iful at my purgatorial experiences, and so
betake itself to nursing and fondling me into repute, furnishing me
with half-a-dozen of those lynx-eyed commentators who would discern
innumerable beauties and veracities through the calfskin walls of
my beatified bantling. They might find, at last, that I had "the
gold-strung harp of Apollo" and played a "most excellent diapason,
celestial music of the spheres,"--hearing the harmony

"As plainly as ever Pythagoras did,"

when "Venus the treble ran sweet division upon Saturn the bass."

Write for posterity! Pray, whom should we write for, in this age which
makes its own epic upon sounding anvils, and whose lyric is yelled from
the locomotive running a muck through forest and field and beside the
waters no longer still? Write poetry now, when noise has become normal,
and we are like the Egyptians, who never heard the roaring of the fall
of Nilus, because the racket was so familiar to them! The age "capers
in its own fee simple" and cries with the Host in "The Merry Devil of
Edmonton," "Away with punctilios and orthography!" Write poetry now!
Thank you, my ancient friend! "My fiddlestick cannot play without
rosin." To be sure, I am, like most minstrels, ready for an offer; and
should any lover of melody propose

"Two hundred crowns, and twenty pounds a year
For three good lives,"

I should not be slow in responding, "Cargo! hai Trincalo!" and in
presently getting into the best possible trim and tune. But the poet may
say now, with the Butler in the old play, "Mine are precious cabinets,
and must have precious jewels put into them; and I know you to be
merchants of stock-fish, dry meat, and not men for my market; then
vanish!"

Barrow said that "poetry was a kind of ingenious nonsense"; and I think,
that, deceived by the glut, the present time is very much of Barrow's
mind. But, courage, my music-making masters! Your warbling, if it be of
genuine quality, shall echo upon the other side of the hill which hides
the unborn years. Only be sure, the song be pure; and you may "give the
_fico_ to your adversaries." You may live in the hearts and upon the
lips of men and women yet unborn; and should the worst come, you may
figure in "The Bibliographer's Manual," with a star of honor
against your name, to indicate that you are exceedingly scarce and
proportionally valuable; rival collectors, with fury in their faces,
will run you up to a fabulous price at the auction, and you