They stick with pins my bleeding seat,
And bid me show my secret teat."

"To hear you prate would vex a saint;
Who hath most reason of complaint?"
Replies a Cat; "Let's come to proof.
Had we ne'er starved beneath your roof,
We had, like others of our race,

In credit lived as beasts of chase.
"Tis infamy to serve a hag;

Cats are thought imps, her broom a nag!
And boys against our lives combine,
Because, 'tis said, your Cats have nine." 1

(1) Expediency, that plausible cheat for glossing error, frequently induces men to select their acquaintance for some temporary end, but as the world apes the virtue it has not," it immediately reckons a man's mere acquaintance to be his friend, affirming that the latter only would be freely associated with. Hence it arises that the connexion which we chose for our benefit, insincerely, becomes the source of our condemnation ultimately, since when the mere associate turns out a villain, we find it useless to repudiate his acquaintance, for a bad companion, when detected, like Samson in his fall, involves friends and foes in one common ruin.

ALL upstarts, insolent in place,
Remind us of their vulgar race.

As in the sunshine of the morn
A Butterfly, but newly born,
Sate proudly perking on a rose,
With pert conceit his bosom glows;
His wings, all glorious to behold,
Bedropt with azure, jet, and gold,

Wide he displays; the spangled dew
Reflects his eyes and various hue,

His now-forgotten friend, a Snail,
Beneath his house, with slimy trail
Crawls o'er the grass, whom when he spies,
In wrath he to the gardener cries,
"What means yon peasant's daily toil,
From choking weeds to rid the soil?
Why wake you to the morning's care?
Why with new arts correct the year?
Why grows the peach with crimson hue
And why the plum's inviting blue?
Were they to feast his taste design'd,
That vermin of voracious kind?
Crush then the slow, the pilfering race,
So purge thy garden from disgrace."

"What arrogance!" the Snail replied,
"How insolent is upstart pride!
Hadst thou not thus, with insult vain,
Provoked my patience to complain,
I had conceal'd thy meaner birth,
Nor traced thee to the scum of earth:
For scarce nine suns have waked the hours,
To swell the fruit, and paint the flowers,
Since I thy humbler life survey'd,
In base, in sordid guise array'd.

A hideous insect, vile, unclean,

You dragged a slow and noisome train,
And from your spider-bowels drew
Foul film, and spun the dirty clue.
I own my humble life, good friend;
Snail was I born, and Snail shall end.

And, what's a Butterfly? at best,
He's but a caterpillar drest;

And all thy race, a numerous seed,
Shall prove of caterpillar breed." 1

(1) The moral here, as usual placed at the commencement, directs our scorn to the vulgar pride and tyranny of upstart pretenders, in whom, like the ass in the lion's skin, the meanness of their original nature will peep out, in spite of all adventitious ornament of rank and fortune. Especially also is this manifested by such coxcombs against their former associates, upon whom they drop the dirt off their footsteps, as they ascend the ladder of ambition. The man of really high birth is characterised by condescension, affability, and regard for his inferiors, for he, like the oak, can stoop and regain his former attitude; but arrogance, cruelty, and injustice, stamp the parvenu, who, like the mushroom, of only a few hours' origin, does not possess the graceful elasticity of rank, and therefore cannot bend, but snaps asunder the instant he swerves out of the perpendicular line of starched pride and vulgar assumption. Vide the description of pride given by Ulysses. (Shakspear: Troilus and Cressida, Act ii. scene 3.)

THE husband thus reproved his wife:
"Who deals in slander, lives in strife.
Art thou the herald of disgrace,
Denouncing war to all thy race?
Can nothing quell thy thunder's rage,
Which spares nor friend, nor sex, nor age?
That vixen tongue of your's, my dear,

Alarms our neighbours far and near.