For this is an offence superiors

Will scarcely tolerate from inferiors.

In short, let such before they proffer
Unasked advice, (a dangerous offer

Inferring somewhat like a sense
Of loftier intelligence)

This maxim on their memory rivet,

If taken, they'll hate those who give it.
I have a thought,* as some-one says
In Reynolds's forgotten plays,
Which spite of th' incongruous mixture,
I'll slip in here, and make a fixture,
But let the sentiment, my Boss,+

Being somewhat odd, be inter nos.

Were monarchs now, as we are told
Nebuchadnezzar was of old,

Condemned to graze, like other beasts,
(A sorry contrast to their feasts)

By way of penance, to atone

For all the folly they have shewn,

Good Lord! how many a royal ass

Would in that case, be sent to grass!

"I have an idea!"-is the sapient remark of a certain drowsy

interlocutor, in one of Mr. Reynolds's defunct comedies,

+ Boss, is a Yankee phrase, signifying friend or companion.

I doubt however, herbs and roots

Would scarcely suit those kingly brutes

Whose more imperial love of slaughter,

Holding human blood like water!

Would prompt them, in their haste, to batten

Where lion, ounce, and tyger, fatten,

Instead of joining in the feast

Of any graminivorous beast.

Having thus digressed, to suit my humour,

Or rather, cut the itching tumour

Of speech, and giv'n the matter vent-
Like sailors when a cord is rent,

I'll patch my story's broken tether,
By splicing both the ends together.

I left Old Nicksa, ('tis a trick
To call so grave a King, Old Nick,
Since there's no doubt the name arose
From Nicksa, as Sir Walter* shews)
I left Old Nicksa gravely listening,
With open mouth, and optics glistening,

To Minos, as that learned roister

* "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft." For some curious particulars respecting "Old Nick," see "Boucher's Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words."

Opened each clients legal oyster,

(That is, his case) with laws own knife,

The harbinger of woe and strife!

Until the luckless monarch got

So puzzled by laws polyglot,

That he, although in most things wiser Than his grave Chancellor, and adviser, Was fain to prop this arm, and t'other, On Sophistry, and Law its brother.

"Tis strange-and here I must premise I'm going to soliloquize,

Or think aloud-an awkward practise
Contrived by playwrights, but the fact is
No other way the knaves have got,
To let the audience know the plot;
And therefore with great nonchalance,
They make some sapient wight advance
Towards the foot-lamps, and declare
His secrets to the open air;

Avowing, whilst he gives his reasons,
Intended murders, plots, and treasons,
The guilt of which success diminishes-
Until the play, as usual, finishes

By death in Tragedy-while marriage
Ends Comedy-a like miscarriage!

'Tis strange by what a slender thread
The wisest men are often led

By minds, whose intellectual tone

Is far inferior to their own;

Although they doubtless think, their will
Exerts its power of freedom still.

Strange too, the weaker intellect

Should in the stronger one, detect

Those little failings which we find,

Taint more or less the greatest mind,

And thence have pow'r to twist and bend
Their influence to a selfish end.

Most strange, that men whose narrow souls
With sight defective as a mole's,

Can scarce see through the mental night
Which shrouds them, even a little light,

Should yet with such adroitness find

The weakness of a nobler mind.*

"The Second-rate Man."- "He has a quick and practised eye for the detection of faults, and, falling short of excellence himself, knows not any pleasure so exquisite and unmixed, as that of exposing the errors of great minds, Ambition being disappointed, jealousy became his master passion; from the torments of which he derives all his pain, and from its gratification all his pleasure."

The Author of "Sydenham."

Has Nature, when with niggard hand,

The intellect of such she spanned,

To compensate the witless zany,
Given to one sense the force of many,

By binding in her mental tether

The puny shoots of wit together;

Until the aggregate of all

Makes up a brain, however small,

Lest from a head so bossed and hollow

A mental bankruptcy should follow?
Perhaps so-but the mind's a sea

Of such profundity, that we

Can only with our line explore

The creeks and shallows near the shore;

Since none can penetrate, I wis,

Th' "unbottomed infinite abyss,"
And with a bright "Ithuriel eye,"
Detect the hidden mystery.

"Tis true that many sages, don
Their metaphysic glasses on,

(Forgetting that self-love will varnish

The lens, and thus its clearness tarnish)

*This beautiful epithet I have borrowed from a charming volume of Poetry by Alaric A, Watts.