d instincts, Mr. Stoddart's Betty, slowly, relentlessly, through
forty years, used "The Death Wake" for the needs and processes of her
art. The whole of the edition, except probably a few "presentation
copies," perished in the kitchen. As for that fell cook, let us hope
that

"The Biblioclastic Dead
Have diverse pains to brook,
They break Affliction's bread
With Betty Barnes, the Cook,"

as the author of "The Bird Bride" sings.

Miss Stoddart had just informed me of this disaster, which left one
almost hopeless of ever owning a copy of "The Death Wake," when I found a
brown paper parcel among many that contained to-day's minor poetry "with
the author's compliments," and lo, in this unpromising parcel was the
long-sought volume! Ever since one was a small boy, reading Stoddart's
"Scottish Angler," and old _Blackwood's_, one had pined for a sight of
"The Necromaunt," and here, clean in its "pure purple mantle" of smooth
cloth, lay the desired one!

"Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,
It gave itself, and was not bought,"

being, indeed, the discovery and gift of a friend who fishes and studies
the Lacustrine Muses.

The copy has a peculiar interest; it once belonged to Aytoun, the writer
of "The Scottish Cavaliers," of "The Bon Gaultier Ballads," and of
"Firmilian," the scourge of the Spasmodic School. Mr. Aytoun has adorned
the margins with notes and with caricatures of skulls and cross-bones,
while the fly-leaves bear a sonnet to the author, and a lyric in
doggerel. Surely this is, indeed, a literary curiosity. The sonnet runs
thus:--

"O wormy Thomas Stoddart, who inheritest
Rich thoughts and loathsome, nauseous words and rare,
Tell me, my friend, why is it that thou ferretest
And gropest in each death-corrupted lair?
Seek'st thou for maggots such as have affinity
With those in thine own brain, or dost thou think
That all is sweet which hath a horrid stink?
Why dost thou make Haut-gout thy sole divinity?
Here is enough of genius to convert
Vile dung to precious diamonds and to spare,
Then why transform the diamond into dirt,
And change thy mind, which should be rich and fair,
Into a medley of creations foul,
As if a Seraph would become a Ghoul?"

No doubt Mr. Stoddart's other passion for angling, in which he used a
Scottish latitude concerning bait, {7} impelled him to search for "worms
and maggots":--

"Fire