such satisfaction. He had worked too long, he said to himself, and this
was the reaction; he was too tired to enjoy the memory of what he had so
heartily admired. Aesthetic judgment was so dependent on mood! He would
glance over what he had done, correct it a little, and inclose it for
the afternoon post, that it might appear in the next issue!

He drank the cup of cold tea by his bedside, sat down, and took up his
hurriedly written sheets. He found in them much that seemed good
work--of his own; and the passages quoted gave ostensible grounds for
the remarks made upon them; but somehow the whole affair seemed quite
different. The review would incline any lover of verse to read the book;
and the passages cited were preceded and followed by rich and praiseful
epithets; but neither quotations nor remarks moved in him any echo of
response. He gave the manuscript what correction it required, which was
not much, for Walter was an accurate as well as ready writer, laid it
aside, and took up the poem.

What could be the matter? There was nothing but embers where had been
glow and flame! Something must be amiss with him! He recalled an
occasion on which, feeling similarly with regard to certain poems till
then favorites, he was sorely troubled, but a serious attack of illness
very soon relieved his perplexity: something like it most surely be at
hand to account for the contradiction between Walter last night and
Walter this morning! Closer and closer he scanned what he read, peering
if he might to its very roots, in agonized endeavor to see what he had
seen as he wrote. But his critical consciousness neither acknowledged
what he had felt, nor would grant him in a condition of poetic collapse.
He read on and on; read the poem through; turned back, and read passage
after passage again; but without one individual approach to the revival
of former impression. "Commonplace! commonplace!" echoed in his inner