Some bards there are who cannot scribble
Without a glove to tear or nibble
Or a small twig to whisk about--
As if the hidden founts of Fancy,
Like wells of old, were thus found out
By mystic trick of rhabdomancy.
Such was the little feathery wand,[3]
That, held for ever in the hand
Of her who won and wore the crown[4]
Of female genius in this age,
Seemed the conductor that drew down
Those words of lightning to her page.
As for myself--to come, at last,
To the odd way in which _I_ write--
Having employ'd these few months past
Chiefly in travelling, day and night,
I've got into the easy mode
Of rhyming thus along the road--
Making a way-bill of my pages,
Counting my stanzas by my stages--
'Twixt lays and _re_-lays no time lost--
In short, in two words, _writing post_.
[1] The only authority I know for imputing this practice to Plato and
Herodotus, is a Latin poem by M. de Valois on his Bed, in which he says:--
_Lucifer Herodotum vidit Vesperque cubantem, desedit totos heic Plato
saepe dies_.
[2] Sir Richard Blackmore was a physician, as well as a bad poet.
[3] Made of paper, twisted up like a fan or feather.
[4] Madame de Stael.
EXTRACT I.
Geneva.
_View of the Lake of Geneva from the Jura.[1]--Anxious to reach it
before the Sun went down.
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