answered, the dear Public's critical judgment, begin to think sharp-witted Horace spoke sooth when he said, that the Public sometimes hit the truth.

In reading these lines, you perhaps have a vision of a person in pretty good health and condition, and yet, since I put forth my primary edition, I have been crushed, scorched, withered, used up and put down (by Smith with the cordial assistance of Brown), in all, if you put any faith in my rhymes, to the number of ninety-five several times, and, while I am writing, I tremble to think of it, for I may at this moment be just on the brink of it, Molybdostom, angry at being omitted, has begun a critique, am I not to be pitied?*

Now I shall not crush them since, indeed, for that matter, no pressure I know of could render them flatter; nor wither, nor scorch them, -no action of fire could make either them or their articles drier; nor waste time in putting them down- I am thinking not their own self-inflation will keep them from sinking; for there's this contradiction about the whole bevy, - though without the least weight, they are awfully heavy. No, my dear honest bore, surdo fabulam narras, they are no more to me than a rat in the arras.

I

can walk with the Doctor, get facts from the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintessence of John, and feel nothing more than a half-comic sorrow, to think that they all will be lying to-morrow tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper shelves, and forgotten by all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug in my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave the whole pack of them outside the door. With Hakluyt or Purchas I wander away to the black northern seas or barbaric Cathay; get fou with O'Shanter, and sober me then with that builder of brick-kilnish dramas, rare Ben; snuff Herbert, as holy as a flower on a grave; with Fletcher wax tender, o'er Chap

The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer-looking title of Scald, in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world th; hot water they always get into.

man grow brave; with Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave; in Very, most Hebrew of Saxons, find peace; with Lycidas welter on vext Irish seas; 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 water

falls, 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, butpish! I have buried the hatchet: I am twisting an allumette out of one of you now, and relighting my calumet. your private capacities, come when you please, I will give you my hand and a fresh pipe apiece.

In

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, clubfooted, 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, I might have forgiven, an o's being wry, a limp in an e, or a cock in an i, but to have the sweet babe of my brain served in pi! I am not queasy-stomached, but such a Thyestean banquet as that was quite out of the question.

In the edition now issued, no pains are neglected, and my verses, as orator say, stand corrected. Yet some blun

ders 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.

tonic,

Something bitter to chew when he 'd play the Byronic,

And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over,

By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. "My case is like Dido's," he sometimes remarked;

"When I last saw my love, she was fairly embarked

In a laurel, as she thought-but (ah how Fate mocks !)

She has found it by this time a very bad box;

Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,

taking

You're not always sure of your game when you've treed it. Just conceive such a change place in one's mistress! What romance would be left? - who can flatter or kiss trees?

And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dialogue

With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,

Not to say that the thought would forever intrude

That you 've less chance to win her the more she is wood?

Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves,

To see those loved graces all taking their leaves;

Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now,

As they left me forever, each making its bough!

If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right,

Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite."

Now, Daphne, before she was happily treeified, Over all other blossoms the lily had deified,

And when she expected the god on a visit

('T was before he had made his intentions explicit),

Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care,

To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses,

Like the day breaking through the long night of her tresses;

So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible,

Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table

(I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable,

Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel),

We read of his verses- the Oracles, namely, (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk,

They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk,

And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores, First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is

you

Would induce a mustache, for 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 sent to him lately,

And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; "Mehercle! I'd make such proceeding felonious,

Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius?

Look well to your seat, 't is like taking an airing

On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing;

It leads one, 't is true, through the primitive forest,

Grand natural features, - ut, then, one has no rest;

You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance,

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.

"O, weep with me, Daphne," he sighed, "for you know it's

A terrible thing to be pestered with 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.

One needs something tangible, though, to begin on,

A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin

on;

What boots all your grist? it can never be ground

Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round

(Or, if 't is a water-mill, alter the metaphor,

And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore,

Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"

It is not a metaphor, though, 't is a simile):

A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going,

For just at this season, I think, they are blowing.

Here, somebody, fetch one, not very far hence

They 're in bloom by the score, 't is but climbing a fence;

There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his

Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with lilies;

A very good plan, were it not for satiety,

One longs for a weed here and there, for variety;

Though a weed is no more thar. a flower in disguise,

Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes."

Now there happened to be among
Phoebus's followers,

A gentleman, one of the omnivorous 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 be

low 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

unwilling 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 tha we must not say fie on,

Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion

(Though they hunt lions also, wheneve they spy one),

Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one,

And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on,

Whose pedigree, traced to earth's earliest years,

Is longer than anything else but their

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