“Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull; Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out as he goes A stream of transparent and forcible prose; He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound That ’tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind That the weathercock rules and not follows the wind; Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, With no doctrine pleased that’s not somewhere denied, He lays the denier away on the shelf, And then--down beside him lies gravely himself. He’s the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling, And so fond of the trip that, when leisure’s to spare, He’ll row himself up, if he can’t get a fare. The worst of it is, that his logic’s so strong, That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong; If there _is_ only one, why, he’ll split it in two, And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue. That white’s white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,-- When it reaches your lips there’s naught left to believe But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean)-gisms that squat ’em Like tadpoles, o’erjoyed with the mud at the bottom. “There is Willis, all _natty_ and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o’erlaying ’em, That one hardly knows whether to thank himfor saying ’em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose! His prose had a natural grace of its own, And enough of it too, if he’d let it alone; But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired, And is forced to forgive where one might have admired; Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, It runs like a stream with a musical waste, And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep;-- ’Tis not deep as a river, but who’d have it deep? In a country where scarcely a village is found That has not its author sublime and profound, For some one to be slightly shallow’s a duty, And Willis’s shallowness makes half his beauty. His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error, And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror: ’Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice; ’Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuinehearty phiz; It is Nature herself, and there’s something in that, Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat. Few volumes I know to read under a tree, More truly delightful than his A l’Abri, With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook; With June coming softly your shoulder to look over,