Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/112

 pond full, and is finally drowned in it. This struck Byrom's fancy. He expands it into a fable in verse, and ventures to show his performance to Law himself. Law laughed, and begged him not to turn the whole book into verse, 'for then it would not sell in prose—so the good man can joke.' This was before the rise of the Authors' Society, and the value of a copyright was still a subject for 'joking.' In later days Law encouraged Byrom to versify other works, and seems to have thought that the effect would be to advertise the prose. He calls Byrom his laureate; but Byrom, I suspect, did not contribute much to Law's popularity. The poems had not a large circulation.

Some of his other religious poems have great merits. Of an early paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm I will only say that Dr. Ward endorses the statement of a Mr. Hedges, that he 'would give all the world to have been able to have done them.' It is in the same metre as the pastoral, and like that poem owes its charm to the entire simplicity which enables Byrom as a reverential interpreter to catch the charm of that masterpiece of Hebrew poetry. Another poem,