XVII.

Speak up!—­or hath he hid his name
To crawl thro’ “subways” unto fame,
  Like Williams of Cornhill?—­
Speak up, my lad!—­when men run small
We’ll show what’s little in them all,
  Receive it how they will!—­

XVIII.

Think now of Irving!—­shall he preach
The princes down,—­shall he impeach
  The potent and the rich,
Merely on ethic stilts,—­and I
Not moralize at two mile high
  The true didactic pitch!

XIX.

Come:—­what d’ye think of Jeffrey, sir? 
Is Gifford such a Gulliver
  In Lilliput’s Review,
That like Colossus he should stride
Certain small brazen inches wide
  For poets to pass through?

XX.

Look down! the world is but a spot. 
Now say—­Is Blackwood’s low or not,
  For all the Scottish tone? 
It shall not weigh us here—­not where
The sandy burden’s lost in air—­
  Our lading—­where is’t flown?

XXI.

Now,—­like you Croly’s verse indeed—­
In heaven—­where one cannot read
  The “Warren” on a wall? 
What think you here of that man’s fame? 
Tho’ Jerdan magnified his name,
  To me ’tis very small!

XXII.

And, truly, is there such a spell
In those three letters, L. E. L.,
  To witch a world with song? 
On clouds the Byron did not sit,
Yet dar’d on Shakspeare’s head to spit,
  And say the world was wrong!

XXIII.

And shall not we?  Let’s think aloud! 
Thus being couch’d upon a cloud,
  Graham, we’ll have our eyes! 
We felt the great when we were less,
But we’ll retort on littleness
  Now we are in the skies.

XXIV.

O Graham, Graham, how I blame
The bastard blush,—­the petty shame,
  That used to fret me quite,—­
The little sores I cover’d then,
No sores on earth, nor sorrows when
  The world is out of sight!

XXV.

My name is Tims.—­I am the man
That North’s unseen diminish’d clan
  So scurvily abused! 
I am the very P. A. Z.
The London’s Lion’s small pin’s head
  So often hath refused!

XXVI.

Campbell—­(you cannot see him here)—­
Hath scorn’d my lays:—­do his appear
  Such great eggs from the sky?—­
And Longman, and his lengthy Co. 
Long, only, in a little Row,
  Have thrust my poems by!

XXVII.