dramas, rare Ben; snuff Herbert, as holy | I might have forgiven, an o's being wry, as a flower on a grave; with Fletcher wax a limp in an e, or a cock in an i, but to tender, o'er Chapman grow brave; with have the sweet babe of my brain served in Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave; in pi! I am not queasy-stomached, but such Very, most Hebrew of Saxons, find peace; a Thyestean banquet as that was quite out with Lycidas welter on vext Irish seas; of the question. with Webster grow wild, and climb earthward again, down by mystical Browne's Jacob's-ladder-like brain, to that spiritual Pepys (Cotton's version) Montaigne; find a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed of before, that divinely inspired, wise, deep, tender, grand-bore. Or, out of my study, the scholar thrown off, Nature holds up her shield 'gainst the sneer and the scoff; the landscape, forever consoling and kind, pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind. The waterfall, scattering its vanishing gems; the tall grove of hemlocks, with moss on their stems, like plashes of sunlight; the pond in the woods, where no foot but mine and the bittern's intrudes; these are all my kind neighbors, and leave me no wish to say aught to you all, my poor critics, but pish! I have buried the hatchet : I am twisting an allumette out of one of you now, and relighting my calumet. In your private capacities, come when you please, I will give you my hand and a fresh pipe apiece. As I ran through the leaves of my poor little book, to take a fond author's first tremulous look, it was quite an excitement to hunt the errata, sprawled in as birds' tracks are in some kinds of strata (only these made things crookeder). Fancy an heir that a father had seen born well-featured and fair, turning suddenly wry-nosed, club-footed, squint-eyed, hair-lipped, wapper-jawed, carrot-haired, from a pride become an aversion,-my case was yet worse. A club-foot (by way of a change) in a verse, In the edition now issued, no pains are neglected, and my verses, as orators say, stand corrected. Yet some blunders remain of the public's own make, which I wish to correct for my personal sake. For instance, a character drawn in pure fun and condensing the traits of a dozen in one, has been, as I hear, by some persons applied to a good friend of mine, whom to stab in the side, as we walked along chatting and joking together, would not be my way. I can hardly tell whether a question will ever arise in which he and I should by any strange fortune agree, but meanwhile my esteem for him grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge on earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying and why, and is honest and fearless, two good points which I have not found so rife I can easily smother my love for them, whether on my side or t'other. For my other anonymi, you may be sure that I know what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. There are those who think it is capital fun to be spattering their ink on quiet, unquarrelsome folk, but the minute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own any sex in a pen. I choose just to hint to some causeless unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always two ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and two parties also to every good laugh. A FABLE FOR CRITICS. PHEBUS, sitting one day in a laurel tree's shade, Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, She took to the tree to escape his pursuing ; Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk; And, though 't was a step into which he had driven her, He somehow or other had never forgiven her; Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he'd Well, here, after all the bad rhyme | A terrible thing to be pestered with I've got back at last to my story's begin- As dull as a volume of old Chester mys- Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old histories, We read of his verses. - the Oracles, namely, (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, For one night bet safely whatever he They were laid at his door by some Got the ill name of augurs, because First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is Would induce a mustache, for you know he's imberbis ; Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position Was assailed by the age of his son the physician; At some poems he glanced, had been And the metre and sentiment puzzled Have they all of them slept in the cave On a corduroy road, and that out of re- It leads one, 't is true, through the You just catch a glimpse of some rav- When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence, Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?' - Here the laurel-leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne. poets! But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she's out of the wood! What would n't I give if I never had known of her? 'T were a kind of relief had I something to groan over : If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her. Now there happened to be among "O, weep with me, Daphne," he A gentleman, one of the omnivorous sighed, "for you know it's swallowers, Who bolt every book that comes out of the press, Without the least question of larger or less, Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head, For reading new books is like eating new bread, One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy. On a previous stage of existence, our Hero Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero; He had been, 't is a fact you may safely rely on, Of a very old stock a most eminent scion, A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on, Who stretch the new boots Earth's un willing to try on, Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on Whose hair's in the mortar of every new Zion, Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one, Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion (Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one), Who contrive to make every good for Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took In any amusement but tearing a book; For him there was no intermediate stage From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age; There were years when he did n't wear coat-tails behind, But a boy he could never be rightly defined; Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man; While other boys' trousers demanded the toil Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, He sat in the corner and read Viri Romæ. He never was known to unbend or to revel once In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once; He was just one of those who excite the benevolence Of your old prigs who sound the soul's depths with a ledger, And are on the lookout for some young men to "edger cate," as they call it, who won't be too costly, And who 'll afterward take to the ministry mostly; Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, Always keep on good terms with each mater-familias Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear |