;
A head in papers, yet without a curl!
Not the Invisible Girl!
No hand--but a handwriting on a wall--
A popular nonentity,
Still call'd the same,--without identity!
A lark, heard out of sight,--
A nothing shin'd upon,--invisibly bright,
"Dark with excess of light!"
Constable's literary John-a-nokes--
_The_ real Scottish wizard--and not which,
Nobody--in a niche;
Every one's hoax!
Maybe Sir Walter Scott--
Perhaps not!
Why dost thou so conceal and puzzle curious folks?

II.

Thou,--whom the second-sighted never saw,
The Master Fiction of fictitious history!
Chief Nong-tong-paw!
No mister in the world--and yet all mystery!
The "tricksy spirit" of a Scotch Cock Lane--
A _novel_ Junius puzzling the world's brain--
A man of Magic--yet no talisman!
A man of clair obscure--not he o' the moon!
A star--at noon.
A non-descriptus in a caravan,
A private--of no corps--a northern light
In a dark lantern,--Bogie in a crape--
A figure--but no shape;
A vizor--and no knight;
The real abstract hero of the age;
The staple Stranger of the stage;
A Some One made in every man's presumption,
Frankenstein's monster--but instinct with gumption;
Another strange state captive in the north,
Constable-guarded in an iron mask--
Still let me ask,
Hast thou no silver platter,
No door-plate, or no card--or some such matter,
To scrawl a name upon, and then cast forth?

III.

Thou Scottish Barmecide, feeding the hunger
Of Curiosity with airy gammon!
Thou mystery-monger,
Dealing it out like middle cut of salmon,
That people buy and can't make head or tail of it;
(Howbeit that puzzle never hurts the sale of it;)
Thou chief of authors mystic and abstractical,
That lay their proper bodies on the shelf--
Keeping thyself so truly to thyself,
Thou Zimmerman made practical!
Thou secret fountain of a Scottish style,
That, like the Nile,
Hideth its source wherever it is bred,
But still keeps disemboguing
(Not disembroguing)
Thro' such broad sandy mouths without a head!
Thou disembodied author--not yet dead,--
The whole world's literary Absentee!
Ah! wherefore hast thou fled,
Thou learned Nemo--wise to a degree,
Anonymous LL.D.!

IV.

Thou nameless captain of the nameless gang
That do--and inquests cannot say who did it!
Wert thou at Mrs. Donatty's death-pang?
Hast thou made gravy o