Page:Letters of Life.djvu/51

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A new nightly visitant came with Thought, and sat in judgment on my couplets. It was Criticism. She measured the lines, and put them to her ear, like a pitch-pipe; and with regard to this specimen, suggested that in the second line "tongue" would make a more accurate rhyme to "among," than the word I had chosen. I examined her decision, but adhered to my original selection. Whereupon Criticism arose and departed, and I went to sleep.

The echo of consenting and euphonious words allured me to these little exercises in composition more than any poetic impulse or original idea. Attention to style, and the import of classical words, were advanced habitudes of mind for such infantine years. They principally arose from the character of the authors with whom I became familiar. There were literally no children's books attainable by me; and as reading became, almost in babyhood, a necessity of existence, I was thrown upon a rather severe selection of standard authors. Young, with his sententious "Night Thoughts," initiated me into the poetry of my native language; Addison's "Spectator," and Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," were the most amusing volumes in the library. Yet so much had I been inured to the measured