THE POET'S FANCY. 53 



shadow forth, its downfall from inherent gravity. The frag- 

 ment of Cork butter seemed augmented to a mountain, from 

 whence streams were slowly trickling on the dishonoured 

 page, that page, now an enormous grease-illuminated scroll, 

 printed in gigantic characters which all who ran might read. 

 And in proportion to the fly-leaf, the Fly itself floated a swollen 

 corpse in a cup large enough to drown its destroyer. And 

 see, swollen as he is and hideous, that monster Fly is coming 

 back to life ! He struggles to the edge of the lacteal flood, 

 lifts above it his large hairy head, made up of dull red eyes, 

 stretches forth his elephantine trunk, growing long, and long, 

 and longer, raises his thin black arms and stands a giant on 

 the edge of the milky pool. Then flapping the drops in a 

 shower from his dripping pinions, he raises a buz deep, 

 deafening as of a thousand buzzes all in one, and darting 

 forward, pounces right upon the Poet's heaving heart. 

 # * * * * * 



One day, towards the end of the same August, whose first 

 was made, as we have just commemorated, a big black-letter 

 day in our Poet's calendar, he was called on, in the midst of 

 his heaviness, to furnish something light, just to puff out 

 what would else have been a slender number of the Milliner's 

 Magazine. In the same parlour, under much such a heavy sky, 

 before him the same sorry equipage for tea, beside him a like 

 bit of melting butter, nothing would have been wanted, but 



