Escaping with a few slight, scarless sneers.

LXXXIII.

I have seen more than I'll say ;--but we will see How our villeggiatura will get on.

The party might consist of thirty-three,

Of highest caste-the Brahmins of the ton. I have named a few, not foremost in degree, By way of sprinkling, scatter'd amongst these, But ta'en at hazard as the rhyme may run. There also were some Irish absentees.

LXXXIV.

There was Parolles, too, the legal bully,
Who limits all his battles to the bar
And senate when invited elsewhere, truly,

He shows more appetite for words than war. There was the young bard Rackrhyme, who had newly

Come out, and glimmer'd as a six weeks' star; There was Lord Pyrrho, too, the great freethinker ;

And Sir John Pottledeep, the mighty drinker.

LXXXV.

There was the Duke of Dash, who was a-duke, 'Ay, every inch a' duke; there were twelve peers

Like Charlemagne's-and all such peers in look

And intellect, that neither eyes nor ears For commoners had ever them mistook. There were the six Miss Rawbolds-pretty dears!

All song and sentiment, whose hearts were set Less on a convent than a coronet;

LXXXVI.

There were four Honourable Misters, whose Honour was more before their names than after :

There was the preux Chevalier de la Ruse, Whom France and Fortune lately deign'd to waft here,

Whose chiefly harmless talent was to amuse;

But the clubs found it rather serious laughter, Because-such was his magic power to pleaseThe dice seem'd charm'd, too, with his repartees.

LXXXVII.

There was Dick Dubious, the metaphysician, Who loved philosophy and a good dinner; Angle, the soi-disant mathematician;

Sir Henry Silvercup, the great race winner. There was the Reverend Rodomont Precisian, Who did not hate so much the sin as sinner; And Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet, Good at all things, but better at a bet.

LXXXVIII.

There was Jack Jargon, the gigantic guardsman; And General Fireface, famous in the field,

I will not dwell upon ragouts or roasts,
Albeit all human history attests
That happiness for man-the hungry sinner!
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

C.

Which, like a creed, ne'er says all it intends, But, full of cunning as Ulysses' whistle, When he allured poor Dolon :-you had better Take care what you reply to such a letter.

CVI.

Held out unto the hungry Israelites : To this we have added since the love of money, The only sort of pleasure which requites. Youth fades, and leaves our days no longer We tire of mistresses and parasites; [sunny; But oh, ambrosial cash! Ah, who would lose

thee?

When we no more can use, or even abuse, thee?

CI.

The gentlemen got up betimes to shoot,

Or hunt the young, because they liked the sport

The first thing boys like, after play and fruit: The middle-aged, to make the day more short; For ennui is a growth of English root,

Though nameless in our language: we retort The fact for words, and let the French translate That awful yawn which sleep cannot abate.

CII.

The elderly walk'd through the library,

And tumbled books, or criticised the pictures, Or saunter'd through the garden piteously, And made upon the hot-house several strictures,

Or rode a nag which trotted not too high,

Or on the morning papers read their lectures, Or on the watch their longing eyes would fix, Longing, at sixty, for the hour of six.

CIII.

But none were gêné: the great hour of union Was rung by dinner's knell; till then all were Masters of their own time-or in communion,

Or solitary, as they chose to bear [known. The hours, which how to pass is but to few Each rose up at his own, and had to spare What time he chose for dress, and broke his fast When, where, and how he chose for that repast.

CIV.

The ladies-some rouged, some a little pale-
Met the morn as they might. If fine, they rode,
Or walk'd; if foul, they read, or told a tale,
Sung, or rehearsed the last dance from abroad;
Discuss'd the fashion which might next prevail,
And settled bonnets, by the newest code,
Or cramm'd twelve sheets into one little letter,
To make each correspondent a new debtor.

CV.

For some had absent lovers, all had friends. The earth has nothing like a she-epistle, And hardly heaven-because it never ends. I love the mystery of a female missal,

dice ;

:

Save in the clubs, no man of honour plays ;Boats when 'twas water, skating when 'twas ice, And the hard frost destroy'd the scenting And angling, too, that solitary vice, [days;

Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.*

• It would have taught him humanity at least. This sentimental savage, whom it is a mode to quote (amongst the songs, teaches how to sew up frogs, and break their legs by novelists), to show their sympathy for innocent sports and old way of experiment, in addition to the art of angling, the cruef. lest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports. They may talk about the beauties of nature, but the angler merely thinks of his dish of fish; he has no leisure to take his eyes from off the streams, and a single bite is worth to him more than all the scenery around. Besides, some fish bite best on a rainy day. The whale, the shark, and the tunny fishery have somewhat of noble and perilous in them; even net-fishing, trawling, &c., are more humane and useful; but angling! No angler can be a good man.

One of the best men I ever knew-as humane, delicateminded, generous, and excellent a creature as any in the world-was an angler: true, he angled with painted flies, and would have been incapable of the extravagances of I. Walton." The above addition was made by a friend in reading over the MS Audi alteram partem. I leave it to counterbalance my own observation.

For me, I know nought: nothing I deny,
Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you,
Except, perhaps, that you were born to die?
And both may, after all, turn out untrue.
An age may come, Font of Eternity,

When nothing shall be either old or new. Death, so call'd, is a thing which makes men

weep;

And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep.

IV.

A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
The very suicide that pays his debt
At once without instalments (an old way
Of paying debts, which creditors regret),
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,
Less from disgust of life than dread of death.

V.

'Tis round him, near him, here, there, everywhere:

And there's a courage which grows out of fear. Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare The worst to know it -when the mountains

rear

[there Their peaks beneath your human foot, and You look down o'er the precipice, and drear The gulf of rock yawns,-you can't gaze a minute

Without an awful wish to plunge within it.

VI.

'Tis true, you don't-but, pale and struck with

terror,

Retire; but look into your past impression! And you will find, though shuddering at the

mirror

Of your own thoughts, in all their self-conThe lurking bias, be it truth or error, fession.

To the unknown; a secret prepossession To plunge with all your fears-but where? You know not:

And that's the reason why you do-or do nct.

VII.

But what's this to the purpose? you will say
Gent. reader, nothing; a mere speculation,
For which my sole excuse is-'tis my way.
Sometimes with, and sometimes without o
casion,

I write what's uppermost, without delay:
This narrative is not meant for narration;
But a mere airy and fantastic basis,
To build up common things with common places.
VIII.

You know, or don't know, that great Bacon sath Fling up a straw, 'twil show the way the wind blows;'

And such a straw, borne on by human breath, Is poesy, according as the mind glows.