"Mehercle! I'd make such proceedings felonious, Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius? Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing 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 wouldn't I give if I never had known of her? "Twere 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 'tis 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, 'tis a simile ;) A lily, perhaps, would set my mill agoing, 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, 'tis 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, A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers, head, For reading new books is like eating new bread, 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 the lion, (Though they hunt lions also, whenever 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, Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters, Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters; Far happier than many a literary hack, He bore only paper-mill rags on his back; And considering his four legs had grown paralytic, She set him on two, and he came forth a critic. Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took In any amusement but tearing a book; For him there was no intermediate stage, But a boy he could never be rightly defined; a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man ; Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, 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 look out for some young men to edger 66 -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 materfamilias Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred 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, 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., sea,) With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, Το prove he'd a brain, by forever confusing it. So worthy Saint Benedict, piously burning With the holiest zeal against secular learning, Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it, Indoctusque sapienter â Româ recessit. "Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew, All separate facts, 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 would he utter, Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, |