ever mild gentleman gave birth to. But I forgot
that one may make too much noise in a silent place by playing the few
notes on the 'ear-piercing fife' which in Othello's regimental band
might have been thumped into decent subordination by his
'spirit-stirring drum'--to say nothing of gong and ophicleide. Will
you forgive me, on promise to remember for the future, and be more
considerate? Not that you must too much despise me, neither; nor, of
all things, apprehend I am attitudinizing a la Byron, and giving you
to understand unutterable somethings, longings for Lethe and all
that--far from it! I never committed murders, and sleep the soundest
of sleeps--but 'the heart is desperately wicked,' that is true, and
though I dare not say 'I know' mine, yet I have had signal
opportunities, I who began life from the beginning, and can forget
nothing (but names, and the date of the battle of Waterloo), and have
known good and wicked men and women, gentle and simple, shaking hands
with Edmund Kean and Father Mathew, you and--Ottima! Then, I had a
certain faculty of self-consciousness, years and years ago, at which
John Mill wondered, and which ought to be improved by this time, if
constant use helps at all--and, meaning, on the whole, to be a Poet,
if not _the_ Poet ... for I am vain and ambitious some nights,--I do
myself justice, and dare call things by their names to myself, and say
boldly, this I love, this I hate, this I would do, this I would not
do, under all kinds of circumstances,--and talking (thinking) in this
style _to myself_, and beginning, however tremblingly, in spite of
conviction, to write in this style _for myself_--on the top of the
desk which contains my 'Songs of the Poets--NO. I M.P.', I
wrote,--what you now forgive, I know! Because I am, from my heart,
sorry that by a foolish fit of inconsideration I should have given
pain for a minute to you, towards whom, on every account, I would
rather soften and 'sleeken every word as to a bird' ... (and, not such
a bird as my black self that go screeching about the world for 'dead
horse'--corvus (picus)--mirandola!) I, too, who have been at such
pains to acquire the reputation I enjoy in the world,--(ask Mr.
Kenyon,) and who dine, and wine, and dance and enhance the company's
pleasure till they make me ill and I keep house, as of late: Mr.
Kenyon, (for I only quote where you may verify if you please) _he_
says my common sense strikes him, and its contrast with my muddy