hope that he might soon join his sainted
aunt, though he had never taken the least
trouble to pay her a visit while she lived in
St. John's Wood. This touching dirge was
printed upon mourning paper, and distributed
among Mr. Blackbrook's friends. The death of
an aunt was an affecting incident, but still it
fell short of the brink of despair. Mr. Blackbrook's
natural abiding-place was the edge
of a precipice. His muse must be fed on
heroic sorrows, hopeless agony, and other
poetical condiments of the same serious
nature. The course of modern life was
too level for his impetuous spirit; but
in the absence of that terrible condition
to which he aspired, he caught at every
incident that could nerve the pinion of his
muse for grander flights. A dead fly, which
he found crushed between the leaves of a
book, furnished him with a theme for one of
his tenderest compositions. He speculated
upon the probable career of the fly,— opined
that it had a little world of its own, a family,
and a sense of the beautiful. This effusion
met with such fervent praise, that he followed
it up by " Thoughts on Cheese Dust," in which
he dived into the mysteries of these animalculæ,
and calculated the myriads of lives that were
sacrificed to give a momentary enjoyment to
the " pampered palate of man." His attention
was called, however, from these minor
poetic considerations, to a matter approaching
in its gravity to that heroic pitch of
sorrow which he had sought so unsuccessfully
hitherto.

His cousin was drowned by the upsetting
of a pleasure-boat. At such a calamity
it was reasonable to despair—to refuse
comfort to leave his hair uncombed—to look
constantly on the ground—to lose all appetite
—to write flowing verse. Mr. Blackbrook
entered upon his vocation with a full
sense of its heroism. At least one hundred
lines would be expected from him on so
tremendous an occasion. The catastrophe was
so poetical! The sea-weed might have been
represented entangled in the golden tresses of
the poor girl, had the accident happened
only a little nearer the Nore; and the print
of her fair form might have been faintly
traced upon "the ribbed sea-sand." This
was unfortunate. In reality the " melancholy
occurrence " took place at Richmond. Mr.
Blackbrook began by calling upon the
willows of Richmond and its immediate vicinity
to dip their tender branches in the stream
in token of their grief. Mr. Blackbrook,
felicitously remembering that Pope once
lived not far from Richmond, next invoked
that poet's shade, and begged the loan of his
melodious rhythm. But the shade in question
not answering to the summons, all that
remained for the sorrowing poet to do was to
take down his dictionary of rhymes, and tune
his own lyre to its most mournful cadences.
He set to work. He called the Thames a
treacherous stream; he christened the wherry
a bark; he declared that when the pleasure-
party embarked at Richmond Bridge, Death,
the lean fellow, was standing upon the beach
with his weapon upraised. Asterisks
described the death; and some of his friends
declared this passage the best in the poem.
He then went on to inform his readers that
all was over; but by this expression the
reader must not infer that the dirge was
brought to a conclusion. By no means. Mr.
Blackbrook had made up his mind that his
state of despair required at least one hundred
lines to give it adequate expression. He
had devoted twenty to the death of a fly—
surely, then, a female cousin deserved one
hundred. This logical reflection spurred
him on. He pulled down the blinds, and in
a gloom that suited well with his forlorn state
of mind, he began a picture of his condition.
With the aid of his dictionary, having asserted
that the shroud enwrapped a cousin's form,
he reflected that he envied the place of the
winding-sheet, and was jealous of the worms.
He felt that he was warming into his subject.
He tried to think of the condition in which
the remains of his relative would speedily
be; and having carefully referred to an
eminent medical work as to the length of time
which the human body requires to resolve
itself into its original earth, (for he was precise
in his statements,) he proceeded to describe,
with heart-rending faithfulness, the various
stages of this inevitable decay. That was
true poetry. He declared that the worm
would crawl upon those lips that the lover
had fondly pressed, and that the hand which
once touched the harp so magically was now
motionless for ever. Having brought this
tragic description to a conclusion, he
proceeded to number the flowers that should
spring from his cousin's grave, and to
promise that

        ——from year to year,
Roses shall flourish, moistened by a tear.

This vow evidently eased his heart a little,
and enabled him to conclude the poem in a
more cheerful spirit. He wound up with the
reflection, that care was the lot of humanity, and
that it was his duty to bear his proportion
of the common load with a patient though
bruised spirit. He felt that to complete his
poetic destiny he ought to wander, none
knew whither, and to turn up only at
most unseasonable hours, and in most
solemn places. But unhappily he was
informed that it was necessary he should
remain on the spot for the proper management
of his affairs. Fate would have it so.
Why was he not allowed to pursue his
destiny ? He was one day mentally bewailing
the even tenour of his way, when a few kind
friends suggested that he should publish his
effusions. At first he firmly refused. What
was fame to him—a hopeless, despairing man
on the brink of the grave! His friends,
however, pressed him in the end into compliance;