over his guests to see what miracles
the hare-brained, sensitive poet had wrought upon his farm. And I can
fancy the proud, shy creature watching from his lattice the company of
distinguished guests,--maddened, if they look at his alcove from the
wrong direction,--wondering if that shout that comes booming to his
sensitive ear means admiration, or only an unappreciative
surprise,--dwelling on the memory of the visit, as a poet dwells on the
first public mention of his poem. In his "Egotisms," (well named,) he
writes,--"Why repine? I have seen mansions on the verge of Wales that
convert my farm-house into a Hampton Court, and where they speak of a
glazed window as a great piece of magnificence. All things figure by
comparison."

And this reflection, with its flavor of philosophy, was, I dare say, a
sweet morsel to him. He saw very little of the world in his later years,
save that part of it which at odd intervals found its way to the
delights of Leasowes; indeed, he was not of a temper to meet the world
upon fair terms. "The generality of mankind," he cynically says, "are
seldom in good humor but whilst they are imposing upon you in some shape
or other."[12]

Our farmer of Leasowes published a pastoral that was no way equal to the
pastoral he wrote with trees, walks, and water upon his land; yet there
are few cultivated readers who have not some day met with it, and been
beguiled by its mellifluous seesaw. How its jingling resonance comes
back to me to-day from the "Reader" book of the High School!

"I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed:
But let me that plunder forbear;
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed.
For he ne'er could be true, she averred,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young:
And I loved her the more, when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue."

And what a killing look over at the girl in the corner, in check
gingham, with blue bows in her hair, as I read (always on the old
school-benches),--

"I have heard her with sweetness unfold
How that pity was due to--a dove:
That it ever attended the bold;
And she called it _the sister of love_.
But her words such a pleasure convey,
So much I her accents adore,
Let her speak, and whatever she say,
Methinks I should love her the more."

There is a rhythmic prettiness in this; but it is the prettiness of a
lover in his teens, and n