"_Pray, my little man, and what's that that you are crying there so bravely?_" Ben told them it was poetry. "_O!--aye! poetry!_" said they; "_poetry! that's a sort of something or other in metre--like the old version, isn't it?_" "_O yes, to be sure_," said they all, "_it must be like the old version, if it is poetry_;" and thereupon they stared at him, marvelling hugely that a "_little curly headed boy like him should be selling such a wonderful thing_!" This made Ben hug himself still more on account of his poetry. I have never been able to get a sight of the ballad of the Light-house Tragedy, which must no doubt have been a great curiosity: but the sailor's song on Blackbeard runs thus-- "Come all you jolly Sailors, You all so stout and brave; Come hearken and I'll tell you What happen'd on the wave. Oh! 'tis of that bloody Blackbeard I'm going now for to tell; And as how by gallant Maynard He soon was sent to hell-- With a down, down, down derry down." The reader will, I suppose, agree with Ben in his criticism, many years afterwards, on this poetry, that it was "wretched stuff; mere blind men's ditties." But fortunately for Ben, the poor people of Boston were at that time no judges of poetry. The silver-tongued Watts had not, as yet, snatched the harp of Zion, and poured his divine songs over New-England. And having never been accustomed to any thing better than an old version of David's Psalms, running in this way-- "Ye monsters of the bubbling deep, Your Maker's praises spout! Up from your sands ye codlings peep, And wag your tails about."-- The people of Boston pronounced Ben's poetry _mighty fine_, and bought them up at a prodigious rate; especially the LIGHT-HOUSE TRAGEDY. A flood of success so sudden and unexpected, would in all probability have turned Ben's brain and run him stark mad with vanity, had not his wise old father timely stepped in and checked the rising fever. But highly as Ben honoured his father, and respected his judgment, he could hardly brook to hear him attack his beloved poetry, as he did, calling it "_mere Grub-street_." And he even held a stiff argument in defence of it. But on reading a volume of Pope, which his father, who well knew the force of contrast, put into his hand for that purpose, he never again opened his mouth in behalf of his "_blind men's ditties_." He used to laugh and say, that after reading Pope, he was so mortified with his _Light-house Tragedy, and Sailor's Song_, which he had once thought so fine, that he could not bear the sight of them, but constantly threw into the fire every copy that fell in his way. Thus was he timely saved, as he ingenuously confesses, from the very great misfortune of being, perhaps, a miserable jingler for life.