er it was committed to paper. I had sometimes
been pleased with a melodious cadence or a happy image--sometimes amused
with my own flow of thought and readiness of versification; but that I,
simple Basil Arbuthnot, should be, after all, enriched with this
splendid gift of song--was it mad presumption, or were these things
proof? I knew not; but lying on the parched grass of the mountain-side,
I tried the question over in my mind, this way and that, till "my heart
beat in my brain," How should I come at the truth? How should I test
whether this opening Paradise was indeed Eden, or only the mirage of my
fancy--mere sunshine upon sand? We all write verses at some moment or
other in our lives, even the most prosaic amongst us--some because they
are happy; some because they are sad; some because the living fire of
youth impels them, and they must be up and doing, let the work be
what it may.

"Many fervent souls,
Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel,
If steel had offer'd."

Was this case mine? Was I fancying myself a poet, only because I was an
idle man, and had lost the woman I loved? To answer these questions
myself was impossible. They could only be answered by the public voice,
and before I dared question that oracle I had much to do. I resolved to
discipline myself to the harness of rhythm. I resolved to go back to the
fathers of poetry--to graduate once again in Homer and Dante, Chaucer
and Shakespeare. I promised myself that, before I tried my wings in the
sun, I would be my own severest critic. Nay, more--that I would never
try them so long as it seemed possible a fall might come of it. Once
come to this determination, I felt happier and more hopeful than I had
felt for the last three years. I looked across the blue mists of the
valley below, and up to the aerial peaks which rose, faint, and far, and
glittering--mountain beyond mountain, range above range, as if painted
on the thin, transparent air--and it seemed to me that they stood by,
steadfast and silent, the witnesses of my resolve.

"I will be strong," I said. "I will be an idler and a dreamer no longer.
Books have been my world. I have taken all, and given nothing. Now I too
will work, and work to prove that I was not unworthy of her love."

Going down, by-and-by, into the valley as the shadows were lengthening,
I met a traveller with an open book in his hand. He was an
Englishman--small, sallow, wiry, and wore a gray, loo