wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. Genuine and innocent wit like this is surely the flavour of the mind. Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food: but God has given us wit, and flavour, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl. SYDNEY SMITH. SYDNEY SMITH. A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON. (Aged Three Years and Five Months.) HOU (But stop, first let me kiss away that tear!) (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite, With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck, With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air, (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair) Thou darling of the sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In love's dear chain so bright and strong a link, Thou idol of thy parents-(Drat the boy! With pure heart newly stamped from Nature's mint, (Where did he learn that squint ?) Thou young domestic dove! (He'll have that jug off with another shove!) Dear nursling of the Hymeneal nest! (Are these torn clothes his best ?) Little epitome of man! (He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan!) Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life (He's got a knife!) Thou enviable being! No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball, bestride the stick, (I knew so many cakes would make him sick.) With fancies buoyant as the thistledown, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk, (He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown!) Thou pretty opening rose! (Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!) Balmy and breathing music like the South, (He really brings my heart into my mouth!) Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star, (I wish that window had an iron bar!) Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove(I'll tell you what, my love, I cannot write unless he's sent above.) THOMAS HOOD. GENEALOGY OF HUMOUR. T is indeed much easier to describe what is not humour, than what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it, I would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegory, and by supposing Humour to be a person, deduce to him all his qualifications, according to the following genealogy: Truth was the founder of the family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of collateral line called Mirth, by whom he has issue, Humour. Humour therefore, being the youngest of the illustrious family, and descended from parents of such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks, and a solemn habit; sometimes airy in his behaviour and fantastic in his dress; insomuch, that at different times he appears as serious as a judge and as jocular as a Merry Andrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his coustitution, whatever mood he is in, he never fails to make his company laugh. JOSEPH ADDISON. WE A NECESSITY. (From "Lucile."') E may live without poetry, music and art; We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks. He may live without books,-what is knowledge but grieving? He may live without hope,-what is hope but deceiving? He may live without love,-what is passion but pining? But where is the man that can live without EDWARD ROBERT, EARL LYTTON. MY DAUGHTER. HERE came to port, last Monday The queerest little craft, It seemed so curious that she Should cross the unknown water, And moor herself right in my roomMy daughter, oh, my daughter! She has no manifest but this, No flag floats o'er the water; GEORGE W. CABLE. She's too new for the British Lloyds- Ring in the little worsted socks! Ring out the muse! ring in the nurse! But- -" the troubled little face Closer pressed in my embrace: "Les don't never ever go To the land of Thus-and-So!" JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. THE FAULT OF THE PUPPY. ORD ERSKINE, at woman presuming to rail, Calls a wife a tin canister tied to one's tail; And the fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on, Seems hurt at his lordship's degrading comparison. But wherefore degrading? Considered aright, A canister's polished and useful and bright; And should dirt its original purity hide, That's the fault of the puppy to which it is tied. MATTHEW ("Monk") Lewis. PRISTINE PROVERBS PRE- BSERVE you plumed biped fine; Deposit particles saline Cryptogamous concreation never grows Whilst self-inspection it neglects, Nor its own foul condition sees, Decortications of the golden grain Teach not a parent's mother to extract The embryo juices of an egg by suction; That good old lady can the feat enact Quite irrespective of your kind instruction. Pecuniary agencies have force To stimulate to speed the female horse. The earliest winged songster soonest sees, With soap, and brush, and flannel, you tickle Bear not to yon famed city upon Tyne The mendicant once from his indigence freed, Down the precipice soon will infallibly go, ANONYMOUS. Birds of a feather flock together. And thence you may gather I'm not of a feather cage Robert Southey 22 Oct, 1836 Drowsie page, drowsie page evermore turn- Fair nymphs and well-dressed youths around ing. Young head no lore will heed, Young heart's a reckless rover; Young beauty, while you read, Sleeping, dreams of absent lover. LINES. (Improvised when two ladies, with whom he had been walking in the garden, forced him from their presence to attend to a visitor of importance. One of the ladies afterward became his wife.) Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. HUS Adam looked, when from the gar- Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to den driven, And thus disputed orders sent from heaven. hide; If to her share some female errors fall, In equal curls, and well conspired to deck ALEXANDER POPE. Each silver vase in mystic order laid. First robed in white, the nymph intent adores Here files of pins extend their shining rows; |