Rhymes On The Road. Introductory Rhymes.

Different Attitudes in which Authors compose.--Bayes, Henry Stevens, Herodotus, etc.--Writing in Bed--in the Fields.--Plato and Sir Richard Blackmore.--Fiddling with Gloves and Twigs.--Madame de Stal.--Rhyming on the Road, in an old Calche.     What various attitudes and ways         And tricks we authors have in writing!     While some write sitting, some like BAYES         Usually stand while they're inditing,     Poets there are who wear the floor out,         Measuring a line at every stride;     While some like HENRY STEPHENS pour out         Rhymes by the dozen while they ride.     HERODOTUS wrote most in bed;         And RICHERAND, a French physician,     Declares the clock-work of the head         Goes best in that reclined position.     If you consult MONTAIGNE and PLINY on     The subject, 'tis their joint opinion     That Thought its richest harvest yields     Abroad among the woods and fields,     That bards who deal in small retail         At home may at their counters stop;     But that the grove, the hill, the vale,         Are Poesy's true wholesale shop.     And verily I think they're right--         For many a time on summer eves,     Just at that closing hour of light,         When, like an Eastern Prince, who leaves     For distant war his Haram bowers,     The Sun bids farewell to the flowers,     Whose heads are sunk, whose tears are flowing     Mid all the glory of his going!--     Even I have felt, beneath those beams,         When wandering thro' the fields alone,     Thoughts, fancies, intellectual gleams,         Which, far too bright to be my own,     Seemed lent me by the Sunny Power     That was abroad at that still hour.     If thus I've felt, how must they feel,         The few whom genuine Genius warms,     Upon whose soul he stamps his seal,         Graven with Beauty's countless forms;--     The few upon this earth, who seem     Born to give truth to PLATO'S dream,     Since in their thoughts, as in a glass,         Shadows of heavenly things appear.     Reflections of bright shapes that pass         Thro' other worlds, above our sphere!     But this reminds me I digress;--         For PLATO, too, produced, 'tis said,     (As one indeed might almost guess),         His glorious visions all in bed.[1]     'Twas in his carriage the sublime     Sir RICHARD BLACKMORE used to rhyme;         And (if the wits dont do him wrong)     Twixt death and epics past his time,[2]         Scribbling and killing all day long--     Like Phoebus in his car, at ease,         Now warbling forth a lofty song,     Now murdering the young Niobes.     There was a hero 'mong the Danes,     Who wrote, we're told, mid all the pains         And horrors of exenteration,     Nine charming odes, which, if you'll look,         You'll find preserved with a translation     By BARTHOLINOS in his book.     In short 'twere endless to recite     The various modes in which men write.     Some wits are only in the mind.         When beaus and belles are round them prating;     Some when they dress for dinner find         Their muse and valet both in waiting     And manage at the self-same time     To adjust a neckcloth and a rhyme.     Some bards there are who cannot scribble     Without a glove to tear or nibble     Or a small twig to whisk about--         As if the hidden founts of Fancy,     Like wells of old, were thus found out         By mystic trick of rhabdomancy.     Such was the little feathery wand,[3]     That, held for ever in the hand     Of her who won and wore the crown[4]         Of female genius in this age,     Seemed the conductor that drew down         Those words of lightning to her page.     As for myself--to come, at last,         To the odd way in which I write--     Having employ'd these few months past         Chiefly in travelling, day and night,     I've got into the easy mode     Of rhyming thus along the road--     Making a way-bill of my pages,     Counting my stanzas by my stages--     'Twixt lays and re-lays no time lost--     In short, in two words, writing post.