, the minimum duration of such, before the passion is
worked off, and the dream-child really breathing free of its
dream-parent. I have occasionally come upon Narcissus about the
twenty-fifth, I suppose, and wondered at my glum reception. 'Poetry gone
sour,' he once gave as the reason. Try it not, Reader, if, indeed, in
thy colony of beavers a poet really dwells.

He is a born palaeontologist: that is, he can build up an epic from a
hint. And, despite modern instances, the old rule obtains for him, he
need not be learned--that is, not deeply or abundantly, only at
points--superficially, the superficial would say. Well, yes, he has an
eye for knowing what surfaces mean, the secret of the divining rod.
Take it this way. We want an expression, say, of the work of Keats, want
to be told wherein lies his individuality. You take Mr. Buxton Forman's
four volumes, and 'work at' Keats! and, after thirty nights and days,
bring your essay. On the morning of the thirtieth the poet read again
the _Grecian Urn_, and at eventide wrote a sonnet; and on the morning of
the thirty-first, essay and sonnet are side by side. But, by the
evening, your essay is in limbo--or in type, all's one--while the sonnet
is singing in our heart, persistently haunting our brain. Some day the
poet, too, writes an essay, and thus plainly shows, says the essayist,
how little he really knew of the matter--he didn't actually know of the
so-and-so--and yet it was his ignorance that gave us that illuminating
line, after all.

I doubt if one would be on safe ground in saying: Take, now, the subject
of wine. We all know how abstemious is the poetical habit; and yet, to
read these songs, one would think 'twas Bacchus' self that wrote, or
that Clarence who lay down to die in a butt of Malmsey. Though the
inference is open to question,

'I often wonder if old Omar drank
One half the quantity he bragged in song.'

Doubtless he sat longest and drank least of all the topers of Naishapur,
and the bell for Saki rang not from his corner half often enough to
please mine host. Certainly the longevity of some modern poets can only
be accounted for by some such supposition in their case. The proposition
is certainly proved inversely in the case of Narcissus, for he has not
written one vinous line, and yet--well, and yet! Furthermore, it may
interest future biographers to know that in his cups he was wont to
recite Hamlet's advice to the players, throned upon a tram-car