Soon, at the magistrate's command,
Á troop from the gens-d'armes house
Of twenty men rode sword in hand,
To storm the bloody farm's-house.
As they were cantering toward the place,
Comes Jacquez to the swineyard,
But started when a great round face
Cried, Rascal, hold thy whinyard.

'Twas Boniface, as mad's King Lear,
Playing antics in the piggery:-
"And what the devil brought you here,
You mountain of a friar, eh?"

Ah, once how jolly, now how wan,
And blubber'd with the vapours,
That frantic Capuchin began

To cut fantastic capers

Crying, Help, hollo, the bellows blow,

The pot is on to stew me;
I am a pretty pig, but, no!
They shall not barbacue me,

Nor was this raving fit a sham;
In truth, he was hysterical,
Until they brought him out a dram,
And that wrought like a miracle.

Just as the horsemen halted near,
Crying, Murderer, stop, ohoy, oh!
Jacquez was comforting the frère
With a good glass of noyeau-

Who beckon'd to them not to kick up
A row; but, waxing mellow,

Squeez'd Jacquez' hand, and with a hiccup

Said, You 're a damn'd good fellow.

་

Explaining lost but little breath :

Here ended all the matter;
So God save Queen Elizabeth,
And long live Henry Quatre!

The gens-d'armes at the story broke
Into horse-fits of laughter,

And, as if they had known the joke,
Their horses neigh'd thereafter.

Lean Dominick, methinks, his chaps
Yawn'd weary, worn, and moody;
So may my readers too perhaps,
And thus I wish 'em Good day.

GRIMM'S GHOST.

January, 1821.

My shade, O Hermes! shall punctually obey thy decree. It shall transmit to thee, from London, a monthly narrative of whatever takes place worthy of notice in that forest of chimneys. To whom, indeed, could such communication be half so properly addressed? As patron of travellers, thou wilt listen with complacency to the memoranda of invalid gentlemen from Florence, Brussels, or Paris : as god of thieves and pickpockets, thou wilt wink at my appropriating to myself the good things of the ancients, and the bad ones of the moderns; the gold of Parnassus and the tinsel of Paternoster-row: and, as conductor of the dead into the infernal regions, thou canst not reject my critical analysis of new plays. Born on Mount Cylene in Arcadia, thou wilt be brisk as the bees of Hymettus, when I convey to thee an Ode on the Serpentine River, or a Sonnet to Primrose-hill, from the pen of a disciple of the new school of poetry. Neither will he, who deemed it no degradation of his divine dignity to steal the oxen of Admetus, the quiver of Apollo, the trident of Neptune, and the girdle of Venus, visit my burglarious intrusions with an indictment in the court of Rhadamanthus, if my shade should, now and then, steal into the boudoir of a countess, the garret of a poet, the green-room of a theatre, or the sanctum sanctorum of a patriotic parish-meeting. Not intended to see the light above, my lucubrations, in the shades below, will be treated with the indulgence usually bestowed upon posthumous productions. If it should prove otherwise, the remedy is obvious the waters of Lethe and the fires of Tartarus are at hand.

Yet why, O son of Maia, confine my terrestrial year's rule to the narrow boundaries of London Wall? Why reject with indignation, my petition to revisit Paris? Thy answer, " Paris is a greater volcano than Vesuvius," must have been delivered in irony. To one, "condemned to fast in fires" below, what could it matter whether that hot-bed of anarchy, the Palais Royal, be,

or be not, converted into a crater of real lava? Or, grant it to be as asserted, is London, at this present writing, so perfectly free from volcanic phenomena? Are her artizans all quiet and industrious? her Mayors content, as heretofore, with dutiful dulness; and her Common Councilmen as loyally leaden as in the days of the friend of my friend Voltaire, when

"All from Paul's to Aldgate ate and slept"?

But hold! I prove too much. In my zeal to shew that London is as combustible as Paris, I may induce thee to prohibit my visit to either capital.

It is now upward of sixty years since the Abbé Raynal resigned to me, in the polished capital of France, the Herculean task of acquainting the sovereigns of Germany with the failure of new plays; the squabbles of the Academy; the freaks of actresses; the revolt of dancers; and the revolutionary movement of royal concubines. During thirty-five years, I toiled at that laborious oar, till the storms of the Revolution drove me into Germany. With thee, O Mercury! I have sojourned fourteen years. At first, how glad were we to associate together! with what goodnature didst thou listen whilst I bantered defunct Parisians! Nivelle de la Chaussée, thou mayest remember, sent a challenge, even in the Elysian fields, to Hugh Kelly, the humblest of English dramatists, because I hailed the latter father of weeping comedy. The Abbé Prevost, for the same cause, squabbled with the voluminous Richardson; merely because he had translated him badly. I pass over Rousseau's ebullition to the shade of David Hume; the man was always mad, dead or alive: but I cannot help reminding thee of his compliment to Mozart, "I admire, Sir, your music in Il don Giovanni very much; some passages nearly equal Le Devin du Village." In process of years, however, O'Hermes, thou and I have waxed less harmonious. Fellow voyagers, a long calm has made us heartily sick of each other's society: thou hast told all thy good things; I have told all mine and now, like an industrious bee, I fly upward to the realms of day, to store thy infernal hive with a fresh assortment of honey.

Auto-biography is rarely to be depended upon. Rousseau's vanity consisted in painting himself too ugly; Richard Cumberland, Mrs. Robinson, and Mrs. Bellamy, have painted themselves much too handsome; Gibbon's features are not unlike, but the attitude is too stately. No man, according to Samuel Johnson, sits down to depreciate himself, even in writing a letter; how, then, can we expect any man to gibbet himself in immortal type? The following paper, entitled, "The Bachelor's Ther

* See Memoires et Correspondance du Baron de Grimm, avec le Duc de Saxe-Gotha, depuis 1753, jusqu'en 1790, 7 vols. svo.

mometer," was evidently never intended to see the light. It may, therefore, be viewed as probably the most sincere selfmemoir that ever was penned :

Ætatis 30. Looked back, through a vista of ten years. Remembered that, at twenty, I looked upon a man of thirty as a middle-aged man; wondered at my error, and protracted the middle age to forty. Said to myself, " Forty is the age of wisdom." Reflected generally upon past life; wished myself twenty again; and exclaimed, "If I were but twenty, what a scholar I would be by thirty! but it's too late now." Looked in the glass; still youthful, but getting rather fat. Young says, a fool at forty is a fool indeed:" forty, therefore, must be the age of wisdom.

31. Read in the Morning Chronicle, that a watchmaker in Paris, aged thirty-one, had shot himself for love. More fool the watchmaker! Agreed that nobody fell in love after twenty. Quoted Sterne, "The expression fall in love, evidently shews love to be beneath a man." Went to Drury-lane: saw Miss Crotch in Rosetta, and fell in love with her. Received her ultimatum : none but matrimonians need apply. Was three months making up my mind (a long time for making up such a little parcel), when Kitty Crotch eloped with Lord Buskin. Pretended to be very glad. Took three turns up and down library, and looked in glass. Getting rather fat and florid. Met a friend in Gray's Inn, who said, I was evidently in rude health. Thought the compliment ruder than the health.

82. Passion for dancing rather on the decline. Voted sitting out play and farce one of the impossibilities. Still in stage-box three nights per week. Sympathized with the public in vexation, occasioned by non-attendance the other three can't please every body. Began to wonder at the pleasure of kicking one's heels on a chalked floor till four in the morning. Sold bay mare, who reared at three carriages, and shook me out of the saddle. Thought saddle-making rather worse than formerly. Hair growing thin. Bought a bottle of Tricosian fluid. Mem. "a flattering unction."

33. Hair thinner. Serious thoughts of a wig. Met Colonel Buckhorse, who wears one. Devil in a bush. Serious thoughts of letting it alone. Met a fellow Etonian in the Green Park, who told me I wore well wondered what he could mean. Gave up cricket club, on account of the bad air about Paddington: could not run in it, without being out of breath.

34. Measured for a new coat. Tailor proposed fresh measure, hinting something about bulk. Old measure too short; parchment shrinks. Shortened my morning ride to Hampstead and Highgate, and wondered what people could see at Hendon. Determined not to marry means expensive, end dubious.