A day. Will you be so good, Talboys, as tell me in ten words the meaning of--in the next Stanza--"keeps its memory of Thee"? TALBOYS. I will immediately. NORTH. To my mind--angler as I am-- TALBOYS. The Prince of Anglers. NORTH. To my mind, two lines and a half about Fishes are here too much--"finny darter" seems conceited--and "dwells and _revels_" needlessly strong--and the _frequent rising_ of "finny darters with the glittering scales" to me seems hardly consistent with the solemn serenity inspired by the Temple, "of small and delicate proportion" "keeping its memory of Thee,"--whatever that may mean;--nor do I think that a poetical mind like Byron's, if fully possessed in ideal contemplation with the beauty of the whole, would have thought so much of such an occurrence, or dwelt upon it with so many words. TALBOYS. I wish that finny darters with the glittering scales had oft leaped from out thy current's calmness, Thou Glenorchy, yesterday--but not a fin could I stir with finest tackle and Double-Nothings. NORTH. That is no answer, either one way or another, to my gentle demur to the perfection of the stanzas. The "scattered water-lily" may be well enough--so let it pass--with this ob, that the flower of the water-lily is not easily separated from its stalk--and is not, in that state, eligible as an image of peace. TALBOYS. It is of beauty. NORTH. Be it so. But, is "scattered" the right word? No. A water-lily to be _scattered_ must be _torn_--for you scatter many, not one--a fleet, not a ship--a flock of sheep, not one lamb. A solitary water-lily--broken off and drifting by, has, as you said, its own beauty--and Byron doubtlessly intended that--but he has not said it--he has said the reverse--for a "scattered" water-lily is a dishevelled water-lily--a water-lily no more--a dispersed or dispersing multitude of leaves--of what had been a moment before--a Flower. TALBOYS. The image pleases everybody--take it as you find it, and be content. NORTH. I take it as I find it, and am not content; I take it as I don't find it, and am. Then I gently demur to "still tells its bubbling tales." In Gray's line-- "And pore upon the brook that babbles by," the word "babbles" is the right one--a mitigated "brawling"--a continuous murmur without meaning, till you give it one or many--like that of some ceaseless female human being, pleasantly accompanying your reveries that have no relation to what you hear. Her blameless babble has that effect--and were it to stop, you would awake. But Byron's "shallower wave still tells its _bubbling tales_"--a tale is still about something--however small--and pray what is that something? Nothing. "Tales," then, is not the _very_ word here--nor will "bubbling" make it so--at best it is a prettyism rather than Poetry. The Poet is becoming a Poetaster. TALBOYS.