herself, who would have wondered at all her children's bursting themselves, one after the other, in spite of her example? I pity, for my part (next to suffering nations), every king in existence, except Ferdinand; and will pity him too when he is put out of a condition to slaughter those who would have made him an honest man.

Pleasant C. R.! let me recall my happier rhymes and rainy days by thinking of thee. C. R. is one of those happy persons whom goodness, imagination, and a tranquil art conspire to keep in a perpetual youth. He and his brother once called upon a man whom I knew, who told me he had seen "the young gentlemen," and yet this man was not old, and C. R. was seven-and-thirty if he was a day. C. R. has a quaint manner with him, which some take for simplicity. It is, but not of the sort which they take it for. I could hear it talk for an hour together, and have heard it, delighting all the while at the interest he can take in a trifle, and the entertainment he can raise out of it. His simplicity is anything but foolishness, though it is full of bonhomie. He is a nice observer. At the same time he is as romantic as a sequestered schoolmaster, and will make as grave Latin quotations. He produces a history out of a whistle. He will describe to you a steam-engine or a water-mill, with all the machinery and the noise to boot, till you die at once with laughter and real interest at the gravity of his enthusiasm. He makes them appear living things, as the fulling-mills did to Don Quixote. One day he gave us all an account of a man he had seen in the Strand, who was standing

with a pole in his hand, at the top of which was a bladder, and underneath the bladder a bill. He told

us what a mystery this excited in the minds of the spectators, and how they looked, first at "the man," then at "the bill," and then "at the bladder ; " — and again, said he, they looked at the bladder, then at the bill, and so on, ringing the changes on these words till we saw nothing before us in life but a man holding those two phenomena. We begged him to change the word "man" into " body," that charm of alliteration might be added; and he complied with a passing laugh, and the greatest good nature conceivable, entering into the joke, and yet feeling a real gravity in commenting upon the people's astonishment. This combination of "bill, body, and bladder" was, after all, nothing but a man standing with an advertisement of blacking, or an eating-house, or some such thing. We have been thankful ever since that "such things are."

I once rode with C. R. from Gainsborough to Doncaster, making rhymes with him all the way on the word philosopher. We made a hundred and fifty, and were only stopped by arriving at our journey's end. Readers uninitiated in doggerel may be startled at this; but nothing is more true. The words were all different, and legitimate doggerel rhymes; though, undoubtedly, the rhymes themselves must often have been repeated, that is to say, the same consonants must have begun them. The following is a rainyday production on the same subject, exhausting, we believe, the real alphabetical quantum of rhymes, with their combinations. But it is submitted with defer

ence to the learned. We dedicate it to our pleasant friend, heartily wishing we could have such another ride with him to-morrow.

You talk of rhyming to the word Philosopher.

That jade the Muse! It's doubtless very cross of her
To stint one even in rhymes, which are the dross of her;
I can't but think that it's extremely gross of her:

I told her once how very wrong it was of her:
If I could help, I'd not ask one, that's poz, of her:

I would not quote procumbit humis bos of her ;
Nor earn a single lettuce yclept Cos of her;

I would not speak to Valcnaer or to Voss of her;

Nor Dryden's self, although the Great High Joss of her:

I would not care for the divinum os of her.

No, though she rhymed me the whole mos, flos, ros, of her:
Walking in woods I wouldn't brush the moss off her:
Nor in the newest green grown take the gloss of her:

In winter-time I wouldn't keep the snows off her;

And yet I don't think either I could go so far:
Thy anger, certainly, I couldn't show so far:

I didn't think the hatchet I could throw so far.
Good heavens! now I reflect, I love the nose of her:
I could cut off my hair to tie the hose of her:
The brightest eyes are nothing to the doze of her:
Love in my heart the smallest keepsake stows of her:
O, for as many kisses as I chose of her!

Since I had one there's no sweet air but blows of her:
There's not a stream but murmurs as it flows of her:

I could exalt to heav'n the very clothes of her.

I wonder how a man can speak in prose of her:

Yet some have e'en said ill (while my blood froze) of her:

Never again shall any be that crows offer

To do her harm, or with his quid pro quos huff her.

With pleasure I could every earthly woe suffer
Rather than see the charmer's little toe suffer:

'Tis only gouty Muses that should so suffer.

S

No. IX.

EATING AND DRINKING.

Quæ virtus et quanta boni sit vivere parvo,
(Nec meus hic sermo, sed qua præcepit Ofellus,
Rusticus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva)
Discite, non inter lances mensaque nitentes
Cum stupet insanis acies fulgoribus, et cum
Aulinis falsis animus meliora recusat:

Vecum hic impransi mecum disquirite. — HORACE.

What, and how great, the virtue and the art
To live on little with a cheerful heart!

(A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine)
Let's talk, my friends, but talk before we dine;
Not when a gilt buffet's reflected pride

Turns you from sound philosophy aside;
Not when from plate to plate your eyeballs roll,

And the brain dances to the mantling bowl. - POPE.

O sang a Roman poet, who describes himself as having grown as fat as a pig; and so sang after him an English one, who is said to have died of eating stewed lampreys. They were judicious in singing before dinner. What is the use, it may be asked, of repeating maxims so often contradicted, and by the very persons that broach them? To which it may be answered, What is the use of any maxims at all? Why do the world go to school? Why do they teach their children? Why do they pique themselves on their experience? Is all this useless? The members of a community that values itself on its good conduct, will hardly answer no: nor must they answer no on the present occasion, Poets of the middle order, perhaps

of the greatest, are famous for the warfare they undergo between their sensibilities and their knowledge. The stretchers "of the ray to ages yet unborn" play tricks among their beams of light, that often scorch their fingers. But the ray is stretched; philosophy is never so well recommended to the world as by the radiance they throw upon it. Generally speaking, the book, rather than the author, is in the reader's mind; and where this is not the case, and the danger of example is apprehended, perhaps the danger is more than compensated by deduction in favor of charity. Besides, those who do contradict their theories, would contradict them more, and in worse taste if they were ignorant of what is good, or in bitter despair of attaining it. Horace had fits of temperance as well as luxury. He has said such pretty things of crusts and salads, that one longs to have eaten them with him, and laughed at the fume of great dinners. Pope was a little domestic fowl, brought up tenderly, and accustomed to be picking. He could not take stout exercise: his frame would not allow it. "Then he ought to have eaten little in proportion." True; but something is to be allowed to the perpetual wear and tear occasioned by the exercise of the mind, and something to the irritability of that very delicacy of constitution which rendered indulgence perilous. The moth flies to the candle; robuster insects avoid it. Let us thank the butterfly race, notwithstanding, for reminding us of Nature and the flowers. What numbers of men, of similar constitutions with Pope, have died of surfeits, and done nothing! How much more gracefully might they have lived, how oftener have