J. J. K.
A FILL UP.
For the Table Book.
There is nothing I find so difficult to fill up as my spare time. Talk as they will about liberty, it is after all nothing but a sort of independent ennui—a freedom we are better without, if we do not know how to use it. To instance myself:—the first thing I do on the cessation of my daily avocations, which terminate rather early, is to throw my two legs upon one chair, and recline my back against another—when, after a provoking yawn of most ambiguous import, I propound to myself with great gravity—what the deuce shall I do? A series of questions instantly occur, which are as instantly answered—generally in the negative. Shall I read Blackstone?—no: Coke upon Littleton?—worse still: Fearne on Contingent Remainders?—horrid idea!—it was recommended the other day to a young friend of mine, who before he got to the end of the first page was taken with a shivering fit, from which he has not yet recovered—no, no; confound the law! I had enough of that this morning—What’s to be done then? The Table Book does not come out till to-morrow—Scott’s novels (unfashionable wretch) I don’t like,—have read the Epicurean already twenty times—and know Byron by heart. Take up my flute, mouthpiece mislaid, and can’t play without—determined to try, notwithstanding it should be my three thousandth failure; accordingly, blow like a bellows for about half an hour—can make nothing of it, suddenly stop, and throw the instrument to the other end of the room—forgetting the glass in the bookcase, the largest pane of which it goes through with a loud crash. Still musical, persist in humming a favourite air I have just thought of—hit the tune to a T, and immediately strike up a most delightful strain, beginning “Sounds delicious,” &c., when a cry comes from the parlour, “We really must leave the house if that horrid noise is to be continued!”—Rather galled by this rub—begin to get angry—start up from my two chairs and walk briskly to the fireplace—arrange my hair pettishly—then stick my hands in my pockets, and begin to muse—glass catches my eye—neckcloth abominably out of order, instinctively untie and tie it again—tired of standing—sit down to my desk—commence a Sonnet to the Moon, get on swimmingly to the fifth line, and then—a dead stop—no rhyme to be got, and the finest idea I ever had in my life in danger of being lost—this will never do—determined to bring it in somewhere, and after a little alteration introduce it most satisfactorily into a poem I had begun yesterday on Patience, till, upon reading the whole over, I find it has nothing whatever to do with the subject; and disgusted with the failure tear up both poem and sonnet in a tremendous rage. Still at a loss what to do—at length I have it—got a communication for the Table Book—I’ll take a walk and leave it—
Gulielmus.