He at length good-humoredly complied, and filled up the measure as follows:— To a form that is faultless, a face that must—please, Is added a restless desire to—tease; O, how my hard fate I should ever be—moan, Could I but believe she’d be bone of my—bone! Mr. Bogart, a young man of Albany, who died in 1826, at the age of twenty-one, displayed astonishing facility in impromptu writing. It was good-naturedly hinted on one occasion that his “impromptus” were prepared beforehand, and he was asked if he would submit to the application of a test of his poetic abilities. He promptly acceded, and a most difficult one was immediately proposed. Among his intimate friends were Col. J. B. Van Schaick and Charles Fenno Hoffman, both of whom were present. Said Van Schaick, taking up a copy of Byron, “The name of Lydia Kane” (a lady distinguished for her beauty and cleverness, who died a few years ago, but who was then just blushing into womanhood) “has in it the same number of letters as a stanza of Childe Harold has lines: write them down in a column.” They were so written by Bogart, Hoffman, and himself. “Now,” he continued, “I will open the poem at random; and for the ends of the lines in Miss Lydia’s _Acrostic_ shall be used the words ending those of the verse on which my finger may rest.” The stanza thus selected was this:— And must they fall, the young, the proud, the brave, To swell one bloated chief’s unwholesome reign? No step between submission and a grave? The rise of rapine and the fall of Spain? And doth the Power that man adores ordain Their doom, nor heed the suppliant’s appeal? Is all that desperate valor acts in vain? And counsel sage, and patriotic zeal, The veteran’s skill, youth’s fire, and manhood’s heart of steel? The following stanza was composed by Bogart within the succeeding ten minutes,—the period fixed in a wager,—finished before his companions had reached a fourth line, and read to them as here presented:[6]— L ovely and loved, o’er the unconquered brave Y our charms resistless, matchless girl, shall reign! D ear as the mother holds her infant’s grave I n Love’s own region, warm, romantic Spain! A nd should your fate to court your steps ordain, K ings would in vain to regal pomp appeal, A nd lordly bishops kneel to you in vain, N or valor’s fire, law’s power, nor churchman’s zeal E ndure ’gainst love’s (time’s up!) untarnished steel. Footnote 6: The truth of this circumstance was confirmed by Mr. Hoffman in the course of a conversation upon that and similar topics several years afterward.