It would appear as though his mind turned, through some natural bent or early association, to the employment of this form; an idea which suggests itself all the more forcibly when we find him, a few years later, setting about the composition of a conventional lament in this mode on a young college acquaintance, and producing, through his power of alchemical transmutation, one of the greatest works of art in the English language.

Something too is left of mediaeval fancy; the details borrowed from the antique undergo fantastic transmutation at the hands of men accustomed to the vehement emotion of the romantic ages.

It is Life,that is, pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations.

With that particular skill of his, during an epidemic of the brevitas pecuniaria, (Angl. shorts,) he would have been just the person to coax into one's house of accompt, at five minutes before two o'clock in the afternoon, to work a little involuntary transmutation,to change the coal-scuttle into ingots, and the ruler into a great, gorged, glittering rouleau.

With that particular skill of his, during an epidemic of the brevitas pecuniaria, (Angl. shorts,) he would have been just the person to coax into one's house of accompt, at five minutes before two o'clock in the afternoon, to work a little involuntary transmutation,to change the coal-scuttle into ingots, and the ruler into a great, gorged, glittering rouleau.

Perhaps even in the midst of his new happiness, there was the unacknowledged fear of evil chance if he should speak too soon and put the beautiful gold to the touch while the magic transmutation was still so dazzlingly fresh.

It was no small matter, too, that the evening, converted by a rare transmutation into the delicious "blink of rest," which Burns so truthfully describes, was all my own.

Probably the supposed transmutation is per saltus.