have often heard of being as " thick as mud," or as" three in a bed;" classical refinement regarded the boat as the "locus in quo," and exemplified the filial affection of the Ptolemies by embarking them in one boat. The writer, too, regarded the old dramatic rule of confining the action to three persons; the brothers were three.

We three Ptolemies be.

Did you ever see,
Any like we?

Who the three were that went to Philippi, no learned critic has determined. One thing is certain; whether brothers or sons-and they must have been sons of somebody-they went to Philippi in a boat. No doubt, therefore, fraternal affection commenced the first canto, an address to the water-gods formed its middle, and the initiatory portion. of the poem concluded with a visionary second sight of Cæsar, Pompey, Cassius, and Brutus, greatly assisted, as in the case of Virgil's famous Witches' Mirror," by the accidental occurrence of the facts previous to the prophecy.

The poet, however, in his next canto introduces another character, whom he associates with the fraternal triad. Fraternal affection, water, in all its forms, and second sight now give place to music.

Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast.

Ergo, enter one trumpeter, solus.

Virgil endeavoured in his Eneid to show what a trumpeter might be, and also how he could be beaten by a gentleman in sea-green inexpressibles and a conch-shell. But then Misenus had not a red

coat.

Trumpeter unus erat, qui coatum scarlet habebat.

Boreas, rendered a real green-eyed monster at the bright habiliments of the trumpeter, blows his last conch, and fades away below the white-crested waves of old ocean; hastening to reveal to his master and mistress the defect of the sea-court trumpeter, and calling on them for revenge.

Anon, revenge comes-mark how the poet rushes "in medias res”— alas, poor man! who shall contend with the gods-no doubt this was his subject his fact, the rising of the wind, cloud upon cloud, wave upon wave, each as white and as twisted as the sea-god's trumpetshell; or, in the poet's axiomical form,

Ventus surgebat et boatum overturnebat.

But now," semper ad eventum fastinat,"-cries, gurglings, horrible shrieks, only to be depictured by the authors of the Rawhead and Bloody-bones novelists, seem to rise from the next line.

Omnes drownderunt."

What awful latitude of thought-all gone-the Ptolemian triad and the victor of the sea-god in one gulf. Can it have been that the little boy who held-we beg pardon-who did not hold the gentlemen's horses at the theatre-alias Will Shakspeare-can it be that he was acquainted with this epic, when he depictured the agonized feelings of Lady Macduff?

What! all my pretty ones?

Did you say all ?-oh, hell-kite! all.

What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
At one fell swoop?

Was it for these sufferers that the Irishman raised subscriptions for the relief of a father, mother, and ten children all drowned in the Shannon.

But stay,

We're sharing gains before the battle's won.

Like an act of Parliament, our poet put in his saving clause: and whilst we see them in our mind's eye

All bobbing, bib, bib, bobbing,

And all bobbing amid the bubbling waves,

in comes the saving clause, giving as much comfort by its exception of "qui swimaway non potuerunt," as when one who does not want to fight is told by his opponent, "he lies"-the man thinks of gooseshooting at twelve paces-"under a mistake," says the saving clause; and the man shakes hands with himself out of pure delight.

It has of late been fashionable among our national legislators to frame their acts of parliament on the untidy method, so as to require the supplementary aid of "An act to amend an act to repeal an act to enforce an act to explain an act for the sweeping of chimneys." Exceptions were the fashion with the author of the scholastic epic. He had already excepted from his awful dénouement one class, the swimmers. Now came an individual-the opponent of the sea-god, who, when well ducked for his impudence, the tail of a pig as curly as his own trumpet saved from the deep profound. Hear the poet.

Omnes drownderunt qui swimaway non potuerunt,
Excipe Tom Periwig, qui clung to the tail of a dead pig.

But who was this Tom Periwig, by whom we are enabled, thanks to Mr. Truefit, to assign a date to this poem-this man, who, unlike Absalom, was saved by his wig?

The following extract, from the Bondinian Chronicle, settles the point:

"Anno Periwiggiorum tertio vixit quidam Thomas, trumpeterusnon Thomæ Citharistæ filius-sed vulgo dictus Periwigus."

The trumpeter Periwig, so carefully distinguished from Tom, the piper's son, was no other than our friend in the scarlet coat.

Qui lituo pugnas insignis obibat et hastà.

Whence, however, comes the pig? loved ancestor of Charles Lamb's delight. No son of thine could call thee pa-boiled: though had thy wife been thy" locum tenens" amid the waves, he might have spoken of water-sowchy. Doubtless our author borrowed his pig from Horace, following in whose wake,

Delphinum silvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.

With these remarks here closes the first chapter on Macaronic poetry, et id genus omne, or as Terence O'Halloran said, " and all them there januses."

"COME gentle Spring! ethereal mildness come!”
Oh! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason,
How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum ?
There's no such season.

The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name!
For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter!
And suffer from her blows as if they came
From Spring the Fighter.

Her praises then, let hardy poets sing

And be her tuneful laureates and upholders Who do not feel as if they had a Spring Pour'd down their shoulders!

Let others eulogize her floral shows,

From me they cannot win a single stanza,
I know her blooms are in full flow-and so's
The influenza!

Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale,
Her honey-blossoms that you hear the bees at,
Her pansies, daffodils, and primrose pale,
Are things I sneeze at!

Fair is the vernal quarter of the year!

And fair its early buddings and her blowings

But just suppose Consumption's seeds appear
With other sowings!

For me, I find, when eastern winds are high
A frigid, not a genial inspiration;

Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy
An inflammation.

Smitten by breezes from the land of plague,
To me all vernal luxuries are fables,
Oh! where's the Spring in a rheumatic leg,
Stiff as a table's?

I limp in agony,-I wheeze and cough ;

And quake with Ague, that great Agitator;
Nor dream, before July, of leaving off

My Respirator.

What wonder if in May itself I lack

A peg for laudatory verse to hang on ?—

Spring mild and gentle ?-yes, as Spring-heeled Jack
To those he sprang on!

In short, whatever panegyrics lie

In fulsome odes too many to be cited,
The tenderness of Spring is all my eye,
And that is blighted!

Down narrow streets and crooked lanes they div'd, Past many a gusty avenue, through which Came yellow fog, and smell of pitch,

From barge and boat, and dusky wharf deriv'd; With darker fumes, brought eddying by the draught, From loco-smoko-motive craft;

Mingling with scents of butter, cheese, and gammons,
Tea, coffee, sugar, pickles, rosin, wax,

Hides, tallow, Russia-matting, hemp and flax,
Salt-cod, red-herrings, sprats, and kipper'd salmons,
Nuts, oranges, and lemons,

Each pungent spice, and aromatic gum,

Gas, pepper, soaplees, brandy, gin, and rum ;
Alamode-beef and greens-the London soil-

Glue, coal, tobacco, turpentine, and oil,

Bark, asafoetida, squills, vitriol, hops,

In short, all whiffs, and sniffs, and puffs, and snuffs,
From metals, minerals, and dyewood stuffs,
Fruits, victual, drink, solidities, or slops-

In flasks, casks, bales, trucks, waggons, taverns, shops,
Boats, lighters, cellars, wharfs, and warehouse-tops,
That, as we walk upon the river's ridge,
Assault the nose-below the bridge.

A walk, however, as tradition tells,

That once a poor blind Tobit used to choose,
Because, incapable of other views,

He met with "such a sight of smells.”

But on, and on, and on,

In spite of all unsavoury shocks,

Progress the stout Sir Peter and Sir John,
Steadily steering ship-like for the docks-

And now they reach a place, the muse, unwilling,
Recals for female slang and vulgar doing,

The famous Gate of Billing

That does not lead to cooing

And now they pass that House that is so ugly
A Customer to people looking smuggl'y-
And now along that fatal Hill they pass
Where centuries ago an Oxford bled
And prov❜d-too late to save his life, alas !—
That he was "off his head."

At last before a lofty brick-built pile
Sir Peter stopped, and with mysterious smile
Tingled a bell that served to bring

The wire-drawn genius of the ring,
A species of commercial Samuel Weller-
To whom Sir Peter, tipping him a wink,
And something else to drink,

"Show us the cellar."

Obsequious bowed the man, and led the way
Down sundry flights of stairs, where windows small,
Dappled with mud, let in a dingy ray-

A dirty tax, if they were tax'd at all.
At length they came into a cellar damp,
With venerable cobwebs fringed around,
A cellar of that stamp

Which often harbours vintages renown'd,
The feudal Hock, or Burgundy the courtly,
With sherry, brown or golden,

Or port, so olden,

Bereft of body 'tis no longer portly

But old or otherwise-to be veracious

That cobwebb'd cellar, damp, and dim, and spacious,
Held nothing crusty—but crustaceous.

Prone, on the chilly floor,

Five splendid Turtles-such a five!
Natives of some West Indian shore

Were flapping all alive,

Late landed from the Jolly Planter's yawl-
A sight whereon the dignitaries fix'd

Their eager eyes, with extasy unmix'd,
Like fathers that behold their infants crawl,
Enjoying every little kick and sprawl.
Nay-far from fatherly the thoughts they bred,
Poor loggerheads from far Ascension ferried!
The alderman too plainly wish'd them dead
And Aldermanbury'd!

(To be continued.)

June.-VOL. LXV. NO. CCLVIII.

T