Four other Oysters followed them, And thick and fast they came at last, The Walrus and the Carpenter And all the little Oysters stood "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, Are very good indeed Now if you're ready, Oysters dear, "But not on us!" the Oysters cried, "After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said. Do you admire the view? "It was so kind of you to come! I wish you were not quite so deaf- "O Oysters," said the Carpenter, -Through the Looking-Glass DODSLEY, ROBERT, an English bookseller, born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, 1703; died at Durham, September 25, 1764. His father was a schoolmaster and apprenticed the boy to a Nottingham stocking weaver. The work assigned him was distasteful, and he ran away and took service as a footman in the family of the Hon. Mrs. Lowther. In 1732 he put forth a little volume of poems entitled The Muse in Livery, and soon after wrote The Toy Shop, a dramatic piece which was acted at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1735. Aided by Pope and others, he opened a bookseller's shop in London, an enterprise which was very successful, and he became the leading publisher of his day, and was on intimate terms with the principal British authors. He established several periodicals, including The Museum, The World and The Perceptor, and in 1758 started The Annual Register, of which Edmund Burke was first editor, and which has been published ever since. Among the contributors to his periodicals were Horace Walpole, Akenside, Soame Jenyns, Lord Lyttleton, and Lord Chesterfield. One of his principal literary enterprises was the Select Collection of Old English Plays (12 vols., 12mo, 1744), which has been several times republished, with considerable additions; the latest edition (1876) being edited by W. C. Hazlitt, and consisting of fifteen volumes. In 1738 he gave Samuel Johnson ten guineas for the manuscript of London, and was afterward the leader of an association of booksellers that furnished Johnson with funds for the preparation of his English Dictionary. In 1737 he produced a drama The King and the Miller of Mansfield, which was well received; Cleone, a tragedy, was received with even greater enthusiasm than his earlier efforts. It had a long run at Covent Garden. Two thousand copies of it were sold on the day of publication, and it passed through three editions within a year. Dodsley is now chiefly remembered, aside from his fame as a publisher, through his Select Collection of Old Plays. He wrote several dramas and other works, which were collected in 1745 under the title of Miscellanies, or Trifles in Prose and Verse. His Poems are included in Chalmers's "Collection of British Poets." THE PARTING KISS. One kind wish before we part, Yet, weep not so, my love, Let me kiss that falling tear; All my soul and all my heart, And every wish shall pant for you; One kind kiss, then, ere we part, VOL. VIII.-19 DOMETT, ALFRED, an English poet, born at Camberwell Grove, Surrey, May 20, 1811; died in 1887. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1829, but left without taking a degree. He travelled in America for a couple of years, returning to England in 1836, and subsequently resided in Italy and Switzerland. In 1841 he was called to the bar at Middle Temple. In 1842 he went to New Zealand, where he had purchased a large tract of land, being one of the earliest emigrants to those islands, where he resided until 1871; holding during those years several important civil positions. He is understood to be the hero of Robert Browning's poem Waring. He put forth several volumes of poems; the earliest appearing in 1832; then appeared Venice (1839). After his return from New Zealand he published Ranolf and Amohia (1872), a poem descriptive of the scenery of New Zealand and its aboriginal inhabitants. In 1877 he made a collection of his poems under the title of Flotsam and Jetsam, Rhymes Old and New. His Christmas Hymn, the most admired of all his poems, appeared originally in Blackwood's Magazine in 1837 A CHRISTMAS HYMN. I. It was the calm and silent night! Seven hundred years and fifty-three |