6

too weak to support me, and I fell backward on my bed. Let none do me the injustice to suppose that my alarm grew out of fears for my personal safety. I had braved danger and death in every possible shape, and what man dare' I am sure that I dared. But there was something so horribly unnatural in this heart-piercing scream-and yet it was not a scream, but a wild sepulchral howl, which had it not been so fearfully articulate, I might have thought to be the nearly suffocated yell of some savage beast of prey-there was something in it, I repeat, so unearthly and so ominous, that I could no more resist the agonies of fear which rushed over me than if I had been paralysed and crushed by the influence of demoniac possession. I lay for near an hour before I could rebuke the terrors which oppressed me; and when my fears had so far vanished that I began to be ashamed of having felt them, I was forced again to undergo all the terrors of alarm. There came, curdling my blood, and penetrating, as it were, my very soul, a second cry, in the same wild, unearthly and unnatural accent as the first. All that I suffered, I cannot, and if I could, I would not describe; for either I should not be believed, or else I should be stigmatized as the veriest craven who ever heard the coward beatings of his heart. If I could for a moment have supposed that the miserable victim was screaming from the force of mortal agonies-that the excruciating pangs of disease, or the steel of the midnight assassin, had extorted this heart-rending cry, I could have rushed with strong nerves and stout heart to the succour of the sufferer. But the hand of some demon seemed upon me, and I lay shuddering and spell-bound on my couch. I prayed fervently to God that I might be spared the agony of a third trial of my agitated senses; for I felt a horrid certainty that my reason could scarcely stand the shock. My prayers were not heard. It came again! that cry! and again, and then again, shooting with a fearful concentration of effect through my tortured and agonizing brain. Suddenly the door of the stranger's room opened. He rushed swiftly to the head of the staircase. "Caroline!" he said, in a voice of the deepest anxiety. I summoned all my scattered energies, rose from my bed, and groped my way as far as to the door-" Caroline!" he repeated in a tone of the wildest impatience. I raised the latch of the door with feverish and oppressive agitation. "Caroline," a third time he reiterated with the accent of despair and unutterable anguish. I staggered wildly forth into the hall, and listened, as, upon the dreadful day of doom, the trembling sinner will listen to his sentence.-"Caroline! girl!"--the words are writ in lines of fire upon my brain

"don't you hear! come up here, right away! Molly's 'most crazy with the pain of her tooth, and I am agoin' to try to get it OUT!"

DIGRESSIONS.

Part First.

I.

It is a long while since I tried a rhyme-
My hand is almost getting out, I think;
So if I mean to write for fame, 'tis time

To mend my pen-shake up my faded ink-
Buy me a quire or two of foolscap paper,
And thus prepare for a poetic caper.

II.

Already is the itch of scribbling on me,

Six lines are written, and three couplets chime;
And the same folly which in school days won me
To fill old Homer with unseemly rhyme,

And versify e'en Dalzel's Collectanea,

Comes o'er my thoughts with twice the same old mania.
III.

And in my hand my very goosequill seems

To have caught a portion of the same velocity,
With which it whilom ran o'er diverse reams

The perished tokens of my mind's precocity,
Which were in fancy to have raised my name
'Above all Greek, above all Roman fame.'

IV.

But now where are they? I have an old box,
I know exactly where it stands-alone,
I look not in it often, for it mocks-

With the dim spectres of my visions gone,
Mementos sad of desolated joys—

Each hope the present moment that employs.
V.

There lie they many a blotted manuscript

Prized in its time o'er Homer, Milton, Dante,
But now of all their fancied honours stripped

In guise unseemly and in place most scanty,-
All undisturbed, excepting when the slattern
Chambermaid wants some paper for a pattern.
VI.

Then as her hands, unreverendly scatter,

Without a thought beyond the just dimension
Required to suit the gown or other matter

Which then employs her classical attention,
Impromptus-Satires-Essays-School-philippics,
And still-born Cantos of forgotten epics-

VII.

Speeches-which once in college chapels told
The author's vanity to vainer fools-

Sonnets-whose fire made Petrarchs love seem cold,
And Odes which spurned indignantly at rules-
Novels which (luckily) ere published died,
And tragedies that slumber by their side,

VIII.

I watch her at her devastating work,

And rushing visions of the past throng o'er me;
Reversing the old fable of the Stork,
The offspring which my youthful fancies bore me,
Bear not their parent up on filial wing,
But prey upon the vitals whence they spring.

IX.

There lie they-in one indiscriminate mass
Neglected, not forgot, for on the heart
Their record is graved deeply; and thus pass,
And thus will pass-till life and thought depart,

Fading and vanishing, the joys of youth,
Its hopes of constancy, its dreams of truth.

X.

But self-love then again is gratified,

That my lot's but an 18mo. epitome Of the great folio of all human pride;

And that the world has never been a whit to me

Or to my merits blind, more than to others

Whose infant muse each critic monthly smothers.

XI.

It surely is encouraging to vanity

That this sad fate falls not alone on me, That thousands have experienced this insanity, This yearning after fame, this thirst to be Named with the glorious-only to be foiledHave dream'd, and woke to find their hearts despoil'd.

XII.

This is meant for philosophy-though I

Will in the reader's ear a moment whisper,

That though on paper it shows plausibly,

There's not a ten year old girl who can lisp her

First elements of feeling, but knows better

And would despise such thoughts-would fashion let her.

XIII.

For in our early days, when life is new,

And the warm tears of feeling fondly gush
To meet, with answering sympathies, the true
Confiding feelings which to meet them rush;
When hearts to meet young hearts rejoicing leap,
Smiles give back smiles and tears make others weep,

XIV.

The pangs of others but augment our pain
As every joy of their's adds zest to ours,
Soon comes the world's experience to restrain

The kindly feelings which the young heart pours
For others' griefs-and with shut hearts we learn

To weep o'er our own woes, nor mourn when others mourn;

XV.

But though the fountains of the heart are froze
By fashion-art-experience of ill-

Treachery of friends-the thousand griefs that close
The soul 'gainst perfect confidence, and fill
Its thoughts with chilling doubts and cold distrust,
The fears we would not entertain, but must ;

XVI.

Still it is mere indifference which ensues,

Not hate-our sympathies are checked and changed, But are not quite reversed-our hearts refuse

To be from their young thoughts so wide estrangedThe fount of feeling may be chilled-and blackDried up or poisoned-but it ne'er rolls back.

XVII.

And so I think upon reflection that

It does not make my case a pin the better, That other's hopes have oft been prisoned at

The self same gaol-where I remain a debtor, Owing so much to Heaven for gifts, and yet Cannot refuse the gifts-nor pay the debt.

XVIII.

But all this is digressive, and is meant to
Display my talent for the serious vein;
If there should be occasion to give vent to
Such feelings in the course of this my strain,

I beg the public will take this example
As, of my wholesale pathos, a small sample.

XIX.

The point which I digressed from, I believe,
Was that I am an author of variety,
(Unpublished) but for that you need not grieve,
As I intend to benefit society,

(God willing and the publishers) by showing
In what I now shall tell them, things worth knowing.

XX.

I said that I began to feel the passion

Of scribbling on me-and in all such cases,

As my rule is to balk no inclination,

I mount my pegasus to try his paces.

Under the spur of this poetic rabies,
Onward he goes-extremum capiat scabies.

XXI.

I will translate-in charity to those

Who cannot construe Latin-this last phrase.
We have a saying blunt enough, Heav'n knows,
Exactly answering to what Horace says;
The learned choose the Latin as refined most,
'Tis plainly rendered Devil take the hindmost."
XXII.

Shrink not fair reader-nothing here is meant
Your apprehensive modesty to flurry—
A common rude expression-it gives vent

To impatient feeling when we're in a hurry,
And, scampering onward in a headlong race,
We cannot stop to pick and choose our phrase.

XXIII.

And here it simply means, I'm in such haste
I cannot stop to think of what's behind;
Of time and patience 'twere a grievous waste,

Did I deliberate much and oft to find

More polished modes of speech or rhymes more proper—
So let them stand-I do not care a copper.

XXIX.

And if I should be voted in minority

On this important question, I can plead

I had the courtly Horace's authority,

Which will weigh something; we the learned, indeed,
Are always pleased, when we can get to back us
An apt quotation from the polished Flaccus.

XXV.

After these flourishing preliminaries,

I think I'll state what 'tis that I intend

The purport and the aim of these vagaries

What they discourse of, and when they shall end.
The short truth is-in unobtrusive rhymes

I will narrate a tale of my own times.