Or your soul or your purse come to grief,
You need only get drunk, and you'll find,
Complete and immediate relief.

For myself, I have managed to do
Without having recourse to this plan,
So I can't write a poem for you,
And you'd better get some one who can.


LETTERS OF T.E. BROWN
[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]

Thank you very much for the satire. Satire is an undoubted branch of
poetry; but I do not affect it much. There is a strong, healthy, noble
satire, the _sæva indignatio_of the Latin classics. But, short of that,
satire seems only an element of discontent and unhappiness.

I know the "pip," the "black pigs" too, know them well; but they are
quite beneath contempt; and nothing on earth would induce me to cross
the bright blue of my serenity. I have a great notion of being the
master of my own happiness, and not suffering it to be contingent on the
manners and conduct of other people.

If a man slights me, he does me no harm; but if his conduct is
detrimental to the general good, if he is unjust, a villain in high
place, a seducer, a poison, a snare to the innocent, then have at him!
though, _constitutionally_ I had rather leave him alone.

The sum of happiness in the world is not too large. I would like, if