Presuming on his own deserts,
On all alike his tongue exerts:
His noisy jokes at random throws,
And pertly spatters friends and foes.
In wit and war the bully race
Contribute to their own disgrace:
Too late the forward youth shall find
That jokes are sometimes paid in kind;
Or if they canker in the breast,
He makes a foe, who makes a jest.
A village Cur, of snappish race,
The pertest puppy of the place,
Imagined that his treble throat
Was blest with Music's sweetest note;
In the mid road he basking lay,
The yelping nuisance of the way;
For not a creature pass'd along
But had a sample of his song.
Soon as the trotting Steed he hears,
He starts, he cocks his dapper ears;
Away he scours, assaults his hoof;
Now near him snarls, now barks aloof;
With shrill impertinence attends,
Nor leaves him till the village ends.
It chanced, upon his evil day,
A Pad came pacing down the way;
The Cur, with never-ceasing tongue,
Upon the passing traveller sprung.
The Horse, from scorn provoked to ire,
Flung backward; rolling in the mire,
The Puppy howl'd, and bleeding lay;
The Pad in peace pursued his way.

A Shepherd's Dog, who saw the deed,
Detesting the vexatious breed,

Bespoke him thus: "When coxcombs prate,
They kindle wrath, contempt, or hate;
Thy teazing tongue had judgment tied,
Thou hadst not like a puppy died." ""1

(1) The malice which often disgraces irony, is never better detected and chastised, than by a blow from the same weapon, and this remark applies to many talented but ill-bred men, who reckless where they plant the thorn, whilst they pursue for themselves the garland, sometimes by an unlucky "contretemps," exchange the two, to their own cost. Thus a jest is frequently paid in kind, as in the case of the poet, Madera, who having 'calumniated a noble lady, called Fontana, was called to account for his impropriety, by Pope Sextus V. He declared he had no reason for the slander, but that'Putana' rhymed to 'Fontana,' upon which the witty Pontiff, in the same humour, condemned him to the galleys, "merely," said he," because 'Galera,' is a good rhyme to Madera."" Upon another occasion, a young man having picked his friend's pocket in joke, in order to witness his distress when requiring his money, found the tables most unpleasantly turned upon himself, for on putting his hand into his own pocket, to refund the money, he discovered that a real thief had walked off with it, in no joke, and left him to pay the cost in sad earnest. So true is it, that those who

DEATH, on a solemn night of state,
In all his pomp of terror sate:

The' attendants of his gloomy reign,

Diseases dire, a ghastly train—

Crowd the vast court! With hollow tone

A voice thus thunder'd from the throne:

"This night our minister we name; Let every servant speak his claim;

Merit shall bear this ebon wand.".

All, at the word, stretch'd forth their hand.
Fever, with burning heat possess❜d,
Advanced, and for the wand address'd:1
"I to the weekly bills appeal,

Let those express my fervent zeal;
On every slight occasion near,

With violence I persevere."

Next Gout appears with limping pace,
Pleads how he shifts from place to place;
From head to foot how swift he flies,
And every joint and sinew plies;
Still working when he seems suppress'd,
A most tenacious stubborn guest.2
A haggard Spectre from the crew
Crawls forth, and thus asserts his due:
""Tis I who taint the sweetest joy,
And in the shape of Love destroy:
My shanks, sunk eyes, and noseless face,
Prove my pretension to the place."
Stone urg'd his ever-growing force;
And next, Consumption's meagre corse,
With feeble voice, that scarce was heard,
Broke with short coughs, his suit preferr❜d:
"Let none object my lingering way,
I gain, like Fabius, by delay;

Fatigue and weaken every foe

By long attack, secure, though slow." 3

(1) Fever, the offspring of poverty and dirt, nursed by parochial neglect, pampered by intoxication, and at last buried at the public charge!

(2) Gout, the son of sloth and sensuality, half-brother to fever, and descended in many cases from the "haggard spectre'" hereinafter named.

(3) This living death is seen, in its early stages, in manufacturing towns, where young bones and sinews, are dissolved into gold, with which the employers

Plague represents his rapid power,
Who thinn'd a nation in an hour.1

All spoke their claim, and hoped the wand.—
Now expectation hush'd the band,

When thus the Monarch from the throne:
"Merit was ever modest known.

What, no Physician speak his right!
None here! but fees their toils requite.2
Let then Intemperance take the wand,
Who fills with gold their zealous hand.
You, Fever, Gout, and all the rest,
(Whom wary men, as foes, detest)
Forego your claim; no more pretend;
Intemperance is esteem'd a friend.
He shares their mirth, their social joys,
And as a courted guest destroys:

The charge on him must justly fall,

Who finds employment for you all."3

purchase positions in parliament, where they prate about educating the ignorant, the rights of the poor, and enunciate principles of peace and charity!-Vide Minutes of the Factory System before the House of Commons, passim.

(1) Aided by fear, of course, for when the Plague promised the dervise, to slay only 30,000, and double that number fell, the disease exonerated itself from blame fairly, by declaring "fear killed the rest."

(2) Byron's epigram upon his doctor, applies to several cases :

"Youth, vigour, and relenting Jove

To keep my lamp in, vainly strove,
For Farinelli blew so stout

He beat all three, and blew it out!"

(3) This admirable but melancholy picture of the "thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to," is one of the finest efforts of our poet's muse, and the deduction is forcible and clear. If death stands behind the chair which health fills, and picks out guest after guest, at the banquet of life, he does so primarily in the garb of intemperance which, like Othello's murder, "slays where it doth love!" The man who, in youth, never did "add hot and rebellious liquors to his blood," has the surest guarantee that in age, "his pulse shall beat equal time, and keep a healthful music." To prove how human life may protract its span, we have only to review the self-denial and rigid rule of Cornaro, the early hours