"Lorenzo ?—I should like, of earthly things,

To see him hanging forty cubits high;
Doesn't he write like Captain Rocks and Swings?
Nay, in this very letter bid you try
To make yourself particular, and tie
A tail on-a prodigious tail!—Oh, daughter!
And don't he ask you down his area-fie!
And recommend to cut your being shorter,

With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?"

Alas! to think how readers thus may vary

A writer's sense!-What mortal would have thought Lorenzo's hint about Professors Airy

And Pond to such a likeness could be brought! Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught To make a comet of poor Ellen's moon,

Could furnish forth an image so distraught, As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon, Tail'd-like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!

And yet, whate'er absurdity the brains

May hatch, it ne'er wants wet-nurses to suckle it:
Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains

To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it;
No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it

To jingle bell-like on his empty head,

No mental mud-but some will knead and knuckle it, And fancy they are making fancy-bread;—

No ass has written, but some ass has read.

No dolts could lead if others did not follow 'em,
No Hahnemann could give decillionth drops,

If any man could not be got to swallow 'em ;
But folly never comes to such full stops.
As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps
Of all Lorenzo's meanings, heads and tails,

The father seized upon her malaprops—
"My girl down areas of a night! 'Ods nails!
I'll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!

"I will!-as sure as I was christen'd John!

A girl-well born-and bred,-and school'd at DittonAccomplish'd-handsome-with a tail stuck on!

And chuck'd-Zounds!-chuck'd in horseponds like a kitten; I wish I had been by when that was written !"— And doubling to a fist each ample hand,

The empty air he boxed with, à-la-Bittón,
As if in training for a fight, long plann'd,
With Nobody-for love-at No Man's Land.

"I'll pond-I'll tail him!"-In a voice of thunder
He recommenced his fury and his fuss,
Loud, open-mouth'd, and wedded to his blunder,

Like one of those great guns that end in buss. "I'll teach him to write ponds and tails to us!" But while so menacing this-that-and-t'others,

His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus: "Men are not women-fathers can't be mothers,— Females are females"-and a few such others.

So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly,
She hustled him outside the chamber-door,
Looking, it must be owned, a little silly;

And then she did as the Carinthian boor
Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that's poor:
Id est, she shut him in the outer space,
With just as much apology-no more—
As Boreas would present in such a case,

For slamming the street door right in your face.

And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept,
What passed in that important tête-à-tête

"Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except

Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate-
So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late,

In front of Mrs. Snelling's sugar'd snacks,
In such a very waspish stinging state-
But now at the Old Dragon, stretched on racks,
Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;

Because that new fast four-inside-the Comet,
Instead of keeping its appointed time,
Had deviated some few minutes from it,
A thing with all astronomers a crime,
And he had studied in that lore sublime;
Nor did his heat get any less or shorter

For pouring upon passion's unslaked lime
A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water,
Mix'd stiff as starch by the Old Dragon's daughter.

At length, "Fair Ellen" sounding with a flourish,
The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart;
Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish
The hasty spirit in Lorenzo's heart,

And soon upon the roof he "topped his part,"
Which never had a more impatient man on,

Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start Like lightning greased, or, as at Ballyshannon Sublimed, "greased lightning shot out of a cannon !"

For, ever since the letter left his hand,

His mind had been in vacillating motion,
Dodge-dodging like a fluster'd crab on land,
That cannot ask its way, and has no notion
If right or left leads to the German Ocean—
Hatred and Love by turns enjoy'd monopolies,

Till, like a Doctor following his own potion,
Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis,
He went and booked himself for our metropolis.

66

Oh, for a horse," or rather four,-" with wings!"
For so he put the wish into the plural-

No relish he retained for country things,
He could not join felicity with rural,

His thoughts were all with London and the mural,
Where architects-not paupers-heap and pile stones;
Or with the horses' muscles, called the crural,
How fast they could macadamize the milestones
Which pass'd as tediously as gall or bile stones.

Nor cared he more about the promised crops,
If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid,
For flies in turnips, or a blight in hops,
Or how the barley prosper'd or decay'd;
In short, no items of the farming trade,

"LORD, JOHN, HERE'S A BURROW!"

Peas, beans, tares, 'taters, could his mind beguile;
Nor did he answer to the servant maid,

That always asked at every other mile,

"Where do we change, Sir?" with her sweetest smile.

"KING JOHN'-oh yes-I recollect King John! 'My Lord, they say five moons'-five moons!-well done! I wonder Ellen was content with one!

"Five moons-all full !-and all at once in heav'n!
She should have lived in that prolific reign!"
Here he arrived in front of number seven,

Th' abode of all his joy and all his pain;
A sudden tremor shot through every vein,
He wish'd he'd come up by the heavy waggon,
And felt an impulse to turn back again,
Oh, that he ne'er had quitted the Old Dragon!
Then came a sort of longing for a flagon.

His tongue and palate seem'd so parch'd with drouth,-
The very knocker fill'd his soul with dread,

As if it had a living lion's mouth,

With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red, In which he had engaged to put his head. The bell-pull turn'd his courage into vapour,

As though 't would cause a shower-bath to shed
Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper-
He look'd askance, and did not like the scraper.

“What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce
A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster,
Instead of putting out its wick at once;

She's gone-it's very evident I've lost her,

And to the wanton wind I should have toss'd herPish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease,

To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster,
Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese,
Or make a honey-moon, if so she please.

"Yes-here I leave her," and as thus he spoke, He plied the knocker with such needless force, It almost split the panel of sound oak;

And then he went as wildly through a course Of ringing, till he made aprubt divorce Between the bell and its dumbfounded handle, Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse, And thrust into his face her blown-out candle, To recognise the author of such scandal.