May have an Odyssean sway of the gales,
And get safe into port, ere his patience all fails
Moreover, although 'tis a slender return

For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with

You

me,

may e'en twist me up, and just light your
cigar with me :

If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces,
And my membra disjecta consign to the breezes,
A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of those
bores,

Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, Describes, (the first verse somehow ends with victoire,)

As dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire;
Or, if I were over-desirous of earning

A repute among noodles for classical learning,
I could pick you a score of allusions, I wis,
As new as the jests of Didaskalos tis ;

Better still, I could make out a good solid list
From recondite authors who do not exist,-

But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist
Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries
After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osi-
ris;-

But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that,
(A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat,)
After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,—
I simply will state that I pause on the brink of
A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion,
Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion,

So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied,

Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted,

An 'twere not for the dulness I've kindly omitted.

I'd apologize here for my many digressions, Were it not that I'm certain to trip into fresh

ones,

('Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh

once ;)

Just reflect, if you please, how 'tis said by Horatius,

That Mæonides nods now and then, and, my gracious!

It certainly does look a little bit ominous

When he gets under way with ton d'apameibome

nos.

(Here a something occurs which I'll just clap a rhyme to,

And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,-
Any author a nap like Van Winkle's may take,
If he only contrive to keep readers awake,
But he'll very soon find himself laid on the shelf,
If they fall a nodding when he nods himself.)

Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I

When Phoebus expressed his desire for a lily,
Our hero, whose homeopathic sagacity

With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity,
Set off for the garden as fast as the wind,
(Or, to take a comparison more to my mind,
As a sound politician leaves conscience behind,)
And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps
O'er his principles, when something else turns up
trumps.

He was gone a long time, and Apollo meanwhile,

Went over some sonnets of his with a file,

For of all compositions, he thought that the son

net

Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it;
It should reach with one impulse the end of its

course,

And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend

With a wave-like up-gathering to burst at the end;

So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink,

He was killing the time, when up walked Mr.

At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses, Went dodging about, muttering "murderers!

asses!"

From out of his pocket a paper he'd take,

With the proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake,

And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, "Here I

see

'Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy,
They are all by my personal enemies written;
I must post an anonymous letter to Britain,
And show that this gall is the merest suggestion
Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question,
For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull
O'er the eyes of the public their national wool,
By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull,
All American authors who have more or less
Of that anti-American humbug-success,
While in private we're always embracing the
knees

Of some twopenny editor over the seas,

And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English

notice;

My American puffs I would willingly burn all,

(They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal,)

To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!"

So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner,

He came cautiously on, peeping round every

corner,

And into each hole where a weasel might pass in,
Expecting the knife of some critic assassin,
Who stabs to the heart with a caricature,

Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits

Disperse all one's good, and condense all one's poor traits.

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching,

And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,—

"Good day, Mr.

I'm happy to meet, With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub-street the soul of a gentleman

carries,

What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopo

lize

The credit of being the New World's metropolis?"

"Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, And assaults the American Dick-"

66

Nay, 'tis clear

That your Damon there's fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click;

Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan
Should turn up his nose at the Poems on Man,'
Your friend there by some inward instinct would
know it,

Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it;
As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit
The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet;
Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after
column,

Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn,
By way of displaying his critical crosses,

And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (and this there's no doubt

of,)

In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of.

Now nobody knows when an author is hit,

If he don't have a public hysterical fit;

Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim ether,

And nobody'd think of his critics-or him either; If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him, All the critics on earth cannot crush with their

ban,

One word that's in tune with the nature of man."

"Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book,

Into which if you'll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted, (when you have got through it,)