PROSE POEMS.
everal pages of this kind appeared at the end of an early volume of “Cornhill Magazine,” of which this is the beginning:
To Correspondents.
“’Tis in the middle of the night; and as with weary hand we write, ‘Here endeth C. M. volume seven,’ we turn our grateful eyes to heaven. The fainting soul, oppressèd long, expands and blossoms into song; but why ’twere difficult to state, for here commenceth volume eight.
“And ah! what mischiefs him environ who claps the editorial tiar on! ’Tis but a paper thing, no doubt; but those who don it soon find out the weight of lead—ah me, how weary!—one little foolscap sheet may carry. Pleasing, we hear, to gods and man was Mr. William Gladstone when he calmed the paper duty fuss; but oh, ’twas very hard on Us. Before he took the impost off, one gentleman was found enough (he was Herculean, but still!—) to bear the letters from Cornhill: two men are needed now, and these are clearly going at the knees. Yet happy hearts had we to-day if one in fifteen hundred, say, of all the packets, white and blue, which we diurnally go through, yielded an ounce of sterling brains, or ought but headache for our pains. Ah, could the Correspondent see the Editor in his misery, no more injurious ink he’d shed, but tears of sympathy instead. What is this tale of straws and bricks? A hen with fifty thousand chicks clapt in Sahara’s sandy plain to peck the wilderness for grain—in that unhappy fowl is seen the despot of a magazine. Only one difference we find; but that is most important, mind. Instinct compels her patient beak; ours—in all modesty we speak—is kept by Conscience (sternly chaste) pegging the literary waste. Our barns are stored, our garners—well, the stock in them’s considerable; yet when we’re to the desert brought, again comes back the welcome thought that somewhere in its depths may hide one little seed, which, multiplied in our half-acre on Cornhill, might all the land with gladness fill. Experience then no more we heed; but, though we seldom find the seed, we read, and read, and read, and read.” &c. &c.
This is also an instance of this hidden verse in the beginning of one of Macaulay’s letters to his sister Hannah:
“My Darling,—Why am I such a fool as to write to a gipsy at Liverpool, who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one letter for my three? A lazy chit, whose fingers tire in penning a page in reply to a quire! There, miss, you read all the first sentence of my epistle, and never knew that you were reading verse.”