'Tis pleasant business making books,
When other people furnish brains;
Like finding them in running brooks,—
The pleasure, minus all the pains!
They tell us Wordsworth once declared
That he could, if he had the mind,
Write plays like those of Avon's bard;
Whereat the stammering Lamb rejoined,
"S-s-s-s-s-so you see,
That all he wanted was the mind!"
O gentle Wordsworth, to deride
Thy simple speech I'm not inclined;
For these good friends, and thou beside,
Have freely lent me of their mind.
I've Shakespeare's point, and Burns's fire,
And Bulwer's own gentility,
And Elia's meekness, yet aspire
To Pope's infallibility.
I've made myself at home with Holmes;
I'm in two Taylors' garments dressed;
Campbell has told his rhymes for me,
And Shelley shelled out like the rest,
And Hood put on his thinking-cap,
And Goldsmith beaten out his best.
I've pilfered Alfred's laureate strains,
And boldly counted Henry's chickens,
And drained Harte's blood from his best veins,
And stol'n from Dickens like the dickens;
Of Hogg I have not gone the whole,
But of three Proctors tithes demanded,
And from a Miller taken toll,
And plucked a Reade, to do as Pan did.
I've beaten Beattie like a tree
That sheds its fruit for every knocker,
Nor let Sir Walter go Scott free,
And filched a shot from Frederick's Locker.
The ladies, too—God bless them all!—
What pieces of their minds I've taken!
It would Achilles' self appall,
If hiding here to save his bacon.
By Hawthorne's genius hedged about,
And deep in Browning's brownest study,
This is the sure retreat, no doubt,
From critics' favors, fair or muddy.
Ah, How it Reads, How well it looks!—
What one May call a death to pains!—
This pleasant way of making books,
With clever folks to furnish brains!