's acknowledgment of my poetic and penurious country.

I have not done with the theme yet. On returning from the equator, I saw
Campbell's funeral. Westminster Abbey was a mob of dukes, statesmen,
privy-councillors, and men of countless acres. Poor Tom's whole life had
been thankless toil; wasting in meagre industry the powers which ought
to have been cherished by his country for purposes of national honour.
Such is always the course of things. The very stones of Burns' pillars
would have made the great poet happy for life, if their price had been
given to him to cheer his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit
of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant
region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has
suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony?
Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and
the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after
his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken
the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished his days in writing
epitaphs in the churchyard, laughing at Sir Thomas Lucy, and bequeathing
deathless scoffs, to the beggary of mankind.

I was growing into what the dramatists call a "towering passion," and
meditating general reforms of Civil Lists, Chancellors of the Exchequer,
and Lord Chamberlains, when my attention was turned to a very animated
scene going on between a pair who seemed perfectly unconscious of all
the external creation. One of the parties was a showy-looking fellow,
with the mingled expression of _roueism_ and half-pay, which is so
frequent and so unmistakeable in the neighbourhood of St James's. The
lady was a calm and composed personage, whom, on a second glance, I
remembered to have seen wherever the world could bow down to the fair
possessor of countless "consols." But the passion for a handsome
mansion, a handsome stud, and a handsome rental, is indefatigable, and
the ex-staff man poured his adorations into her ear with all the glow of
a suitor ten thousand pounds worse than nothing.

Poesy! sweetest of all the maids of Parnassus! it is thou that givest
thy votary power to read the soul: it is thou that canst translate the
glance into a speech, and give eloquence to the clasp of a hand. It is
thou alone to whom the world is indebted for this _true_ version of the
pleadings of the Guardsman.

TRUE