Like a ropemaker's were his ways;
For still one line upon another

He spun, and like his hempen brother,
Kept going backwards all his days.

Hard by his attic lived a Chemist,
Or Alchemist, who had a mighty
Faith in the Elix'ir Vitæ ;

And though unflattered by the dimmest
Glimpse of success, he still kept groping
And grubbing in his dark vocation,
Stupidly hoping,

To find the art of changing metals,
And guineas coin from pans and kettles,
By mystery of transmutation.

Our starving Poet took occasion
To seek this conjuror's abode,

Not with encomiastic ode,

Or laudatory dedication,
But with an offer to impart,

For twenty pounds the secret art,
Which should procure, without the pain

Of metals, chemistry, and fire,
What he so long had sought in vain,
And gratify his heart's desire.

The money paid, our bard was hurried
To the philosopher's sanctorum,
Who, somewhat sublimized and flurried,
Out of his chemical decorum,

Crowed, capered, giggled, seemed to spurn his

Crucibles, retort, and furnace,

And cried as he secured the door,

And carefully put to the shutter,

Now, now, the secret I implore:

Out with it-speak - discover-utter!"

With

Cried

grave and solemn look, the poet

-66

'ListO, list! for thus I show it:

Let this plain truth those ingrates strike,

Who still, though blessed, new blessings crave,
That we may all have what we like,
Simply by liking what we have."

LESSON CLVIII.

A Geological Excursion. -THOMAS HOOD.

Vincit omnia amor.— - Ovid.

hammer. Hood.

-

TIME has been called the test of truth, and some old verities have made him testy enough, Scores of ancient authorities has he exploded like Rupert's drops, by a blow upon their tales; but at the same time he has bleached many black-looking stories into white ones, and turned some tremendous bouncers into what the French call accomplished facts. Look at the Megatherium or Mastodon, which a century ago even credulity would have scouted, and now we have mantel-pieces of their bones! The headstrong fiction which Mrs. Malaprop treated as a mere allegory on the banks of the Nile, is now the Iguanodon! To venture a prophecy, there are more such prodigies to come true.

Suppose it a fine morning, Anno Domini, 2000; and the royal geologists, with Von Hammer at their head—pioneers, excavators, borers, trappists, graywackers, carbonari, fieldsparrers, and what not, are marching to have a grand field-day in Tilgate forest. A good cover has been marked out for a find. Well! to work they go; hammer and tongs, mallets and three-men beetles, banging, splitting, digging, shoveling, sighing like paviors, blasting like miners, puffing like a smith's bellows, hot as his forge- dusty as millers-muddy as eeis

- what with sandstone and gritstone, and puddingstone, blue clay and brown, marl and bog-earth- now unsextonizing a petrified bachelor's button now a stone tom-tit-now a marble gooseberry-bush—now a hā'porth of Barcelona nuts geologized into two pen'orth of marbles- now a couple of cherries, all stone, turned into Scotch pebbles. and now a fossil red herring with a hard row of flint. But these are geological bagatelles! We want the organic remains of one of Og's bulls, or Gog's hogs- that is, the Mastodon - or Magog's pet lizard—that is, the Iguanodon-or Polyphemus' elephant, that is, the Megatherium. So they go again, with a crash like Thor's Scandinavian hammer, and a touch of an earthquake, and lo! another and greater Bonyparte to exhume! Huzza! shouts Field-sparrer, will spar with any one and give him a stone.

go,

shouts another—here he comes,

- no, he don't, says a fourth. Where's his

where 's his caudal? What

at him, he 's so prodigious! Just hoist a bit

a little,

lumbar

- if he

there's his cranium ·

Hold on, cries one let says a thirdhead?- where 's his mouth? fatiguing work it is only to look There, there now, easy does it! a little more! Pray, pray, pray take care of his processes, they are very friable. "Never you fear, zur be friable, I'll eat un." Bravo! Is that brain, I wonder, or mud? No, 't is conglomerate. Now for the cervical vertebræ. Stop, somebody hold his jaw. That's your sort! there's his scapula. Now then, dig boys, dig, dig into his ribs. Work away lads- you shall have oceans of strong beer, and mountains of bread and cheese, when you've got him out. We can't be a hundred yards from his tail. Huzza! there's his femur! I wish I could shout from here to London. There's his tarsus! Work

lumbuses, every

- it breaks my

that scapula 's Huzza! shouts

Jack of us! but I can't dig back. Never mind; there he is - his tail with a broad arrow at the end! It's a Hylæosaurus! but no a wing-St. George! it's a flying dragon. Boniface, the landlord of the village inn, that has St. George and the Dragon as his sign! Huzza! echoes every knight of the Garter. Huzza! cries each schoolboy who has read the Seven Champions. Huzza! huzza! roars the illustrator of Schiller's Hampf mit dem Drachen. Huzza! huzza! chorus the descendants of Moor of Moor Hall. The legends are all true, then! Not a bit of it! cries a stony-hearted professor of fossil osteology—Look at the teeth, they're all molar! he's a Mylodon! That creature ate neither sheep, nor oxen, nor children, nor tender virgins, nor hoary pilgrims, nor even geese and turkeys —he lived on What? what? what? they all exclaim. Why, on raw potatoes and undressed salads, to be sure!

LESSON CLIX.

Preface to the First Edition of “A Fable for Critics; a Poem published under the name of "A Wonderful Quiz;" attributed, without doubt correctly, to JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Ir being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks TO THE READER.

This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I consulted them when it could make no confusion. For (though in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it.

I begun it, intending a fable, a frail, slender thing. rhyme

winged, with a sting in its tail. ings not previously planned,

-it

But, by addings, and alterdigressions chance-hatched,

like bird's eggs in the sand, the dawdlings to suit every whimsy's demand (always freeing the bird which I held in my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree), grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf; and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh, and when my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my fable, they call it a bull.

Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be; that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following whereever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun at them or with them.

So the excellent public is hereby assured, that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land, but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut-up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the review and magazine critics call lofty and true, and about thirty thousand (this tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed full of promise and pleasing. The public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over sedulous about courting them, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot.

As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them SEND IN