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Those, however, who read his notes and reflections carefully and intelligently are bound to notice how much more than a mere verse-maker Burns was. This was the journal of a man of strong, sound sense and keen observation. It has also to be recognised that Burns was at his weakest when he attempted to describe scenery for mere scenery's sake. His gift did not lie that way.

"A low-born man," replied Nemu, "to whom a free education was given at the House of Seti, and who is well known as a verse-maker and interpreter of dreams. His name is Pentaur, and it certainly must be admitted that he is handsome and dignified. He is line for line the image of the pioneer Paaker's late father. Didst thou ever see him, my lord?"

We are also told that Shelley's excessive nobility of nature prevented him from agreeing with his commonplace father; and truly the poet was a bad and an ungrateful son. But, if a pretty verse-maker is privileged to be an undutiful son, what becomes of all our old notions? I think once more of the great Sir Walter, and I remember his unquestioning obedience to his parents.

"He has never been surpassed in the editorial faculty, at the same time being apt as compositor, pressman, verse-maker, compiler and reporter; but as adviser, satirist and humorist he was perhaps at his best. His one and two line bits of comment and wisdom were models of pithiness, and few writers have equalled him in masterly skill in argument.

"A low-born man," replied Nemu, "to whom a free education was given at the House of Seti, and who is well known as a verse-maker and interpreter of dreams. His name is Pentaur, and it certainly must be admitted that he is handsome and dignified. He is line for line the image of the pioneer Paaker's late father. Didst thou ever see him, my lord?"

Her powers, both as an actor and a verse-maker, made a wonderful reputation at the time, which, as we shall see, was highly serviceable to her after.

But if there be anything in me, it will work itself out in original form. And, after all, the verse-maker is not the inventor of ideas. Adventure on foot is a notion that remounts to the age of fable. Hercules, for instance; that was the way in which he got to heaven, as a foot-traveller. How solitary the world is at this hour!

She seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing from the Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker. And she talked like an angel, but her views upon poetry as a calling in life, shocked me not a little. She said she preferred a mariage de convenance to a love match, because it generally turned out better.

"Heroics are old-fashioned; but the Chaucer couplet, as brought to perfection by our modern poets, I think the best adapted to dainty leaves and uncrackable nuts. I accept the modern Chaucerian. The subject?" "Oh, never trouble yourself about that. By whatever title your Augustan verse-maker labels his poem, his genius, like Pindar's, disdains to be cramped by the subject.

It was not until he discovered one morning that everybody knew a couplet or two of "How we beat the Favourite" that he consented to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a verse-maker. Even in this picture of the excitements of the turf, there is nothing that would not be as true of Epsom or Ascot as of Randwick or Flemington.