at school,

And I was always getting flogg'd—

For John turn'd out a fool.

I put this question hopelessly

To every one I knew,—

What would you do, if you were me.

To prove that you were you?

Our close resemblance turn'd the tide

Of my domestic life;

For somehow my Intended bride

Became my brother's wife.

In short, year after year the same

Absurd mistakes went on;

And when I died—the neighbours came

And buried brother John!

(Published with music by Messrs Cramer.)

UN PAS QUI COÛTE.

I'VE a genius or a talent—I perceive it pretty clearly

In pursuing an ambition or in climbing up a tree—

For never quite attaining, but attaining very nearly

To my aspiration's altitude, whatever it may be.

Tis a faculty that haunts me with an obstinate persistence,

For I felt it in my boyhood, and I feel it in my prime,—

All the efforts and endeavours I have made in my existence

Have invariably ended "but a step from the sublime."

As a boy I made a tender of my tenderest affection,

In a lovely little sonnet to the fairest of the fair:

(Though nothing but a youngster, I've preserved the recollection

Of her tyranny, her beauty, and the way she did her hair.)

She was married, I remember, to a person in the City,—

I consider'd him remarkably obtrusive at the time;

So I quitted my enslaver with a lofty look of pity,

For I felt my situation "but a step from the sublime."

Being confident that Cupid was a little gay deceiver,

I forgot my disappointment in a struggle after Fame;

I had caught the rage of writing as a child may catch a fever,

So I took to making verses as a way to make a name.

When I publish'd a collection of my efforts as a writer—

With a minimum of reason and a maximum of rhyme—

I am proud to say that nobody could well have been politer

Than the critics, for they, call'd it "but a step from the

sublime."

I was laudably ambitious to extend my reputation,

And I plann'd a pretty novel on a pretty novel plan;

I would make it independent both of sin and of "sensation,"

And my villain should be pictured as a persecuted man.

For your Bulwers and your Braddons and your Collinses

may grovel

In an atmosphere of horror and a wilderness of crime;

Twas for me to controvert them, and I did so in a novel

Which was commonly consider'd "but a step from the

sublime."

I have master'd metaphysics—I have mounted on the pinions

Both of Painting and of Music—and I rather think I know

Ev'ry nook and ev'ry corner of Apollo's whole dominions,

From the top of Mount Parnassus down to Paternoster Row.

I have had my little failures, I have had my great