that a little well-timed flattery might be trusted to expand the sales. Another year the same unblushing petitioner was even more hardy in her demand.
"Will you write me a page of verse for the portrait of Miss Forester? The young lady is seated with a little dog on her lap, which she looks at rather pensively. She is fair, with light hair, and is in mourning."
Here is an inspiration for a poet. A picture, which he has not seen, of a young lady in mourning looking pensively at a little dog! And poor Beattie was never paid a cent for these effusions. His sole rewards were a few words of thanks, and Lady Blessington's cards for parties he was too ill to attend.
More business-like poets made a specialty of fitting pictures with verses, as a tailor fits customers with coats. A certain Mr. Harvey, otherwise lost to fame, was held to be unrivalled in this art. For many years his "chaste and classic pen" supplied the annuals with flowing stanzas, equally adapted to the timorous taste of editors, and to the limitations of the "innocent females" for whom the volumes
