'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 him for 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; 690 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: 700 'Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice; 'Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuine hearty 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, Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, 710 And Nature to criticise still as you read,-- The page that bears that is a rare one indeed. 'He's so innate a cockney, that had he been born Where plain bare-skin's the only full-dress that is worn, He'd have given his own such an air that you'd say 'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on 't, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the flush of the moment; If he wait, all is spoiled; he may stir it and shake it, 720 But, the fixed air once gone, he can never re-make it. He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness, If he would not sometimes leave the _r_ out of sprightfulness; And he ought to let Scripture alone--'tis self-slaughter, For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,-- The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town.