But the public
would have none of it, though ensphered in faultless verso, and the
poets fled back to their flames and darts, and to the primrose at the
river's brim. There is, however, something pathetic, and something
that pleasantly reminds us of the elasticity of the human intellect in
these failures; and the book before us is an amusing example of such
eccentric efforts to enlarge the sphere of the poetic activity.
This little volume is called _The Fancy_, and it does not appear to me
certain that the virtuous American conscience know what that means. If
the young ladies from Wells or Wellesley inquire ingenuously, "Tell us
where is Fancy bred?" we should have to reply, with a jingle, In the
fists, not in the head. The poet himself, in a fit of unusual candour,
says:
_Fancy's a term for every blackguardism_,
though this is much too severe. But rats, and they who catch them,
badgers, and they who bait them, cocks, and they who fight them, and,
above all, men with fists, who professionally box with them, come
under the category of the _Fancy_. This, then, is the theme which the
poet before us, living under the genial sway of the First Gentleman of
Europe, undertook to place beneath the special patronage of Apollo.
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