t; and as a religious man, and of the
dissenting persuasion, he considered all such pursuits as equally trivial
and profane. Before you condemn him, you must recall to remembrance how
too many of the poets in the end of the seventeenth century had led their
lives and employed their talents. The sect also to which my father
belonged, felt, or perhaps affected, a puritanical aversion to the
lighter exertions of literature. So that many causes contributed to
augment the unpleasant surprise occasioned by the ill-timed discovery of
this unfortunate copy of verses. As for poor Owen, could the bob-wig
which he then wore have uncurled itself, and stood on end with horror, I
am convinced the morning's labour of the friseur would have been undone,
merely by the excess of his astonishment at this enormity. An inroad on
the strong-box, or an erasure in the ledger, or a mis-summation in a
fitted account, could hardly have surprised him more disagreeably. My
father read the lines sometimes with an affectation of not being able to
understand the sense--sometimes in a mouthing tone of mock heroic--always
with an emphasis of the most bitter irony, most irritating to the nerves
of an author.

"O for the voice of that wild horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
The dying hero's call,
That told imperial Charlemagne,
How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain
Had wrought his champion's fall.

"_Fontarabian echoes!_" continued my father, interrupting himself; "the
Fontarabian Fair would have been more to the purpose--_Paynim!_--What's
Paynim?--Could you not say Pagan as well, and write English at least, if
you must needs write nonsense?--

"Sad over earth and ocean sounding.
And England's distant cliffs astounding.
Such are the notes should say
How Britain's hope, and France's fear,
Victor of Cressy and Poitier,
In Bordeaux dying lay."

"Poitiers, by the way, is always spelt with an _s,_ and I know no reason
why orthography should give place to rhyme.--

"'Raise my faint head, my squires,' he said,
'And let the casement be display'd,
That I may see once more
The splendour of the setting sun
Gleam on thy