When he’s wrong he is flat, when he’s right he can’t show it, He’ll tell you what Snooks said about the new poet,[3] Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson’s Princess; He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his Birth in perusing, on each art and science, Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, And though _nemo_ we’re told, _horis omnibus sapit_, The rule will not fit him, however you shape it, For he has a perennial foison of sappiness; He has just enough force to spoil half your day’s happiness, And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with, But just not enough to dispute or agree with. These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) From two honest fellows who made me a visit, And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle; I sha’n’t now go into the subject more deeply, For I notice that some of my readers look sleep’ly; I will barely remark that, ’mongst civilized nations, There’s none that displays more exemplary patience Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, From all sorts of desperate persons, than ours. Not to speak of our papers, our State legislatures, And other such trials for sensitive natures, Just look for a moment at Congress,--appalled, My fancy shrinks back from the phantom it called; Why, there’s scarcely a member unworthy to frown ’Neath what Fourier nicknames the Boreal crown; Only think what that infinite bore-pow’r could do If applied with a utilitarian view; Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care To Sahara’s great desert and let it bore there; If they held one short session and did nothing else, They’d fill the whole waste with Artesian wells. But ’tis time now with pen phonographic to follow Through some more of his sketches our laughing Apollo:-- “There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, You find that’s a smile which you took for a sneer; One half of him contradicts t’other; his wont Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt; His manner’s as hard as his feelings are tender, And a _sortie_ he’ll make when he means to surrender; He’s in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, When he seems to be joking, be sure he’s in earnest; He has common sense in a way that’s uncommon, Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-outer, Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her, Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, And though not a poet, yet all must admire In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar.