, in
point of their arising, they were secondary,) as further illustrative of
my '_Author's Mind_' shown in other specimens; for example, a
linsey-woolsey tapestry of many colours shall be hung upon the end of
this arcade; the last few trees in this poor avenue shall bear the
flowers of poetry as well as the fruit of prose; my swan (O, dub it not
a goose!) would, like a _prima-donna_, go off this theatre of fancy,
singing. And again, suffer me, good friend, to think your charity still
willing to be pleased: many weary pages back, I offered you to part with
me in peace, if you felt small sympathies with a rambler so whimsical
and lawless; surely, having walked together kindly until now, we shall
not quarrel at the last.

Empty, however--empty, and rejoicing in its unthoughtful emptiness--have
I boasted this my head but a page or two ago; and that boast, for all
the critic's sneer, that no one will deny it, shall not be taken from me
by renewal of determined meditations; now that my house is swept and
garnished, I would not beckon back those old inhabitants. Neither let me
heed so lightly of your intellect, as to hope to satisfy its reading
with the scanty harvest of a _soil effete_; this license of writing up
to measure shall not show me sterile, any more than that emancipation
shall, by indulgence of thought, be disenchanted. And now to solve the
problem: not to think, for my mind is in a regimen of truancy; not to
fail in pleasing, if it be possible, the great world's implacable
palate, therefore to eschew dilution of good liquor; and yet to render
up in fair array the fitting tale of pages: well, if I may not
metaphysically draw upon internal resources, I can at least externally
and physically resort to yonder--desk; (drawer would have savoured of
the Punic, which Scipio and I blot out with equal hate;) for therein lie
_perdus_ divers poeticals I fain would see in print; yea, start not at
"poeticals," carp not at the threatening sound, for verily, even as
carp--so called from _carpere_, to catch if you can, and the Saxon capp,
to cavil, because when caught they don't pay for mastication--even as
carp, a muddy fish, difficult to hook, and provocate of hostile
criticism, conceals its lack of savour in the flavour of port-wine--even
so shall strong prose-sauce be served up with my poor dozen of sonnets:
and ye who would uncharitably breathe that they taste stronger of
Lethe's mud than of Helicon's sweet water, treat me t