am not at all more fortunate in the reception of my poetry. I have
tried it every way--ballades by the bale, sonnets by the dozen, loyal
odes, seditious songs, drawing-room poetry, an Epic on the history of
Labducuo, erotic verse, all fire, foam, and fangs, reflective ditto,
humble natural ballads about signal-men and newspaper-boys, Life-boat
rescues, Idyls, Nocturnes in rhyme, tragedies in blank verse. Nobody
will print them, or, if anybody prints them, he regrets that he
cannot pay for them. My moral and discursive essays are rejected, my
descriptions of nature do not even get into the newspapers. I have
not been elected by the Sydenham Club (a clique of humbugs); I have
let my hair grow long; I have worn a cloak and a Tyrolese hat, and
attitudinised in the picture-galleries, but nobody asked who I am. I
have endeavoured to hang on to well-known poets and novelists--they
have not welcomed my advances.

My last dodge was a Satire, the _Logrolliad_, in which I lashed the
charlatans and pretenders of the day.

While hoary statesmen scribble in reviews
And guide the doubtful verdict of the Blues,
While HAGGARD scrawls, with blood in lieu of ink,
While MALLOCK teaches Marquises to think,

so long I have rhythmically expressed my design to wield the dripping
scourge of satire. But nobody seems a penny the worse, and I am not a
paragraph the better. Short stories of a startling description fill my
drawers, nobody will venture on one of them. I have closely imitated
every writer who succeeds, but my little barque may attendant sail, it
pursues the triumph, but does not partake the gale.