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 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, You're not always sure of your game when you've treed it.

Just conceive such a change taking place in one's mistress!

the Oracles,

(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

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 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, but 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.

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.

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 than 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,

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 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 that we must not say fie on,

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

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

dred a year:

Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful

conditions,

Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions.

In this way our Hero got safely to college,

Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge;

A reading-machine, always wound up and going,

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing,

Appeared in a gown, and a vest of black satin,

To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin That Tully could never have made out a word in it

(Though himself was the model the author preferred in it),

And grasping the parchment which gave

him in fee

All the mystic and-so-forths contained in A. B.,

He was launched (life is always compared to a sea)

With just enough learning, and skill for the using it,

To prove he 'd a brain, by forever confusing it.

So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning

With the holiest zeal against secular learning,

Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it,

Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit.

"T would be endless to tell you the things that he knew, Each a separate fact, undeniably true, But with him or each other they'd nothing to do;

No power of combining, arranging, discerning,

Digested the masses he learned into learning;

There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for

(And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for), Not a deed would he do, nor a word Iwould he utter,

Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter.

In

Of

his wits

compiling the journals' historical bits,

shops broken open, men falling in fits,

Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers,

And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters,

Then, rising by industry, knack, and address,

Got notices up for an unbiased press, With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for

Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for:

From this point his progress was rapid and sure,

To the post of a regular heavy reviewer.

And here I must say he wrote excel

lent articles

On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek particles;

They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for,

And nobody read that which nobody cared for;

If any old book reached a fiftieth edi

tion,

He could fill forty pages with safe erudition:

He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules,

And his very old nothings pleased very old fools;

But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart,

And you put him at sea without compass or chart,

His blunders aspired to the rank of an art;

For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him,

So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him,

Carving new forms of truth out of Na-
ture's old granite,
New and old at their birth, like Le
Verrier's planet,

Which,

to get a true judgment, themselves must create

In the soul of their critic the measure and weight,