Never before had it appeared in half so favorable a light. Never before was I so thoroughly convinced that to appreciate the beauties of an author, we must enter into his feelings--possess his spirit. This I could now do perfectly. And those brief stanzas--where was there ever such genuine poetry as in them? Byron, in comparison, was fustian; Milton bombast; Shakspeare a mere poetaster, and Homer a sleepy-head--‘_quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus_.’ The effect was astonishing. Ere I had finished the fifth reading, my sufferings were so much alleviated, that I could even recognize my own countenance in a mirror--though still somewhat distorted. After the tenth reading, however, the kindly influence ceased. In vain did I persevere; the fifteenth perusal was accomplished; but all to no purpose. The twang--twang--twang--and the gnawing, wrenching, screwing sensation still continued. Again I leaned over the fire in silent despair. I revolved in my mind the poem I had just read--the sentiment--the meter--the rhyme. A thought struck me. This eternal snap, snap, snap, said I to myself, is meter; this perpetual recurrence of similar pains is rhyme; these momentary cessations of agony are intervals of stanzas. Surely the tooth-ache, thought I, is a poetical subject. Coleridge lay open on my table. My eye rested on a scrap of rhythmical Latin. “Dormi, Jesu! Mater ridet, Quae tam dulcem somnum videt, Dormi Jesu! blandule! Si non dormis, Mater plorat, Inter fila cantans orat Blande, veni, somnule.” The hint was sufficient. Ainsworth and the glossary soon enabled me to metamorphose Burns’s Scotch into Monkish Latin. If the meter appear sometimes lame, or the syntax barbarous, the blame be on the torturing pulsations that guided the movement--on the disorganizing twinges that convulsed my whole mental fabric. AD DENTIUM DOLOREM. Exsecrandum venenatum Hunc dirumque mî dolorem, Qui maxillam cruciatam Nunc percurrit; ac sonorem Dat in auribus frequènter, Cum sevitiâ rodente; Nervi quoque lacerantur, Quasi machinâ torquente! Febri, quidèm, aestuante, Rheumatismo commordente, Vel rigore congelante, Sive colicâ premente, Nos vicini miserentur, Luctuoso comploratu; Sed, Inferne morbos inter, Nostro ludis ejulatu! Barba madet mea sputis; Atque sterno locum sellis, In cachinnum nunc solutis Antè foculum puellis, Cùm saltare me viderent; Memet interim volente Ut in pectines urgerent, Ex dolore, tam demente. Inter omnes cruciatus, Quibus homines premuntur,-- Sive messes devastates, Sive pacta quae franguntur, Sive funus amicorum, Sive poenitentium sedeis, Sive dolos improborum,-- Longè plurimùm tu lædis!