"What a miracle is Genius--Genius, the Divine and Beautiful," said a
gentleman leaning against the same fireplace with the deformed cavalier
in iron-gray, and addressing that individual, who was in fact Mr.
Alexander Pope. "What a marvellous gift is this, and royal privilege
of Art! To make the Ideal more credible than the Actual: to enchain
our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets, our tears, for a mere
brain-born Emanation: to invest with life the Incorporeal, and to
glamour the cloudy into substance,--these are the lofty privileges of
the Poet, if I have read poesy aright; and I am as familiar with the
sounds that rang from Homer's lyre, as with the strains which celebrate
the loss of Belinda's lovely locks"--(Mr. Pope blushed and bowed, highly
delighted)--"these, I say, sir, are the privileges of the Poet--the
Poietes--the Maker--he moves the world, and asks no lever; if he cannot
charm death into life, as Orpheus feigned to do, he can create Beauty
out of Nought, and defy Death by rendering Thought Eternal. Ho! Jemmy,
another flask of Nantz."

And the boy--for he who addressed the most brilliant company of wits in
Europe was little more--emptied the contents of the brandy-flask into
a silver flagon, and quaffed it gayly to the health of the company
assembled. 'Twas the third he had taken during the sitting. Presently,
and with a graceful salute to the Society, he quitted the coffee-house,
and was seen cantering on a magnificent Arab past the National Gallery.

"Who is yon spark in blue and silver? He beats Joe Addison himself, in
drinking, and pious Joe is the greatest toper in the three kingdoms,"
Dick Steele said, good-naturedly.

"His paper in the Spectator beats thy best, Dick, thou sluggard," the