Prevalent Poetry.
A Temperance Sermon.
Anticipatory Dirge on Professor Buckland, the Geologist.
BY BISHOP SHUTTLEWORTH.
When Professor Buckland’s grave was being dug in Islip churchyard, in August 1856, the men came unexpectedly upon the solid limestone rock, whichthey were obliged to blast with gunpowder. The coincidence of this fact with some of the verses in the above anticipatory dirge is somewhat remarkable.
The following is by Jacob F. Henrici, and appeared originally inScribner’ s Magazinefor November 1879:
A Microscopic Serenade.
The epitaph following was written by the learned and witty Dr. Charles Smith, author of the histories of Cork and Waterford. It was read at a meeting of the Dublin Medico-Philosophical Society on July 1, 1756, and is a very curious specimen of the “terminology of chemistry:”
“Boyle Godfrey, Chymist and Doctor of Medicine.
EPITAPHIUM CHEMICUM.
To Clara Morchella Deliciosa.
(A MYCOLOGICAL SERENADE.)
By Mr. A. Stephen Wilson, North Kinmundy, Aberdeenshire, andread at a meeting of the Cryptogamic Society at Glasgow in 1880.
By Mr. A. Stephen Wilson, North Kinmundy, Aberdeenshire, andread at a meeting of the Cryptogamic Society at Glasgow in 1880.
To the Pliocene Skull.
(A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS.)
The following verses are from “Notes and Queries,” and evidently refer to a case of “breach of promise”:
Knox Ward, King-at-Arms, disarmed at Law.
Lament of an Unfortunate Druggist,
A Member of the Pharmaceutical Society, whose matrimonialspeculations have been disappointed.
Ode to “Davies’ Analytical”
Man and the Ascidian.
A MORALITY IN THE QUEEN ANNE MANNER.
A Geological Madrigal.
The Husband’s Complaint.
“Will she thy linen wash and hosen darn?”—Gay.
Homœopathic Soup.
A Billet-Doux.
BY A COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER, CHIDDINGLY, SUSSEX.
Cumulative verse—in which one newspaper gives a few lines, and other papers follow it up—like that which follows, is very common in American newspapers, which, however profound or dense, invariably have a corner for this kind of thing. It has been said that the reason why no purely comicpaper, likePunchorFun, succeeds in the United States, is because all their papers have a “funny” department.
The Arab and his Donkey.
An Ohio poet thus sings of the beginning of man:
Evolution.
The following lines are from a book written by M. Halpine, under the sobriquet of “Private Miles O’Reilly,” during the Civil War in the United States. They have some merit apart from their peculiar versification, and the idea of comparing the “march past” of veteran troops in war time with the parade of the old gladiators is a happy one.
Morituri te Salutant.
“About the year 1775 there was a performer named Cervetti in the orchestra of Drury Lane Theatre, to whom, the gods had given the appropriate name of Nosey, from his enormous staysail, that helped to carry him before the wind. ‘Nosey!’ shouted from the galleries, was the signal, or word of command, for the fiddlers to strike up. This man was originally an Italian merchant of good repute; but failing in business, he came over to England, and adopted music for a profession. He had a notable knack of loud yawning, with which he sometimes unluckily filled up Garrick’s expressive pauses, to the infinite annoyance of Garrick and the laughter of the audience. In the summer of 1777 he played at Vauxhall, at the age of ninety-eight.” Upon such another nose was the following lines written:
The Roman Nose.
Mrs. Thrale, on her thirty-fifth birthday, remarked to Dr. Johnson, that no one would send her verses now that she had attained that age, upon which the Doctor, without the least hesitation, recited the following lines:
Thirty-Five.
Moore, in his “Life of Sheridan,” says that he (Sheridan) “had a sort of hereditary fancy for difficult trifling in poetry; particularly to that sort which consists in rhyming to the same word through a long string of couplets, till every rhyme that the language supplies for it is exhausted,” a task which must have required great patience and perseverance. Moore quotes some dozen lines entitled “To Anne,” wherein a lady is made to bewail the loss of her trunk, and she thus rhymes her lamentations:
From another of these trifles of Sheridan, Moore gives the following extracts:
John Skelton, a poet of the fifteenth century, in great repute as a wit and satirist, was inordinately fond of writing in lines of three or four syllables,and also of iteration of rhyme. This perhaps was the cause of his writing much that was mere doggerel, as this style scarcely admits of the conveyance of serious sentiment. Occasionally, however, his miniature lines are interesting, as in this address to Mrs. Margaret Hussey:
The following national pasquinade we find in Egerton Brydges’ “Censura Literaria Restituta,” written in commemoration of the failure of Spain by her Invincible Armada to invade Britain. The iteration of metre is all that approaches in it to the style of Skelton, of whose verse it is an imitation:
Epitaph on Dr. William Maginn.
The Musical Ass.
The above is a translation from the “Fabulas Litterarias” of Tomaso de Yriarte (1750-1790). Yriarte conceived the idea of making moral truths the themes for fables in the style of Æsop, and these he composed in every variety of verse which seemed at all suitable. Even when the leading idea presents no remarkable incident, Yriarte’s fables please by their simplicity.
Boxiana.
The Ruling Power.
Nahum Fay on the Loss of his Wife.
The Radenovitch.
A SONG OF A NEW DANCE.
Footman Joe.
To a Lady
WHO ASKED FOR A POEM OF NINETY LINES.
We give the following curious old ballad a place here, not only on account of the iteration of rhyme, but also as the original of the macaronic verses on p. 95:
The Wig and the Hat.