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THE NEW MINSTREL;

OR,

THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.

PART II.

I.

AND now behold our youthful Bard, a dweller
Within the narrow limits of a shop;

And bound by hateful parchment to a seller
Of quartos and octavos,-forced to drop

From high Parnassus, to become a teller

Of tomes and quires; and half compelled to stop
His own productions, and to deal out those
That others wrote in base, ignoble, prose.

II.

For one whole week he never link'd a rhyme!
He was as busy with his new vocation,

As if he meant not to commit the crime

Of Poetry, but bend him to his station:
Vain hope! he learned in that short space of time,
Of every book the title and the station,
That might assist him in the art of writing,
A subject he was doom'd to take delight in.

III.

And in the midst of all that learned lore
He grew more emulous of higher fame ;
He almost scorned the themes he wrote before,
And panted for the first-the highest name:
Epics he planned of forty books and more,

And toiled like copying-clerk upon the same!
And while they thought him writing out a bill,
Verses like rain were pouring from his quill.
VOL. III. PART I.

L

IV.

Sometimes he grew enamoured of the wild,
And, terrible! seas raged-rocks fell asunder,-
Homer's strong Ajax was a perfect child

To Harry's heroes, who were full of wonder!
'Midst noise and fury worlds in wreck were piled;

Each verse was full of lightning, wrath, and thunder ? He scorn'd a touch of beauty or of pleasure;

But all was fear and horror without measure.

V.

Anon he'd grow delighted with the sweet,

Melodious, melting strain; soft as the stream That trickles through its silent, still retreat;

Where e'eu one hard-tongued consonant would seem An interloper,-all his tuneful feet

Were liquids, pour'd as softly as the beam Of moonlight on the waters,-mild as flowers, And noiseless as the hum of noontide bowers.

VI.

E'en in the midst of casting up a page,

He would stop short to note some sudden thought; His fancy seemed eternal war to wage

With figures, it was so sublimely wrought : Nothing his mental fever could assuage

But writing all beside to him was nought; And, had not others to the trade attended, The trade itself had quickly have been ended.

VII.

Within doors or without, 'twas all the same;
He was eternally at composition;

He was so bent upon poetic fame,

He would have braved the Spanish Inquisition; Ev'n in the crowded streets the verses came,

And he would stop as though he saw a vision; He might have pass'd his father, and not known him, Unless his flapper* had been by and shown him.

VIII.

Oh, Meditation! source of sweet delight!
Who does not love thy golden reveries?
What wonder silence, solitude, and night,

Inspire thy dreams, with purse and mind at ease:
But that thou canst enchant the absent wight,
Is wonderful, when blest with none of these:
Harry would meditate amidst the noise
Of carts, drays, coaches, horses, men, and boys!
* See Swift's Laputa.

IX..

One thing, at times, a little damped his spirit,
He saw whole shelves of poetry unsold!
Surely, he thought, they could not all want merit,
And yet, somehow, they did not turn to gold;
But he concluded they could not inherit

The fire that he did, who was never cold;
And so he went on writing as before,-
Nay, even in despite he wrote the more.

X.

If any thing can cure a lad of rhyming,
The living with a publisher must do it;
For when an author has been long subliming,
He sees the man of books will hardly view it;
'Maugre the couplets that so nicely chime in,

And all the fire and spirit beaming through it;
He only thought they could not comprehend it,
And pitied them more than the bard who penned it.
XI.

His master very soon began to find

That a young poet was not good for much

In business; all his orders were behind;

He wished he had been bred among the Dutch,

Who to the charms of poesy are so blind,

They scarce know how the rhyming chord to touch: He said he'd have him up before the Mayor,

Had he the youth had spouted verses there!

XII.

Vain man! to think a Mayor would quench the fire Within his breast, whom nature form'd a poet; When opposition makes it burn the higher,

And him the more resolved the world shall know it

By striving to put out, he fed the ire,

And Harry oft was bold enough to show it; His wayward course at last he let him run, And only wished that he were twenty-one.

XIII.

In truth, there is no mania more incurable
Than the poetic frenzy; he that's born
A poet, be his works or not endurable,

Will look on every remedy with scorn.
How is it, doctors! that while you are able

To cure most ills by which the heart is torn, This still defies the pharmacy of London, Although it has so many licges undone?

XIV.

We know full well that you prescribe for many,
Who do not need it half so much as those;
You ne'er deny your physic unto any,

(So they can pay,) for real or fancied woes; But, as for him who ventures his last penny

In printing poems to make readers dose, You won't give ev'n a pill to cool his blood, To do both him and all the public good.

XV.

Perhaps it was that Harry was mistaking

During his whole apprenticeship, and thought That he was bound to learn the art of making

Verses; which, though his master never taught, He vowed to learn; nor dreamt that he was breaking His parchment bond, with many a caution fraught; Those genius-quenching writings called indentures, That spoil so many juvenile adventures.

XVI.

He knew what they contained, ev'n to the letter,-
They bound him down at peril not to marry;
He knew he must not chuse for worse or better,
Nor keep late hours, nor master's secrets carry,
Nor be himself a creditor nor debtor,—

For all these joys he was content to tarry;
But then through all these seven long years of time,
There was no cov'uant that he should not rhyme.

XVII.

Who would might serve the customers, for aught
He cared; in business he was worth so little,
Ilis master set his service down as nought,

And thought a genius scarcely worth his victual :
The tricks of trade he never could be taught,
Nor knew of profit or of loss a tittle!

One Christmas, at a noble peer's abode,
'Stead of his lordship's bill, he left an ode.

XVIII.

And once, when he was sent to Russel-square,
To show some new productions to a dame;
Waiting her leisure in the parlour there,

There came upon him the poetic flame,
And he began to write, sans thought, sans care,
(Ev'n in the Palace he had done the same,)——
And there he wrote for hours, until, by chance,
A servant came, and woke him from his trance!

XIX.

But poets' days roll on as swift as others,→
Time will not tarry till their works appear;
Nay, in his progress he too often smothers

The hopes they felt in many a by-gone year:
He realised not Harry's, nor his mother's;

But when his one-and-twentieth spring drew near,
He hail'd with pleasure his defunct indentures,
That left him free for literary adventures.

XX.

And then he launched upon the world, a bark
Without a rudder, and without a guide;
And, though the winds were out, and ocean dark,
And dangers threatening him on every side,
With only his poetic star to mark

His way across the wild and wayward tide,
He dreamed of sailing to a world of glory,
Where every spot would echo with his story.

XXI.

He had long scribbled for the magazines;

He gave them verses, and they gave him-space; And many reading misses in their teens,

Found H-H- always in his monthly place: But now he burned for more auspicious scenes, And larger, longer, loftier works to trace,Thus builders, who begin with fourth-rate houses, Grow proud-build squares-and ruin selves and spouses.

XXII.

But now he thought, as he had rhymed so long, 'Twas time he should be known,-he therefore made

A small collection from his heaps of song,-
Only four volumes just to tempt the trade,-
With these he tried the publishers among,

But none of all the craft could he persuade
To buy them,-blind, infatuated men!
You ne'er may meet with such a chance again.
XXIII.

On one proud epic now his hopes he placed,-
He scorned to write, as once he did, in brief;
The mighty plan, the characters, he traced,-

His hero, Gallia's great, though fallen, chief:
Inspired beyond control, he wrote in haste,
And filled, enthusiastic, leaf on leaf;
He hid himself in an obscure abode,
Deemed, by us bards, to fame the surest road.