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THE PROGRESS OF ART.

O HAPPY time! Art's early days!
When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise,
Narcissus-like I hung!

When great Rembrandt but little seem'd,
And such Old Masters all were deem'd
As nothing to the young!

Some scratchy strokes-abrupt and few,
So easily and swift I drew,

Sufficed for my design;

My sketchy, superficial hand,

Drew solids at a dash-and spann'd
A surface with a line.

Not long my eye was thus content,
But grew more critical—my bent
Essay'd a higher walk;

I copied leaden eyes in lead-
Rheumatic hands in white and red,
And gouty feet-in chalk.

Anon

my

studious art for days

Kept making faces-happy phrase,

For faces such as mine! Accomplish'd in the details then, I left the minor parts of men, And drew the form divine.

Old Gods and Heroes-Trojan-Greek,
Figures-long after the antique,
Great Ajax justly fear'd;
Hectors, of whom at night I dreamt,
And Nestor, fringed enough to tempt
Bird-nesters to his beard.

A Bacchus, leering on a bowl,
A Pallas, that out-stared her owl,
A Vulcan very lame;

A Dian stuck about with stars,

With my right hand I murder'd Mars(One Williams did the same.)

But tired of this dry work at last,
Crayon and chalk aside I cast,

And gave my brush a drink?
Dipping" as when a painter dips
In gloom of earthquake and eclipse,"-
That is in Indian ink.

Oh then, what black Mont Blancs arose, Crested with soot, and not with snows: What clouds of dingy hue!

In spite of what the bard has penn'd,

I fear the distance did not "lend

Enchantment to the view."

Not Radclyffe's brush did e'er design
Black Forests, half so black as mine,
Or lakes so like a pall;

The Chinese cake dispersed a ray
Of darkness, like the light of Day
And Martin over all.

Yet urchin pride sustain'd me still,
I gazed on all with right good will,
And spread the dingy tint;
"No holy Luke help'd me to paint,
The Devil surely, not a Saint,
Had any finger in 't!"

But colours came !-like morning light,
With gorgeous hues displacing night,
Or Spring's enliven'd scene:

At once the sable shades withdrew;
My skies got very, very blue;
My trees extremely green.

And wash'd by my cosmetic brush,
How Beauty's cheek began to blush ;
With lock of auburn stain-

(Not Goldsmith's Auburn)-nut-brown hair, That made her loveliest of the fair;

Not "loveliest of the plain!"

Her lips were of vermilion hue;

Love in her eyes, and Prussian blue,
Set all my heart in flame!
A young Pygmalion, I adored

The maids I made-but time was stored
With evil-and it came!

Perspective dawn'd-and soon I saw
My houses stand against its law;
And "keeping" all unkept!
My beauties were no longer things
For love and fond imaginings;

But horrors to be wept!

Ah! why did knowledge ope my eyes?
Why did I get more artist-wise?

It only serves to hint,

What grave defects and wants are mine;
That I'm no Hilton in design—

In nature no Dewint!

Thrice happy time!-Art's early days!

When o'er each deed with sweet self-praise,
Narcissus-like I hung!

When great Rembrandt but little seem'd,
And such Old Masters all were deem'd

As nothing to the young!

A FAIRY TALE.

On Hounslow heath-and close beside the road,
As western travellers may oft have seen,——
A little house some years ago there stood,
A minikin abode;

And built like Mr. Birkbeck's, all of wood;
The walls of white, the window-shutters green ;—
Four wheels it had at North, South, East, and
(Tho' now at rest)

[West,

On which it used to wander to and fro,
Because its master ne'er maintain’d a rider,
Like those who trade in Paternoster Row;
But made his business travel for itself,
Till he had made his pelf,

And then retired-if one may call it so,
Of a roadsider.

Perchance, the very race and constant riot
Of stages, long and short, which thereby ran,
Made him more relish the repose and quiet
Of his now sedentary caravan;

Perchance, he loved the ground because 'twas

common,

And so he might impale a strip of soil,

That furnish'd, by his toil,

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