Oh happy time! — Art’s early days!

When o’er each deed, with sweet self-praise,

Narcissus-like I hung!

When great Rembrandt but little seemed,

And such Old Masters all were deemed

As nothing to the young!

Some scratchy strokes — abrupt and few,

So easily and swift I drew,

Sufficed for my design;

My sketchy, superficial hand

Drew solids at a dash — and spanned

A surface with a line.

Not long my eye was thus content,

But grew more critical — my bent

Essayed a higher walk;

I copied leaden eyes in lead —

Rheumatic hands in white and red,

And gouty feet — in chalk.

Anon my studious art for days

Kept making faces — happy phrase,

For faces such as mine!

Accomplished in the details then,

I left the minor parts of men,

And drew the form divine.

Old Gods and Heroes — Trojan — Greek,

Figures — long after the antique,

Great Ajax justly feared;

Hectors, of whom at night I dreamt,

And Nestor, fringed enough to tempt

Bird-nesters to his beard.

A Bacchus, leering on a bowl,

A Pallas that out-stared her owl,

A Vulcan — very lame;

A Dian stuck about with stars,

With my right hand I murdered Mars —

(One Williams did the same).

But tired of this dry work at last,

Crayon and chalk aside I cast,

And gave my brush a drink!

Dipping —“as when a painter dips

In gloom of earthquake and eclipse,”—

That is — in Indian ink.

Oh then, what black Mont Blancs arose,

Crested with soot, and not with snows:

What clouds of dingy hue!

In spite of what the bard has penned,

I fear the distance did not “lend

Enchantment to the view.”

Not Radcliffe&rsquo............