last night the Moon had a golden ring, and to-night no Moon we see!” The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, and a scornful laugh laugh'd he. Colder and louder blew the wind, a gale from the north-east;

The snow fell hissing in the brine, and the billows froth'd like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain the vessel in its strength;

She shudder'd and paused, like a frighten'd steed, then leap'd her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, and do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale, that ever wind did blow."

He wrapp'd her warm in his seaman's coat against the stinging blast ;

He cut a rope from a broken spar, and bound her to the mast.
"O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?"

"'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" and he steer'd for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live in such an angry sea!" "O father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?" But the father answer'd never a word, a frozen corpse was he.

Lash'd to the helm, all stiff and stark, with his face turn'd to the skies,
The lantern gleam'd through the gleaming snow on his fix'd and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasp'd her hands and pray'd, that saved she might be ;
And she thought of Christ, who still'd the wave on the Lake of Galilee.

And fast thro' the midnight dark and drear, thro' the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept towards the reef of Norman's Woe.
And ever, the fitful gusts between, a sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf on the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows, she drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves look'd soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheath'd in ice, with the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank. Ho! ho! the breakers roar'd!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, a fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair lash'd close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, the salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, on the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, in the midnight and the snow !
Christ save us all from a death like this, on the reef of Norman's Woe!

Longfellow.

XXXVIII. ASSIMILATION AND DIALECT.

VERY close to quotation or personation is dialect. How far shall a reader or an actor, in giving the speech of others, present the peculiarities of utterance or dialect? It is suggestive that dialect readings are considered as belonging to the lower class of literature. There is a tendency to the merely imitative, as dialectic tendencies are accidental, and have little vital connection with the processes of thought and feeling. There is a connection, however, in some forms of humor and pathos, or in grotesque expression; note its expressive power, for example, in Irish or Scotch.

Dialect does not consist in the pronunciation of elements, or even of individual words; hence, mere change of vowels or consonants will not make the dialect expressive or natural. There is a certain melody or rhythm which is peculiar to every nation. This is very important as a means of expression, because it shows their peculiarity of character, their modes of thought and feeling.

In fact, dialectic changes, though at first they seem to be superficial, and merely a subject for imitation, are expressive of life. They are not adopted for their own sake, but heighten the impression of truthfulness.

Hence, dialect when used is a part of the process of assimilation. They must result from sympathetic identification of the reader with his character. He must so reproduce in himself the processes of thinking and feeling that dialect is made a necessity.

Imitation, therefore, is apt to mislead. Even in matters of dialect, it tends to reproduce the literal rather than the essential. Where the whole energy is taken up with the literal mispronunciations, the real process of thinking, peculiarities of feeling, the oddities of the character, in other words, the psychic elements,are entirely lost.

It should be carefully noted by all public readers that dialectic peculiarities can be only suggested. To give Scotch or Irish dialect in an extreme form renders the words unintelligible. expression must be clear and easily understood.

AN' the judge took a big pinch iv snuff, and he says, "Are you guilty or not, Jim O'Brien, av you plaze?"

An' all held their breath in the silence of dhread,

An' Shamus O'Brien made answer and said :
"My lord, if you ask me, if in my life-time

I thought any treason, or did any crime

That should call to my cheek, as I stand alone here,
The hot blush of shame, or the coldness of fear,
Though I stood by the grave to receive my death-blow,
Before God and the world I would answer you, no!
But if you would ask me, as I think it like,

If in the rebellion I carried a pike,

An' fought for ould Ireland from the first to the close,
An' shed the heart's blood of her bitterest foes,
I answer you, yes; and I tell you again,
Though I stand here to perish, it's my glory that then
In her cause I was willing my veins should run dhry,
An' that now for her sake I am ready to die."

Then the silence was great, and the jury smiled bright,
An' the judge was n't sorry the job was made light;

All