Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it;
It should reach with one impulse the end of its

course,

And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend

With a wave-like up-gathering to burst at the

end;

So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink,

He was killing the time, when up walked Mr.-
At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses,
Went dodging about, muttering "murderers!

asses!"

From out of his pocket a paper he'd take,

With the proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake,

And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, “Here I

see

Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy,
They are all by my personal enemies written;
I must post an anonymous letter to Britain,
And show that this gall is the merest suggestion
Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question,
For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull
O'er the eyes of the public their national wool,
By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull,
All American authors who have more or less
Of that anti-American humbug-success,
While in private we're always embracing the
knees

Of some twopenny editor over the seas,

And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English

notice;

My American puffs I would willingly burn all,

(They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal,)

To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!”

So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack ⚫ Horner,

He came cautiously on, peeping round every

corner,

And into each hole where a weasel might pass in,
Expecting the knife of some critic assassin,
Who stabs to the heart with a caricature,

Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits

Disperse all one's good, and condense all one's poor traits.

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching,

And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,

"Good day, Mr.

I'm happy to meet, With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub-street the soul of a gentleman

carries,

What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopo

lize

The credit of being the New World's metropolis?"

"Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, And assaults the American Dick-"

Nay, 'tis clear That your Damon there's fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click;

Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan

Should turn up his nose at the Poems on Man,' Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it,

Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it;
As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit
The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet;
Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after
column,

Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn,
By way of displaying his critical crosses,

And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (and this there's no doubt of,)

In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of.

Now nobody knows when an author is hit,

If he don't have a public hysterical fit;

Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim ether,

And nobody'd think of his critics—or him either; If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him, All the critics on earth cannot crush with their

ban,

One word that's in tune with the nature of man."

"Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book,

Into which if you'll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted, (when you have got through it,)

As to think it not unworth your while to review it, And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do,

A place in the next Democratic Review."

"The most thankless of gods you must surely have thought me,

For this is the forty-fourth copy you've brought me, I have given them away, or at least I have tried, But I've forty-two left, standing all side by side, (The man who accepted that one copy, died,)From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, With the author's respects' neatly written in each.

The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum,
When he hears of that order the British Museum
Has sent for one set of what books were first
printed

In America, little or big,—for 'tis hinted
That this is the first truly tangible hope he
Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy.
I've thought very often 'twould be a good thing
In all public collections of books, if a wing
Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry
lands,

Marked Literature suited to desolate islands,

And filled with such books as could never be read Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,

Such books as one's wrecked on in small countrytaverns,

Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented,

Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so

Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe; And since the philanthropists just now are banging

And gibbeting all who're in favor of hanging,— (Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar

Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter, And that vital religion would dull and grow callous,

Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the

gallows,)

And folks are beginning to think it looks odd,
To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God;
And that He who esteems the Virginia reel
A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal,
And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery
Than crushing His African children with slavery,—
Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillion

Are mounted for hell on the Devil's own pillion,
Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows,
Approaches the heart through the door of the

toes,―

That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored For such as take steps in despite of his word, Should look with delight on the agonized prancing Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing,

While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter

About offering to God on his favorite halter,

And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence,

Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the

surgeons

Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all