of songs, the reverie of Divine and Moral, such as “can only be sung when the punch-bowl has done its work and the wild wit is set free*.* To return to my boarding-house, which, with all its chairs, had none appropriated to a Professor of Moral Philosophy. In the absence of such a monitor, nature, fortunately for myself, had gifted me with a taste for reading, which the languor of ill-health, inclining me to sedentary habits, helped materially to encourage. Whatever books, good, bad, or indifferent, happened to come within my reach, were perused with the greatest avidity, and however indiscriminate the course, the balance of the impressions thence derived was decidedly in favour of the allegorical lady, so wisely preferred by Hercules when he had to make his election between Virtue and Vice. Of the material that ministered to this appetite, I shall always regret that I did not secure, as a literary curiosity-a collection of halfpenny Ballads, the property of a Grocer's apprentice, and which contained, amongst other matters, a new version of Chevy Chase, wherein the victory was transferred to the Scots. In the mean time, this bookishness acquired for me a sort of reputation for scholarship amongst my comrades, and in consequence my pen was sometimes called into requisition, in divers and sometimes delicate cases. Thus for one party, whom the Gods had not made poetical, I composed a love-letter in verse; for another, whose education had been neglected, I carried on a correspondence with reference to a tobacco manufactory in which he was a sleeping partner; whilst, on a graver occasion, the hand now peacefully setting down these reminiscences, was employed in penning a most horrible peremptory invitation to pistols and twelve paces, till one was nicked. The facts were briefly these. A spicy-tempered captain of Artillery, in a dispute with a superior officer, had rashly cashiered himself by either throwing up or tearing up his commission. In this dilemma he arrived at Dundee, to assume a post in the Customs, which had been procured for him by the interest of his friends. To his infinite indignation, however, he found that instead of a lucrative surveyorship, he had been appointed a simple tide-waiter! and magnificent was the rage with which he tore, trampled, and danced on the little official paper book wherein he had been set to tick off, bale by bale, a cargo of "infernal hemp." Unluckily, on the very day of this revelation, a forgery was perpetrated on the local Bank, and those sapient Dogberries, the town officers, saw fit to take up our persecuted ex-captain, on the simple ground that he was the last stranger who had entered the town. Rendered almost frantic by this second insult, nothing would serve him in his paroxysm but calling somebody out, and he pitched at once on the cashier of the defrauded Bank. As the state of his nerves would not permit him to write, he entreated me earnestly to draw up a defiance, which I performed, at the expense of an agony of suppressed laughter, merely to imagine the effect of such a missive on the man of business-a respectable powdered, bald, pudgy, pacific little body, with no more idea of “going out" than a cow in a field of clover. I forget the precise result-but certainly there was no duel A. Cunningham, ODE TO PERRY, THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN. "In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it-soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum,-fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity-slow and retentive in cases of deliberation-never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the marknever splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service-all things as it were with all men,-ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or Mahometan,-heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew,in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn." PERRY'S CHARACTERISTICS OF A Settler. I. O! PATENT, Pen-inventing Perrian Perry! Friend of the Goose and Gander, That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander, For which they chant thy praise all Britain through, II. Friend to all Author-kind Whether of Poet or of Proser,— Thou art composer unto the composer Of pens,-yea, patent vehicles for Mind To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive Perrygrinations through the realms of Thought; III. Modern Improvements in their course we feel; To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance. To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts, IV. In times bygone, when each man cut his quill What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade What Pens were sliced, hew'd, hack'd, and haggled out, Some capable of ladye-billets neat, Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk, And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark, Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans! V. To try in any common inkstands, then, Was like a dip into a lucky box: You drew, and got one very curly, And split like endive in some hurly-burly; Turn'd upwards, like a rabbit's tail; VI. Not so thy Perryan Pens! True to their M's and N's, They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split, Huge fullstop blots, Where even semicolons were unfit. They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge In sable sludge Nay, bought at proper "Patent Perryan" shops, The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile, VII. Pleasant they are to feel! So firm! so flexible! composed of steel So finely temper'd-fit for tenderest Miss Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death- There is so little of the goose about 'em, VIII. Ah! who can paint that first great awful night, When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret, IX. Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt: He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat, Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt That went a Beaver in, comes out a Rat! Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright, Upon Rienzi's night, Gnaw'd up one long kid glove, and all her bag, Quite to a rag. Knowles has confess'd he trembled as for life, Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail More oranges with his one fevered mouth, Yea, Buckstone, changing colour like a mullet, Refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice, From his best friend, an ice, Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet. X. Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints, During their trial? 'Tis past denial. And does not Pocock, feeling, like a peacock, All eyes upon him turn to very meacock? And does not Planché, tremulous and blank, Meanwhile his personages tread the boards, Seem goaded by sharp swords, And call'd upon himself to "walk the plank ?" Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot, XI. Thus pending does not Mathews, at sad shift About his arms, and Adam's apples A spirit-bottle-empty of "the cratur"? XII. To clench the fact, Myself, once guilty, of one small rash act, Quite in a hurry, |