Or, failing in plans of this milder description, He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription,

Considering that authorship wasn't a rich craft, To print the "American drama of Witchcraft.” "Stay, I'll read you a scene," but he hardly began,

Ere Apollo shrieked "Help!" and the authors all

ran:

And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit,

And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate,
He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle,

As calmly as if 'twere a nine-barrelled pistol,
And threatened them all with the judgment to

come,

Of "A wandering Star's first impressions of Rome.” Stop! stop!" with their hands o'er their ears screamed the Muses,

"He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, 'Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying,

'Tis mere massacre now that the enemy's flying; If he's forced to 't again, and we happen to be

there,

žive us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether."

I called this a "Fable for Critics;" you think

it's

More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets;
My plot, like an icicle, 's slender and slippery,
Every moment more slender, and likely to slip

awry,

And the reader unwilling in loco desipere,

Is free to jump over as much of my frippery
As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he

May have an Odyssean sway of the gales,
And get safe into port, ere his patience all fails ;
Moreover, although 'tis a slender return

For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn,
And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with

me,

You may e'en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me :

If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces,
And my membra disjecta consign to the breezes,
A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of those
bores,

Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, Describes, (the first verse somehow ends with victoire,)

As dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire;
Or, if I were over-desirous of earning

A repute among noodles for classical learning,
I could pick you a score of allusions, I wis,
As new as the jests of Didaskalos tis ;

Better still, I could make out a good solid list
From recondite authors who do not exist,→

But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist
Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries
After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osi-
ris;-

But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that,
(A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat,)
After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,---
I simply will state that I pause on the brink of
A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion,
Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion,

So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied,

Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted,

An 'twere not for the dulness I've kindly omitted.

I'd apologize here for my many digressions, Were it not that I'm certain to trip into fresh

ones,

('Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh

once ;)

Just reflect, if you please, how 'tis said by Horatius,

That Mæonides nods now and then, and, my gracious!

It certainly does look a little bit ominous

When he gets under way with ton d'apameibome

nos.

(Here a something occurs which I'll just clap a rhyme to,

And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,—
Any author a nap like Van Winkle's may take,
If he only contrive to keep readers awake,
But he'll very soon find himself laid on the shelf,
If they fall a nodding when he nods himself.)

Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I

When Phoebus expressed his desire for a lily,
Our hero, whose homeopathic sagacity

With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity,
Set off for the garden as fast as the wind,
(Or, to take a comparison more to my mind,
As a sound politician leaves conscience behind,)
And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps
O'er his principles, when something else turns up
trumps.

He was gone a long time, and Apollo mean while,

Went over some sonnets of his with a file,

For of all compositions, he thought that the son

net

Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it;
It should reach with one impulse the end of its

course,

And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend

With a wave-like up-gathering to burst at the end;

So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink,

He was killing the time, when up walked Mr.
At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses,
Went dodging about, muttering "murderers!

asses!"

From out of his pocket a paper he'd take,

With the proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake,

And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, “Here I

see

'Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy,
They are all by my personal enemies written;
I must post an anonymous letter to Britain,
And show that this gall is the merest suggestion
Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question,
For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull
O'er the eyes of the public their national wool,
By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull,
All American authors who have more or less
Of that anti-American humbug—success,
While in private we're always embracing the
knees

Of some twopenny editor over the seas,

And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English

notice ;

My American puffs I would willingly burn all,

(They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal,)

To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!"

So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner,

He came cautiously on, peeping round every

corner,

And into each hole where a weasel might pass in,
Expecting the knife of some critic assassin,
Who stabs to the heart with a caricature,

Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits

Disperse all one's good, and condense all one's poor traits.

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching,

And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,

"Good day, Mr.

I'm happy to meet, With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub-street the soul of a gentleman

carries,

What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize

The credit of being the New World's metropolis ? "

Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, And assaults the American Dick-"