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152
IN THE DOZY HOURS.
reviewer struggles with the situation as best he can, saying pleasant things which are scantily merited, and sharp things which are hardly deserved; but striving intelligently, and with tolerable success to tell a self-indulgent public something about the volumes which it is too lazy to read for itself.
"O dreams of the tongues that commend us,
Of crowns for the laureate pate,
Of a public to buy and befriend us,
Ye come through the Ivory Gate.
But the critics that slash us and slate,
But the people that hold us in scorn,
But the sorrow, the scathe, and the hate,
Through the portals of horn."
