There are certain persons, animals, and things whose evident vocation in life we can clearly appreciate. Aldermen were made to eat turtle, pretty girls to be kissed, horses to be ridden, foxes to be hunted, melons to be eaten, apricots to be preserved, but what on earth is the use of Poets, flies, and nettles? I leave the question to the natural Philosophers. All I mean to assert is, that Poets are Poets, flies are flies, and nettles are nettles, because they can't help it! It is their misfortune, not their fault. The one can no more change his nature than the others, which is rather hard upon them, especially the Poets (I don't suppose it is very acutely felt by the others); for what is the estimation, by society at the present day, of an unfortunate individual afflicted with the monomania of rhyming? Generally, I believe, that he is a bore. The race who were once supposed to be under the protection of Apollo are now transferred to the influence of Diana, and voted lunatics-harmless perhaps, but decidedly bores. Who considers a poet either useful or ornamental? What man of business would give him a place in his counting-house? What mancuvring mamma a place in her calculations? What Alderman a place at his table, or what Barnacle in office a place of any sort ? Unless, indeed, there

happened to be a vacant gaugership, which, it is well known, is an employment peculiarly adapted for a man of genius and imagination, -as exemplified in the case of one Robert Burns, a departed rhymster, in whom we are all beginning to take a most affectionate interest, now he has been dead not much more than half a century. But that is quite the usual thing, and the usual fate of genius: he asks for bread when alive, and he gets a stone when dead! If he could only manage to dispense with living in the present, he might be sure of living in the future: if he does not presume to expect the appreciation of his own generation, he may be sure of the appreciation of posterity. But I do not exactly see what good posterity can do the departed. If we were Roman Catholics, posterity might subscribe, with its usual liberality, for masses for the Soul, instead of for monuments to the Man, and shorten the pangs of purgatory, if they could not prevent the pangs of earth. But we Protestants have not even that satisfaction; and I declare, I think there is no more melancholy mockery than the posthumous honours paid to the manes of men who have been miserably neglected all their lives.

But men of genius are by no means the only

beings who are never appreciated until they are dead; and Poetry, like Virtue, is its own rewardand very often its own only reward. Let us esteem it accordingly. The worst of it is, that, like murder, it "will out:" you can no more keep it to yourself than you can keep a chicken in its shell when it is fully hatched. It is a light that cannot be hid under a bushel—a rash that cannot be kept in; and the unfortunate patient is no more responsible for having the cacoëthes than he is for having the measles. The symptoms vary in some cases the malady is acute but transitory; in others it is chronic and incurable; but in all it must have its course.

The only true believers in Poetry and Poets are those very young ladies, just emancipated from the thraldom of Minerva House, the dumb-bells of the drill sergeant, and the scales of the music-masterwho look with enthusiastic admiration on the young gentlemen who write pretty lines to their pretty eyebrows in their pretty albums, and believe in the "flowing locks," the "Byronic collar," and the "eye in a fine frenzy rolling" of the Poet, with all their little hearts, God bless them! I think they also believe that the aforesaid young gentlemen live in the clouds, instead of in the sky-parlour-see

spirits instead of drinking them-lisped in rhyme (which, as the first words they articulated were of course Pa-pa and Ma-ma, they probably did)—and, in short, are all soul. And if they do, their ideas are not more absurd than those of the shrewd, hard, matter-of-fact man of business, who imagines that because a man professes what he is pleased to call the knack of writing rubbish, he is necessarily incapable of any of the ordinary duties and business of lifethat he would probably reckon two and two make five, and never could be taught to know on which side his bread is buttered. Where did our matterof-fact friend get his very matter-of-fiction idea from? Not that I mean to say that the cultivation of the Muses is likely to inspire a youth with a taste for the tallow trade, or that a money-lender ought to receive a liberal education; but there have been authors who could write very good cheques, and men of letters who by no means neglected the study of £ s. d.; and surely Milton, Latin Secretary to Oliver, Addison, Secretary of State of Anne, and Pryor, her Ambassador to the "Grand Monarque," were capable of something besides jingling rhymes. To take more modern instances, Rogers, the banker, if he indulged in the "Pleasures of Memory," did not forego the pleasures of money-making; and Talfourd, the uni

versally esteemed and lamented Talfourd, was none the less qualified to hold the scales of Themis because he had previously handled the lyre of Apollo. Indeed, the most eminent Poets of all lands and all ages have been the most eminent in their different professions or avocations-for you will find very few instances of a man who has been all his life a Poet, an entire Poet, and nothing but a Poet. In fact, that would be impossible, unless he had inherited broad acres or buoyant consols; for Pegasus is very much like the white elephant which the King of Ava presents to obnoxious courtiers,-he confers an inestimable honour upon the possessor, but he is a terribly expensive animal to keep, and would soon eat a man of moderate means out of house and home.

There is a pithy little bit of advice once bestowed by Mr. Punch upon "Persons about to Marry," which would apply equally well to persons about to poetize : it is contained in one word-" Don't!" and I am sure it would have the same effect, or rather want of effect, upon both subjects. In fact, young lovers and young poets are two classes of persons who appear equally ridiculous in the eyes of the rest of the world, and who, happily for themselves, are equally insensible to ridicule, and, unhappily for themselves,