stream of thought would gush out upon the page at once, like
water sparkling up suddenly in the desert; and when it had
passed, I gnawed my pen hopelessly, or blundered on with cold and
miserable toil, as if there were a wall of ice between me and my
subject."

"Do you now perceive a corresponding difference," inquired I,
"between the passages which you wrote so coldly, and those fervid
flashes of the mind?"

"No," said Oberon, tossing the manuscripts on the table. "I find
no traces of the golden pen with which I wrote in characters of
fire. My treasure of fairy coin is changed to worthless dross. My
picture, painted in what seemed the loveliest hues, presents
nothing but a faded and indistinguishable surface. I have been
eloquent and poetical and humorous in a dream,--and behold! it is
all nonsense, now that I am awake."

My friend now threw sticks of wood and dry chips upon the fire,
and seeing it blaze like Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, seized the
champagne bottle, and drank two or three brimming bumpers,
successively. The heady liquor combined with his agitation to
throw him into a species of rage. He laid violent hands on the
tales. In one instant more, their faults and beauties would alike
have vanished in a glowing purgatory. But, all at once, I
remembered passages of high imagination, deep pathos, original
thoughts, and points of such varied excellence, that the vastness
of the sacrifice struck me most forcibly. I caught his arm.

"Surely, you do not mean to burn them!" I exclaimed.