There had been caricatures, and rhymes, and many little children's books; and then the lines written for his bread, which, except that they were written for _Punch_, were hardly undertaken with a more serious purpose.

In all of it there was ample seriousness, had he known it himself.

What a tale of the restlessness, of the ambition, of the glory, of the misfortunes of a great country is given in the ballads of Peter the French drummer! Of that brain so full of fancy the pen had lightly written all the fancies.

He did not know it when he was doing so, but with that word, fancy, he has described exactly the gift with which his brain was specially endowed.

If a writer be accurate, or sonorous, or witty, or simply pathetic, he may, I think, gauge his own powers.