Is sent to desire, that when your August vacation comes, your friends you'd meet here:

For why should you stay in that filthy hole, I mean the city so smoky, When you've not one friend left in town, or at least not one that's witty to joke w'ye.

Invitation to Sheridan.

There is a good forced rhyme in Drunken Barnaby's Journal, almost the only good thing in it. It was suggested by the writer's Latin (for he was the author both of the original and the version), but it is not the worse for that. Indeed the passage is much bet

ter in the English than in the Latin.

Veni Banbury, O profanum,

Ubi vidi Puritanum

Felem facientem furem,

Quia Sabbatho stravit murem.

To Banbury came I, O profane one,
Where I saw a Puritàne one

Hanging of his cat on Monday

For killing of a mouse on Sunday.

Ludicrous panegyric and climax, out of a Poem in praise of the Horn-Book. This might have come under the head of Exaggeration.

Thy heavenly notes, like angel's music, cheer
Departing souls, and soothe the dying ear.
An aged peasant on his latest bed

Wish'd for a friend some godly book to read :

The pious grandson thy known handle takes,

And (eyes lift up) this savory lecture makes;- *
"Great A," he gravely read. Th' important sound
The empty walls and hollow roof rebound;
Th' expiring ancient rear'd his drooping head,
And thank'd his stars that Hodge had learn'd to read
"Great B," the younker bawls. O heavenly breath!
What ghostly comforts in the hour of death!

What hopes I feel !-"Great C," pronounc'd the boy;
The grandsire dies with ecstasy of joy.

Ludicrous association of ideas, and aspect of solemnity.

Tickell.

My hair I'd powder in the woman's way,
And dress, and talk of dressing, more than they.
I'll please the Maids of Honor, if I can:

Without black velvet breeches WHAT IS MAN?

Bramston's Man of Taste.

Bramston was a facetious clergyman and minor poet, whose verses are to be found in Dodsley. They would be worth reprinting in some selection, especially with notes explaining the allusions. He has considerable spirit and ease; and with more attention to the structure of his verse, might have gone nigh to rival a portion of the Dunciad. One of his poems is an Art of Politics. The Man of Taste ends with the following convincing summary of arguments :

This is true Taste; and whoso likes it not,
Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot.

A great prose wit, Arbuthnot (who, by the way, left some interesting serious verses on the subject of Self-Knowledge, which are to be found in the same Collection), tells a friend in a letter, that the following thought came into his head one day, as he was getting into his chariot. It is a banter on the subtleties of the schools, and the metaphysical poets.

The dust in smaller particles arose

Than those which fluid bodies do compose.
Contraries in extremes do often meet:

It was so dry, that you might call it wet.

Burdens of songs have been rendered jovial and amusing not only by mere analogies of sound, like those of Darwin, such as the glou glou of the French bacchanalian poets (imitating the decantering of wine), and Chaulieu's parrots in a masquerade calling to the waiters,

(Tôt, tôt,-tôt, tôt,—tôt, tôt,—

Du rôt, du rôt, du rôt,

Holà, holà, laquais,

Du vin aux perroquets)

but a man of genius, the best farcical writer in our language,

O'Keefe, has made them epitomes of character and circumstance, and filled them with a gaiety and a music the most fantastical and pleasant. It is hardly fair to quote them apart from the whole context of the scene; and readers are warned off, if their own animal spirits cannot enter heartily into an extravagance. But such as are not afraid to be amused, will be.

I shall give, however, but one taste of such excessive pickle. The following is a part of a song sung by a schoolmaster, whose animal spirits triumph over his wig and habiliments :—

Amo, umas,

I love a lass

As cedar tall and slender;
Sweet Cowslip's grace

Is her nominative case,
And she's of the feminine gender.

(Pleasant bit of superfluous information!)

Rorum, corum,

Sunt Divorum,

Harum scarum Divo;

Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig, and hat-band,
Hic hoc horum, genitivo.

A collection of songs, particularly street songs, good and bad (that is to say, very bad, or unintentionally absurd), remains to be made by some "competent hand," and would be a rich exhibition of popular feeling. A distinguished living writer and statesman, who is great enough to be a thorough humanist, and to think nothing beneath him which interests his fellow-creatures, is in possession of some such collection, and might perhaps allow it to be used. Materials for such things have influenced the fate of kingdoms; and what is more, or at least no anti-climax, Uncle Toby patronized them. Everybody knows how fond he was of the tune of Lillibullero; his comfort under all afflictions,-controversy, surgery, and Dr. Slop.

The late Mr. Mathews, a man of genius in his way, an imitator of mind as well as manner, and a worthy contributor to the wit which he collected from friends and kindred, was a disburser of much admirable "acute nonsense," which it is a pity not to

preserve. What could be better than his Scotchwoman? or his foreigners? or the gentleman who, " with infinite promptitude of mind, cut off the lion's head?" or the Englishman, who after contemplating Mount Vesuvius, and comparing it with its fame (and himself), exclaimed, snapping his fingers at it, "You're a humbug!"

Endless are the "quips and cranks" of Wit and Humor. PUNS (Pointes ?) are banished from good company at present, though kings once encouraged and Cæsar and Bacon recorded them, and Cicero and Shakspeare seem to have thought them part of the common property of good spirits. They are tiresome when engrossing, and execrable, if bad; at least, if not very and elaborately bad, and of malice prepense. But a pun may contain wit of the first water. Those of Hood are astonishing for their cleverness, abundance, and extravagance.

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And us'd to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.
Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,

And the Forty-second Foot."

And in another song, with an astounding confusion of ideas, natural in one sense, and impossible in the other ;—

And then he tried to sing " All's well,"

But couldn't though he tried;

His head was turn'd, and so he chew'd
His pigtail till he died.

The court-fool's pun upon Archbishop Laud was a good

one:

Great praise to God, and little Laud to the devil.

Good Macaronic verses are laughable from the combination of the familiar and unfamiliar in the mixture of the two languages, especially if one of them be Greek or Latin. It is like forcing a solemn schoolmaster to join in the antics of his boys. In Dr.

King's Anglo-Greek version of the children's song, "Boys, boys, come out to play," the schoolmaster himself seems to have volunteered his services. The doctor is bantering the pedantries of his time, and gives it as a passage from a Greek author.* It is here printed in English characters, " for the benefit (as authors used to say) of the country gentlemen," but in truth, for the amusement of the numerous clever readers now-a-days, who have not happened to be taught Greek.

Kummete, Mei-boies; Meiboies, kummete plaiein :
Mone isashritas theberei topa nouna diài :

(the moon is as bright as the very top o' noon-day)
Kummete sun houpo, sun loudo gummete kaulo :
Leusete suppèran, Mei-boies, leusete beddon,
Sun tois komraidoisin enri stretessi plaontes.

There is good English-Latin writing mixed with baser matter, in Ruggle's comedy of Ignoramus, which was twice played at Cambridge before James I., and made his Majesty hardly know how to endure himself for laughing. Ignoramus, who talks LawLatin and French, is a barrister answering to his name, and in love with the fair Rosabella, to whom he promises

Farthingales biggos, kirtellos, et periwiggos.

He complains of the heat and the press of suitors in court, and calls his clerks about him when he returns to chambers.t

O valde caleor; O chaud, chaud, chaud. In nomine Dei, ubi sunt clerici mei jam? Dulman, Dulman.

Dul. Hic, Magister Ignoramus, vous avez Dulman.

*I learn this from "Specimens of Macaronic Poetry" (8vo., 1831), which originally appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine.

† As the passage is worth something for its pleasantry apart from the jargon, it is here translated, with the retention only of the French and an occasional law phrase.

Igno. I'm terribly hot. O chaud, chaud, chaud. In the name of God, where have my clerks got to? Dulman, Dulman?

Dulman (entering). Here am I, sir. Vous avez Dulman.