ABSTRACT
While he spoke, another of the bards arose, and took his station in the midst of the groupe. My friend whispered me, that he had composed some famous lyrical ballads and was proceeding to descant on his genius, when the bard began, first announcing his subject to be,
the hermit and the snail. A hermit walk’d forth from his cell one day, And he met a snail across his way, And thus to the snail did the hermit say,
‘Silly snail!’
