His muse must be fed on heroic sorrows, hopeless agony, and other poetical condiments of the same serious nature. The course of modern life was too level for his impetuous spirit; but in the absence of that terrible condition to which he aspired, he caught at every incident that could nerve the pinion of his muse for grander flights. A dead fly, which he found crushed between the leaves of a book, furnished him with a theme for one of his tenderest compositions. He speculated upon the probable career of the fly--opined that it had a little world of its own, a family, and a sense of the beautiful. This effusion met with such fervent praise, that he followed it up by "Thoughts on Cheese-dust," in which he dived into the mysteries of these animalculæ, and calculated the myriads of lives that were sacrificed to give a momentary enjoyment to the "pampered palate of man." His attention was called, however, from these minor poetic considerations, to a matter approaching in its gravity to that heroic pitch of sorrow which he had sought so unsuccessfully hitherto. His cousin was drowned by the upsetting of a pleasure-boat. At such a calamity it was reasonable to despair--to refuse comfort--to leave his hair uncombed--to look constantly on the ground--to lose all appetite--to write flowing verse. Mr. Blackbrook entered upon his vocation with a full sense of its heroism. At least one hundred lines would be expected from him on so tremendous an occasion. The catastrophe was so poetical! The sea-weed might have been represented entangled in the golden tresses of the poor girl, had the accident happened only a little nearer the Nore; and the print of her fair form might have been faintly traced upon "the ribbed sea-sand." This was unfortunate. In reality, the "melancholy occurrence" took place at Richmond. Mr. Blackbrook began by calling upon the willows of Richmond and its immediate vicinity to dip their tender branches in the stream, in token of their grief. Mr. Blackbrook, felicitously remembering that Pope once lived not far from Richmond, next invoked that poet's shade, and begged the loan of his melodious rhythm. But the shade in question not answering to the summons, all that remained for the sorrowing poet to do was to take down his dictionary of rhymes, and tune his own lyre to its most mournful cadences. He set to work: he called the Thames a treacherous stream; he christened the wherry a bark; he declared that when the pleasure-party embarked at Richmond-bridge, Death, the lean fellow, was standing upon the beach with his weapon upraised. Asterisks described the death; and some of his friends declared this passage the best in the poem. He then went on to inform his readers that all was over; but by this expression the reader must not infer that the dirge was brought to a conclusion: by no means. Mr. Blackbrook had made up his mind that his state of despair required, at least, one hundred lines to give it adequate expression.