Barbs! barbs! alas! how swift you flew,
Her neat post-wagon trotting in!
Ye bore Matilda from my view;
Forlorn I languished at the U-

niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen.

This faded form! this pallid hue!
This blood my veins is clotting in!
My years are many-they were few
When first I entered at the U-

niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen.

There first for thee my passion grew,
Sweet, sweet Matilda Pottingen!
Thou wast the daughter of my tu-
tor, law-professor at the U-

niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen

Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu,
That kings and priests are plotting in;
Here doomed to starve on water gru-
el, never shall I see the U-

niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen.

[During the last stanza he dashes his head repeatedly against the walls of his prison, and finally so hard as to produce a visible contusion. He then throws himself on the floor in an agony. The curtain drops, the music still continuing to play till it is wholly fallen.] GEORGE CANNING.

THE LITTLE BROWN MAN.

A LITTLE man we've here,
All in a suit of brown,
Upon town;
He's as brisk as bottled beer,
And, without a shilling rent,

Lives content:

"For d'ye see," says he, "my plan-
D'ye see," says he, "my plan-

My plan, d'ye see, 's to-laugh at that!” Sing merrily, sing merrily, the Little Brown

Man.

HYPOCHONDRIACUS.

By myself walking,
To myself talking,
When as I ruminate
On my untoward fate,
Scarcely seem I
Alone sufficiently,
Black thoughts continually
Crowding my privacy;
They come unbidden,
Like foes at a wedding,
Thrusting their faces
In better guests' places,
Peevish and malcontent,
Clownish, impertinent,
Dashing the merriment:
So, in like fashions,
Dim cogitations
Follow and haunt me,
Striving to daunt me,
In my heart festering,
In my ears whispering-

"Thy friends are treacherous,

Thy foes are dangerous,
Thy dreams ominous."

Fierce Anthropophagi,
Spectres, Diaboli-

What scared St. Anthony-
Hobgoblins, Lemures,
Dreams of Antipodes!
Night-riding Incubi
Troubling the fantasy,
All dire illusions
Causing confusions:
Figments heretical,

Scruples fantastical,
Doubts diabolical!
Abaddon vexeth me;
Mahu perplexeth me;
Lucifer teareth me-

Jesu! Maria! liberate nos ab his diris 'entationibus Inimici.

CHARLES LAMB.

A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO.

MAY the Babylonish curse

Strait confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see

In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind

(Still the phrase is wide or scant),
To take leave of thee, great plant!
Or in any terms relate

Half my love, or half my hate;
For I hate, yet love, thee so,
That, whichever thing I shew,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrained hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More for a mistress than a weed.

Sooty retainer to the vine!
Bacchus's black servant, negro fine!
Sorcerer! that mak'st us dote upon
Thy begrimed complexion,
And, for thy pernicious sake,
More and greater oaths to break
Than reclaimed lovers take

'Gainst women! Thou thy siege dost lay

Much, too, in the female way,

While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath Faster than kisses, or than death.

Thou in such a cloud dost bind us
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;
While each man, through thy height'ning

steam,

Does like a smoking Etna seem;

And all about us does express

(Fancy and wit in richest dress) A Sicilian fruitfulness.

Thou through such a mist dost show us
That our best friends do not know us,
And, for those allowed features
Due to reasonable creatures,
Liken'st us to fell chimeras,

Monsters that who see us, fear us;
Worse than Cerberus or Geryon,
Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion.

Bacchus we know, and we allow

His tipsy rites. But what art thou,
That but by reflex can'st shew
What his deity can do-
As the false Egyptian spell
Aped the true Hebrew miracle?
Some few vapors thou may'st raise,
The weak brain may serve to amaze;
But to the reins and nobler heart
Can'st nor life nor heat impart.

Brother of Bacchus, later born!
The old world was sure forlorn,
Wanting thee, that aidest more
The god's victories than, before,
All his panthers, and the brawls
Of his piping Bacchanals.
These, as stale, we disallow,

Or judge of thee meant: only thou
His true Indian conquest art;
And, for ivy round his dart,
The reformed god now weaves
A finer thyrsus of thy leaves.

Scent to match thy rich perfumo Chemic art did ne'er presume— Through her quaint alembic strain, None so sov'reign to the brain. Nature, that did in thee excel, Framed again no second smell. Roses, violets, but toys For the smaller sort of boys, Or for greener damsels meant; Thou art the only manly scent.

Stinking'st of the stinking kind! Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind! Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison! Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite

Nay, rather,

Plant divine, of rarest virtue!

Blisters on the tongue would hurt you!
'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee;
None e'er prospered who defamed thee;
Irony all, and feigned abuse,
Such as perplext lovers use
At a need, when, in despair

To paint forth their fairest fair,

Or in part but to express

That exceeding comeliness

Which their fancies doth so strike
They borrow language of dislike;
And, instead of dearest Miss,
Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss,
And those forms of old admiring,
Call her Cockatrice and Siren,
Basilisk, and all that's evil,
Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil,
Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor,
Monkey, Ape, and twenty more-
Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe-
Not that she is truly so,
But no other way they know
A contentment to express
Borders so upon excess
That they do not rightly wot
Whether it be from pain or not.

Or, as men, constrained to part
With what's nearest to their heart,
While their sorrow's at the height
Lose discrimination quite,
And their hasty wrath let fall,
To appease their frantic gall,
On the darling thing, whatever,
Whence they feel it death to sever,
Though it be, as they, perforce,
Guiltless of the sad divorce.

427

For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee.

For thy sake, Tobacco, I

Would do anything but die,
And but seek to extend my days
Long enough to sing thy praise.
But, as she, who once hath been
A king's consort, is a queen
Ever after, nor will bate
Any tittle of her state
Though a widow, or divorced-
So I, from thy converse forced,
The old name and style retain,
A right Catherine of Spain:
And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys
Of the blest Tobacco Boys;
Where though I, by sour physician,
Am debarred the full fruition
Of thy favors, I may catch
Some collateral sweets, and snatch