f writing verses to
great people?"

"Great and small. I consider nothing too high or too low. I have
written verses upon the king, and upon a prize ox; for the first I got
nothing, but the owner of the ox at Christmas sent me the better part of
the chine."

"In fact, you write on all kinds of subjects."

"And I carry them to the people whom I think they'll please."

"And what subjects please best?"

"Animals; my work chiefly lies in the country, and people in the country
prefer their animals to anything else."

"Have you ever written on amatory subjects?"

"When young people are about to be married, I sometimes write in that
style; but it doesn't take. People think, perhaps, that I am jesting at
them, but no one thinks I am jesting at his horse or his ox when I speak
well of them. There was an old lady who had a peacock; I sent her some
lines upon the bird; she never forgot it, and when she died she left me
the bird stuffed and ten pounds."

"Mr. Parkinson, you put me very much in mind of the Welsh bards."

"The Welsh what?"

"Bards. Did you never hear of them?"

"Can't say that I ever did."

"You do not understand Welsh?"

"I do not."

"Well, provided you did, I should be strongly disposed to imagine that
you imitated the Welsh bards."

"I imitate no one," said Mr. Parkinson; "though if you mean by the Welsh
bards the singing bards of the country, it is possible we may resemble
one another; only I would scorn to imitate anybody, even a bard."

"I was not speaking of birds, but bards--Welsh poets--and it is
surprising how much the turn of your genius coincides with theirs. Why,
the subjects of hundreds of their compositions are the very subjects
which you appear to delight in, and are the most profitable to
you--beeves, horses, hawks--which they described to their owners in
colours the most glowing and natural, and then begged them as presents. I
have even seen in Welsh an ode to a peacock."

"I can't help it," said Parkinson, "and I tell you again that I imitate
nobody."

"Do you travel much about?"

"Aye, aye. As soon as I have got my seed into the ground, or my crop
into my barn, I lock up my home and set out from house to house and
village to village, and many is the time I sit down beneath the hedges
and take out my pen and inkhorn. It is owing to that, I suppose, that I
have been called the flying poet." . . . [_Wanting_.]

"It appears to me, young man," said Parkinson, "that yo