It is only a new turn given, by a little false pronunciation, to a very common though not very courteous inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner-party, it would have been vapid; to the mistress of the house, it would have shown much less wit than rudeness. We must take in the totality of time, place, and person; the pert look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled porter; the one stopping at leisure, the other hurrying on with his burthen; the innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second; the place--a public street-not favourable to frivolous investigations; the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire; namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the good things which they carry, they being in most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees than owners of such dainties,—which the fellow was beginning to understand; but then the wig again comes in. and he can make nothing of it: all put together constitute a picture : Hogarth could have made it intelligible on canvass.

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The same persons shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cremona ;* because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to call it cold; because of thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty aside), we must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. But as some stories applied by Swift to a lady's dress, or mantua (as it was then termed) coming in contact with one of those fiddles called Cremonas, are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this bi-verbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been better if it had been less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was enough in conscience; the Cremona afterwards loads it. It is in fact a double pun; and we have always observed that a superfœtation in this sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time; or, perhaps, the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The impression, to be forcible, must be simultaneous and undivided.

ELIA.

*Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremona."

ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE.

It was but yesterday the snow

Of thy dead sire was on the hill—

It was but yesterday the flow

Of thy spring showers encreased the rill,
And made a thousand blossoms swell
To welcome summer's festival-

It was but yesterday I saw

Thy harvests wave their golden treasures,
And man, to Nature's genial law,

Responsive, taste the season's pleasures ;
And now all these are of the past,

For this lone hour must be thy last!

Thou must depart! where none may know-
The sun for thee hath ever set,

The star of morn, the silver bow,
No more shall gem thy coronet
And give thee glory; but the sky
Shall shine on thy posterity,
Bright as it ever shone on thee;
While as a torrent they are pouring

On where forgetfulness will be

In ambush couch'd for their devouring,
Where now it waits thy latest sand
From destiny's unpitying hand.

In darkness-in eternal space,
Sightless as a sin-quenched star,

Thou shalt pursue thy wandering race,
Receding into regions far:

On thee the eyes of mortal men

Shall never, never light again;

Memory alone may steal a glance,

Like some wild glimpse in sleep we're taking,

Of a long perish'd countenance

We have forgotten when awaking

Sad, evanescent, colour'd weak,

As beauty on a dying cheek.

Whence flows the stream of ages? Where

Pass perish'd things its surface bears

The breathing life, the joy and care,

The good and evil of earth's years?

And were they made with thee to die-
Created who can tell us why?

As dewy flowers that bloom to-day,

Hallowing the summer air with sweetness,
Extinguish'd ere to-morrow's ray,

Leave but memorials of death's fleetness.

Man alone hopes in distant skies

To bloom 'mid some bright paradise.

I once had many pleasant gleams

Of thy prospective hours, and things
That turn'd out but delusive dreams,
Fading beneath thy restless wings;
And many unreckon'd gifts of thine
I never thought could have been mine,

And many joys, and many pains,
At this thy dying hour departed,
And hopes I dared not count as gains,
And fears which made me coward-hearted,
That soon must be as they were not-
I, thou, and they, alike forgot!
Farewell! that cold regretful word

To one whom we have called a friend-
Yet still "farewell" I must record,

The sign that marks our friendship's end.
Thou 'rt on thy couch of wither'd leaves,
The surly blast thy breath receives,
In the stript woods I hear thy dirge,
Thy passing-bell the hinds are tolling,
Thy death-song sounds in ocean's surge,
Oblivion's clouds are round thee rolling,-
Thou'lt buried be where buried lie
Years of the dead eternity.

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN.

"Come like shadows-so depart."

B. it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both-a task for which he would have been much fitter, no less from the temerity than the felicity of his pen

"Never so sure our rapture to create

As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate." Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a common-place piece of business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other people than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox or

mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair and reasonable.

On the question being started, Asaid, "I suppose the two first persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?" In this C.as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of B.- -'s face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. "Yes, the greatest names," he stammered out hastily, "but they were not persons-not persons."-"Not persons?" said A-, looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. "That is," rejoined B., "not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the Essay on Human Understanding, and the Principia, which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the But what we want to see any one bodily for, is when there is something peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them, But who could paint Shakspeare?"-" Ay," retorted A- "there it is; then

men.

I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?"—"No," said B―, 66 neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantle-pieces, that I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton's face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it is too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the precisian's band and gown."-"I shall guess no more," said A——. "Who is it, then, you would like to see in his habit as he lived,' if you had your choice of the whole range of English literature?" B- then named Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their night-gown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this A laughed outright, and conceived B- was jesting with him; but as no one followed his 'example, he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense. Bthen (as well as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty years ago-how time slips!) went on as follows. "The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson, I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him: he and Boswell together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently explicit: my friends, whose repose I should be tempted to disturb, (were it in my power) are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.

"And call up him who left half-told

The story of Cambuscan bold."

When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition (the Urn-burial) I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. Besides, who would not be curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having himself been twice married, wished that mankind were propagated like trees! As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own "Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus," a truly formidable and inviting personage: his style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie; and for the unravelling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt of an encounter with so portentous a commentator!" "I am afraid in that case," said A- "that if the mystery were once cleared up, the merit might be lost;"-and turning to me, whis pered a friendly apprehension, that while B continued to admire these old crabbed authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning was often quite as uncomeatable, without a personal citation from the dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. The volume was produced;

and while some one was expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed to the old edition, A got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming, "What have we here?" read the following :-"Here lies a She-Sun, and a He-Moon there, She gives the best light to his sphere,

Or each is both and all, and so

They unto one another nothing owe."

There was no resisting this, till B—, seizing the volume, turned to the beautiful "Lines to his Mistress," dissuading her from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused features and a faltering tongue.

By our first strange and fatal interview,

By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words' masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory

Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten'd me,
I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath,
By all pains which want and divorcement hath,
I conjure thee; and all the oaths which I
And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy
Here I unswear, and overswear them thus,
Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous.
Temper, oh fair Love! love's impetuous rage,
Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd Page;
I'll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind
Thee! only worthy to nurse it in my mind.
Thirst to come back; oh, if thou die before,
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar.
Thy (else Almighty) beauty cannot move
Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love,
Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness; thou hast read
How roughly he in pieces shiver'd

Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd.
Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have prov'd
Dangers unurg'd: Feed on this flattery,
That absent lovers one with th' other be.
Dissemble nothing, not a boy; nor change
Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange
To thyself only. All will spy in thy face
A blushing, womanly, discovering grace.
Richly cloth'd apes are call'd apes, and as soon
Eclips'd as bright we call the moon the moon.
Men of France, changeable cameleons,
Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions,
Love's fuellers, and the rightest company
Of players, which upon the world's stage be,
Will quickly know thee.

O stay here! for thee

England is only a worthy gallery,
To walk in expectation; till from thence
Our greatest King call thee to his presence.
When I am gone, dream me some happiness,
Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess,

Nor praise, nor dispraise me; nor bless, nor curse
Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse
With midnight startings, crying out, Oh, oh,
Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him go