--
A Promise. They will do no Harm._
'Twas kindly, if not _very_ warm.
Said B.--_The Author may, in Time,
Acquire the Rudiments of Rhyme:
His Efforts now are scarcely Verse._
This, certainly, could not be worse.

Sorely discomfited, our Bard
Worked for another ten Years--hard.
Meanwhile the World, unmoved, went on;
New Stars shot up, shone out, were gone;
Before his second Volume came
His Critics had forgot his Name:

And who, forsooth, is bound to know
Each Laureate _in embryo_!
They tried and tested him, no less,-
The sworn Assayers of the Press.
Said A.--_The Author may, in Time...._
Or much what B. had said of Rhyme.
Then B.--_These little Songs display...._
And so forth, in the sense of A.
Over the Bard I throw a Veil.

There is no MORAL to this Tale.

THE TOYMAN.

With Verse, is Form the first, or Sense?
Hereon men waste their Eloquence.

"Sense (cry the one Side), Sense, of course.
How can you lend your Theme its Force?
How can you be direct and clear,
Concise, and (best of all) sincere,
If you must pen your Strain sublime
In Bonds of Measure and of Rhyme?
Who ever heard true Grief relate
Its heartfelt Woes in 'six' and 'eight'?
Or felt his manly Bosom swell
Beneath a French-made _Villanelle_?
How can your _Mens divinior_ sing
Within the Sonnet's scanty Ring,
Where she must chant her Orphic Tale
In just so many Lines, or fail?..."

"Form is the first (the Others bawl);
If not, why write in Verse at all?
Why not your throbbing Thoughts expose
(If verse be such Restraint) in Prose?
For surely if you speak your Soul
Most freely where there's least Control,
It follows you must speak it best
By Rhyme (or Reason) unreprest.
Blest Hour! be not delayed too long,
When Britain frees her Slaves of Song;
And barred no more by Lack of Skill,
The Mob may crowd _Parnassus_ Hill!..."

Just at this Point--for you must know,
All this was but the To-and-fro
Of MATT and DICK who played with Thought,
And lingered longer than they ought
(So pleasant 'tis to tap one's Box
And trifle round a Paradox!)--
There came--but I forgot to say,
'Twas in the Mall, the Month was May--
There came a Fellow where they sat,
His Elf-locks peeping through his Hat,
Who bor