the Cleopatra-coloured hair
which they call purple, and we auburn. Very much might be done in this
vein of literature, but it must be by a man at once an Oriental scholar
and a natural poet: the idioms of ancient and modern times should be
more considered, and something of apologetic explanation offered to an
English ear for phrases such as "the mountains skipping like rams," "the
horse swallowing the ground with fierceness," and represented as being
afraid as a grasshopper. A thousand like instances could be displayed
with little searching; let the above be taken as they are meant, for
good, and as of zeal for showing the best of books to the best
advantage: but it will appear that this essay trenches on the former one
so slenderly hinted at, as '_The Wisdom of Revision_,' therefore has
been stated too much at length already. Let it then rest on the shelf
till a better season. For this time, good reader, I, following up the
object of self-relieving, thank you for your patience, and will turn to
other themes of a more sublunary aspect.

* * * * *

One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author's
mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem: verily, a wearisome,
unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing. Nevertheless, let my candour
humbly acknowledge that, for the larger canticle of two mortal days, I
was brooding over, and diligently brewing up, a right happy, capital,
and noble-minded thesis, no other than

HOME.

Alas, for the epidemy to which, few can doubt, ideas are subject! Alas,
for the conflict of prolific geniuses, wherewith the world's quiet is
disturbed! not impossibly, this very book now in progress of inditing
will come to be classed as a "Patch-work," an "Olla Podrida," a "Book
without a name," or some other such like _rechauffee_ publication;
whereas I protest its idea to be exclusively mine own, and conceived
long before its seeming congeners saw the light in definite
advertisements--at least to my beholding. And similarly went it with my
poor epic: scarcely had a general plan suggested itself to my musings,
and divers particular morsels thereof assumed "their unpremeditative
lay;" scarcely had I jotted down a staid synopsis, and a goodly array of
metrical specimens; when some intrusive newspaper displayed to me in
black and white a good-natured notice of somebody else's '_Home, an
Epic_.' So, as in the case of '_Nero_,' and haply of other su