I called this a “Fable for Critics”; you think it’s More of a display of my rhythmical trinkets; My plot, like an icicle, ’s slender and slippery, Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling _in loco desipere_ Is free to jump over as much of my flippery As he fancies, and, if he’s a provident skipper, he May have like Odysseus control of the gales, And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails; Moreover, although ’tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me, You may e’en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me: If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces, And my _membra disjecta_ consign to the breezes, A fate like great Ratzau’s, whom one of those bores Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze Describes (the first verse somehow ends with _victoire_), As _dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire_; Or, if I were over-desirous of earning A repute among noodles for classical learning, I could pick you a score of allusions, i-wis, As new as the jests of _Didaskalos tis_; Better still, I could make out a good solid list From authors recondite who do not exist,-- But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton’s prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris;-- But, as Cicero says he won’t say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate’er he could possibly think of,-- I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you’d have gritted, An ’twere not for the dulness I’ve kindly omitted. I’d apologize here for my many digressions, Were it not that I’m certain to trip into fresh ones (’Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once;) Just reflect, if you please, how ’tis said by Horatius, That Mæonides nods now and then, and, my gracious! It certainly does look a little bit ominous When he gets under way with _ton d’apameibomenos_. (Here a something occurs which I’ll just clap a rhyme to, And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,-- Any author a nap like Van Winkle’s may take, If he only contrive to keep readers awake, But he’ll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, If _they_ fall a-nodding when he nods himself.)