be allowed the expression, much more gracious, and if it were read now, for the first time, it might pass for a very happy specimen of the gifted author of Nelly Gray.' I should like to think that Goldsmith and Hood were now discussing it, pleasantly, in some spiritual cosmos!

Perhaps there is no couplet in English rhyme more perspicuously condensed than Goldsmith's on the French nation :

'They please are pleased-they give to get esteem, Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.'

Goldsmith excelled as novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, and satirist, and, in this respect, I doubt if he is equalled by any English writer.

THOMAS HOOD'S COMICALITY.

Thomas Hood plays off his tricks on the most knowing readers: he carries on his double-dealing with apparently the utmost simple-mindedness.

'And Christians love in the turf to lie,

Not in watery graves to be

Nay the very fishes would sooner die

On the land than in the sea.'

He treats logic with a mock ceremonial of respect, as

in the case of

His head was turned, and so he chewed

His pig-tail till he died.

Hood supplied titles for sham books in the Chatsworth library; he invented many, here are four of them:

Novel.-Percy Vere, in forty volumes.

The Life of Zimmerman-by himself.
Tadpoles or tales out of my own head.
Voltaire, Volney, Volta-three vols.

A LETTER OF DEAN SWIFT.

'May it please your Honor,-

'Dublin, Oct. 6, 1694.

'That I might not continue by any means the many troubles I have given you, I have all this while avoyded one, which I fear proves necessary at last. I have taken all due methods to be ordayned and one Time of Ordination is allready elapsed since my Arrivall without effecting it. Two or three Bishops, acquaintances of our Family, have signified to me and them that after so long a standing in the University it is admired I have not entered upon something or other (above half the Clergy in this Town being my Juniors) and that it being so many Years since I left this Kingdom, they could not admit me to the Ministry without some certificate of my Behavior where I lived: And my Lord

Archbishop of Dublin was pleased to say a good deal of this kind to me Yesterday, concluding against all I had to answer that He expected I should have a Certificate from Your Honor of my Conduct in your Family. The sense I am in, how low I am fallen in Your Honor's Thoughts has denyed me Assurance enough to beg this Favor till I find it impossible to avoyd, And I entreat Your Honor to understand, that no Person is admitted to a Living here, without some Knowledge of His Abilityes for it; which it being reckon'd impossible to judge in those who are not ordained, the usuall Method is to admit them first to some small Reader's Place till by Preaching upon Occasions they can value themselves for better Preferment: This (without great Friends) is so generall that if I were four score years old, I must go the same way, and should at that age be told, every one must have a Beginning. I entreat that Your Honor will consider this, and will please to send me some Certificate of my Behavior during almost three years in Your Family: Wherein I shall stand in need of all Your Goodness to excuse my many Weaknesses and Follyes and Oversights, much more to say any Thing to my Advantage. The Particulars expected of me, are what relate to Morals and Learning, and the Reasons of quitting Your Honor's family, that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill Actions of mine. They are all entirely left to Your Honor's

Mercy, tho' in the first, I think I cannot reproach myself any further than for Infirmityes.

'This is all I dare beg at present from Your Honor, under Circumstances of Life not worth your Regard What is left me to wish (next to the Health and Felicity of Your Honor and Family) is that Heaven would one Day allow me the Opportunity to leave my Acknowledgments at your feet, for so many Favors I have received, which, whatever effect they have had upon my Fortune, shall never fayl to have the greatest upon my Mind, in approving myself upon all occasions

"Your Honor's most obedient and most dutifull Servant

'J. SWIFT.

'I beg my most humble duty and Service, be presented to my Ladyes, Your Honor's Lady and Sister.

'The ordination is appointed by the Arch-Bishop by the Beginning of November, so that if Your Honor will not grant this Favor immediatly I fear it will come too late.

'For the Honorable Sr William Temple, Bart., at His House at Moor Park near Farnham in Surrey, England.

'By way of London.'

This letter has never before been printed in extenso. I lent it to Mr. John Forster, but not soon enough to appear in his fragment of the Life of Swift.

I have a short note in Dean Swift's autograph addressed to Alexander Pope, in which, after referring to Lord Peterborough and Dr. Arbuthnot, he says: ‘I am weary of the Town, so that the kind lodging in your Heart must be large indeed if it holds me; mine cannot hold the Esteem and Friendship I have for you.'

On the back of this note is written, in Pope's autograph, the following reflections: 'A King—a scarecrow of straw, yet protects your corn.'

'A fine Lady is like a Catt, when young the most gamesome and lively of all creatures-when old, the most melancholy.'

A FAIRY FUNERAL.

'There it was on a little river island, that once, whether sleeping or waking I know not, I saw celebrated a fairy's funeral. First, I heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper in the night winds, and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly instrument was the scarce audible dirge. It seemed to pass over the stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the fairy anthem floated over our couch, and then alighting, without footsteps, among the heather.

"The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if