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 excellent articles On the Hebraic 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 edition,

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 Nature'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, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace,

To compute their own judge; and assign him his place,

Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round

it,

And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it,

Without the least malice,-his record would be
Profoundly æsthetic as that of a flea,

Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes,

Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, borne by an Arab guide, ventured to render a General view of the ruins at Denderah.

As I said, he was never precisely unkind; The defect in his brain was just absence of mind; If he boasted, 'twas simply that he was self-made, A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, My respect for my Maker supposing a skill

In his works which our hero would answer but ill; And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he

Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery,

And set up a kind of a man-manufactory,

An event which I shudder to think about, seeing That Man is a moral, accountable being.

He meant well enough, but was still in the way, As a dunce always is, let him be where he may; Indeed, they appear to come into existence

To impede other folks with their awkward assist

ance;

If you set up a dunce on the very North pole,
All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul,
He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins,
And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins,

To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice,
All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice ;
Or, if he found nobody else there to pother,
Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other,
For there's nothing we read of in torture's inven-
tions,

Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.

A terrible fellow to meet in society,

Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at

tea;

There he'd sit at the table and stir in his sugar, Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar;

Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights,
Of your time-he's as fond as an Arab of dates;-
You'll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way,
Of something you've seen in the course of the day;
And, just as you're tapering out the conclusion,
You venture an ill-fated classic allusion,-

The girls have all got their laughs ready, when,

whack!

The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back!

You had left out a comma,-your Greek's put in joint,

And pointed at cost of your story's whole point. In the course of the evening, you venture on certain

Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain ; You tell her your heart can be likened to one

flower,

"And that, oh most charming of women, 's the sun

flower,

Which turns"-here a clear nasal voice, to your

terror,

From outside the curtain, says "that's all an error." As for him, he's-no matter, he never grew tender, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke,

(Though he'd willingly grant you that such doings are smoke ;)

All women he damns with mutabile semper,

And if ever he felt something like love's distemper, 'Twas towards a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican,

And assisted her father in making a lexicon;
Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious
About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius,
Or something of that sort,-but, no more to bore

ye

With character-painting, I'll turn to my story.

Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes

To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes,
The genus, I think it is called, irritabile,

Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily,

And nurses a-what is it ?—immedicabile,
Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel,
As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel,
If any poor devil but look at a laurel;—
Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting,
(Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse
had a quieting

Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a
Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta,)

Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray,
Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away;
And if that wouldn't do, he was sure to succeed,
If he took his review out and offered to read;

Or, failing in plans of this milder description,
He would ask for their aid to get up a subscrip-
tion,

Considering that authorship wasn't a rich craft,
To print the "American drama of Witchcraft.”
Stay, I'll read you a scene," but he hardly
began,

66

Ere Apollo shrieked "Help!" and the authors all

ran:

And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit

And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate,
He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle,

As calmly as if 'twere a nine-barrelled pistol,
And threatened them all with the judgment to

66

come,

Of "A wandering Star's first impressions of Rome." Stop! stop!" with their hands o'er their ears screamed the Muses,

"He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, 'Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying,

'Tis mere massacre now that the enemy's flying; If he's forced to 't again, and we happen to be

there,

Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether."

I called this a "Fable for Critics;" you think

it's

More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets;
My plot, like an icicle, 's slender and slippery,
Every moment more slender, and likely to slip

awry,

And the reader unwilling in loco desipere,

Is free to jump over as much of my frippery
As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he