Happy insect! happy thou,

Dost neither age nor winter know;

But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,

(Voluptuous and wise withal,

Epicurean animal!)

Sated with thy summer feast,

Thou retir'st to endless rest.

DRINKING.

From Anacreon.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair;
The sea itself, which one would think,
Should have but little need of drink,
Drinks ten thousand rivers up,
So filled that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun, and one would guess,
By's drunken fiery face, no less,
Drinks up the sea, and when he's done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own light,
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl then, fill it high!
Fill all the glasses there! for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, men of morals, tell me why?

GOLD.

From Anacreon.

A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pain the greatest pain,
It is to love, and love in vain.
Virtue now nor noble blood,
Nor wit by love is understood,
Gold alone does passion move,
Gold monopolizes love!

A curse on her, and on the man,
Who this traffic first began!

A curse on him who found the ore!
A curse on him who digged the store!
A curse on him who did refine it!

A curse on him who first did coin it!

A curse, all curses else above,

On him who used it first in love!

Gold begets in brethren hate;
Gold in families debate;

Gold does friendship separate;

Gold does civil wars create;

These the smallest harms of it!

Gold, alas! does love beget.

I can not conclude without a word of detestation toward Sprat, who, Goth and Vandal that he was, destroyed Cowley's familiar letters.

V.

COMIC POETS.

J. ANSTEY.

My acquaintance with "The Pleader's Guide" commenced some five-and-forty years ago, after the following fashion.

It had happened to me to make one of a large Christmas party in a large country mansion, the ladies whereof were assembled one morning dolefully enough in an elegant drawing-room. It was what sportsmen are pleased to call a fine open day;" which, being interpreted according to the feminine version, means every variety of bad weather of which our climate is capable, excepting frost. Dirt, intolerable dirt, it always means, and rain pretty often. On the morning in question, it did not absolutely rain, it only mizzled; but the clouds hung over our heads in a leaden canopy, threatening a down pour; and all the signs of the earth testified to the foregone deluge that had already confined us to the house until our patience was worn to a thread. Heavy drops fell from the eaves, the trees in the park were dripping from every bough, the fallen leaves under the trees dank with moisture, the grass as wet as if it grew in a ford, the gravel-walks soft and plashy, the carriage drives no better than mud. In short, it was the very dismalest weather that ever answered to the name of "a fine open day;" and our sportsmen accordingly had all sallied forth to enjoy it, some to join Sir John's hounds, some to a great coursing meeting at Streatley.

As we stood at the windows bemoaning our imprisonment, we saw that the drizzle was fast settling into steady rain, and that there was no more chance of a ride on horseback, or a drive in an open carriage, than of the exhilarating walk which is the proper exercise of Christmas. All the pets about the park sympathized in our afflictions. The deer dropped off to their closest covert; the pied peacock, usually so stately and so dignified as he

trailed his spotted train after him, when he came to the terrace to tap at the window for his dole of cake, actually sneaked away, when summoned, in pure shame at his draggled tail; the swans looked wet through. The whole party seemed chilled and dismal, and I was secretly meditating a retreat to my mother's dressing-room, to enjoy in quiet a certain volume of Causes Célèbres," which I had abstracted from the library for my own private solace, when every body was startled by a proposal of the only gentleman left at home; a young barrister, who had had sufficient courage to confess his indifference to field sports, and who now, observing on the ennui that seemed to have seized upon the party, offered to use his best efforts to enliven us by reading aloud-by reading a law-book. Fancy the exclamations at a medicine so singularly ill-adapted to the disease! For my own part, I was not so much astonished. I suspected that the young gentleman had got hold of another volume of my dearly beloved "Causes Célèbres," and was about to minister to our discontent by reading a French Trial. But the rest of the party laughed and exclaimed, and were already so much aroused by the proposal, that the cure might be said to be more than half accomplished, before our learned teacher opened the pages of "The Pleader's Guide."

I wish I could communicate to my extracts the zest that his selections derived from his admirable reading, and from the humorous manner in which he expounded the mystery of the legal phrases, which I shall do my best to avoid, not to overtask my reader's ingenuity.

It is an old lawyer instructing a young one:

"But chiefly thou, dear Job, my friend,

My kinsman, to my verse attend;

By education formed to shine

Conspicuous in the pleading line;

For you, from five years old to twenty,

Were crammed with Latin words in plenty;

Were bound apprentice to the Muses,

And forced with hard words, blows, and bruises

To labor on poetic ground,

Dactyls and spondees to confound;
And when become in fictions wise,

In Pagan histories and lies,

Were sent to dive at Granta's cells,
For truth in dialectic wells;

There duly bound for four years more,
To ply the philosophic oa,
Points metaphysical to moot,
Chop logic, wrangle, and dispute;
And now, by far the most ambitious
Of all the sons of Bergersdicius,
Present the law with all the knowledge
You gathered both at school and college,
Still bent on adding to your store
The graces of a Pleader's lore,
And, better to improve your taste,
Are by your parents' fondness placed
Among the blest, the chosen few,
(Blest, if their happiness they knew,)
Who, for three hundred guineas paid
To some great master of the trade,
Have, at his rooms, by special favor,
His leave to use their best endeavor,
By drawing pleas from nine till four,
To earn him twice three hundred more;
And after dinner may repair

To 'foresaid rooms, and then and there
Have 'foresaid leave from five till ten,
To draw the aforesaid pleas again."

Then he favors his pupil with a bit of his own history, which seems to me capital:

"Whoe'er has drawn a special plea,
Has heard of old Tom Tewksbury;
Deaf as a post and thick as mustard,
He aimed at wit, and bawled and blustered,
And died a Nisi prius leader-

That genius was my special pleader.
That great man's office I attended,
By Hawk and Buzzard recommended;
Attorneys both of wondrous skill

To pluck the goose and drive the quill.
Three years I sat his smoky room in,
Pens, paper, pounce and ink consuming;
The fourth, when Essoign day begun,
Joyful I hailed the auspicious sun,
Bade Tewksbury and clerk adieu;
*Purification Eighty-two

*The Purification of the Virgin Mary is one of the return days of Hilary Term.