great delight, if we may judge from the numerous examples which they have left behind them. Of these, the following, taken from the merry Bishop Corbet, and the "humorous ” Ben Jonson, may serve as specimens.

The

first, by Corbet, is from "Wit Restored," 8vo. 1658.

"Mark how the lanterns cloud mine eyes,

See where a moon-drake 'gins to rise;
Saturn crawls like an iron-cat,

To see the naked moon in a slipshod hat.
Thunder-thumping toadstools crock the pots,
To see the mermaids tumble;

Leather cat-a-mountains shake their heels,
To hear the goss-hawk grumble.

The rustic thread

Begins to bleed,

And cobwebs elbows itches;

The putrid skies

Eat mull-sack pies

Bak'd up in logic breeches.

Monday trenchers made good hay,

The lobster wears no dagger;
Meal-mouth'd she-peacocks powl the stars,
And made the low-bell stagger;

Blue crocodiles foam in the toe,

Blind meal-bags do follow the doe:

A rib of apple brain spice

Will follow the Lancashire dice.

Hark! how the chime of Pluto's

pot cracks,

To see the rainbow's wheel-gan made of flax."

The following is, also, from the pen of the jolly divine: it is from the Ashmolean Museum, A. 37.

"Like to the thundering tone of unspoke speeches,
Or like a lobster clad in logic-breeches,

Or like the grey fur of a crimson cat,
Or like the mooncalf in a slipshod hat;

E'en such is he who never was begotten
Until his children were both dead and rotten.

Like to the fiery tombstone of a cabbage,
Or like a crab-louse with its bag and baggage,
Or like the four-square circle of a ring,
Or like to hey-ding, ding-a, ding-a, ding;
E'en such is he who spake, and yet, no doubt,
Spake to small purpose, when his tongue was out.

Like to a fair, fresh, fading, wither'd rose,
Or like to rhyming verse that runs in prose,
Or like the stumbles of a tinder-box,
Or like a man that's sound, yet hath the
E'en such is he who died, and yet did laugh,
To see these lines writ for his epitaph."

The specimen from Ben Jonson is taken from

one of his "6 Masques," entitled the "Vision of Delight," where it is put into the mouth of Phantasie, to intimate the inconsistencies of dreams. It might have been shorter; but if it amused the audience, we need not quarrel with it. The whole would be too much for the patience of a modern reader; we must, therefore, be content with extracts.

"The politic pudding has still his two ends,

Though the bellows and bagpipe were ne'er so good friends;

And who can report what offence it would be

For a squirrel to see a dog climb up a tree?

If a dream should come in now to make you afeard, With a windmill on his head, and bells at his beard, Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your

toes,

And your boots on your brows, and your spurs on your nose?

I say,

let the wine make ne'er so good jelly,

The conscience of the bottle is much in the belly.

For why? do but take common council in your way, And tell me who'll then set a bottle of hay

Before the old usurer, and to his horse

A slice of salt butter, perverting the course
Of civil society? open that gap,

And out-skip your fleas, four-and-twenty at a clap,

With a chain and a trundle bed following at th' heels, And will they not cry, then, the world runs a-wheels?"

Yet would I take the stars to be cruel,

If the crab and the rope-maker ever fight duel,
On any dependence, be it right, be it wrong;
But, mum! a thread may be drawn out too long."

So we say, and so, no doubt, say our readers; but as 66 nonsense" has so much to do with Poetry in almost every shape, we should have been guilty of an unpardonable omission, had we neglected to give them a taste (although, perhaps, it may have been a surfeit) of what are, professedly, "NONSENSE VERSES."

POPE'S NURSE.

THERE is in Twickenham Church-yard an inscription to the memory of the woman who nursed Pope, of which the following is a copy:

"To the Memory of Mary Beach, who died November 5, 1725, aged 78.

"Alexander Pope, whom she nursed in his infancy, and whom she affectionately attended for twenty-eight years, in gratitude for such a faithful old servant, erected this stone."

It is to this epitaph that Lady Mary Wort

ley Montague alludes in the following sarcastic lines, written on her quarrel with Pope.

"No wonder our poet's so stout and so strong, Since he lugg'd and he tugg'd at the bubby so long."

DRINKING CUPS.

EVERY reader of poetry has heard of Lord Byron's celebrated goblet, at Newstead Abbey, formed of a human skull, on which the fine verses beginning, "Start not, nor deem my spirit fled," are inscribed. It is mounted in silver, somewhat after the fashion of the winecups formed of the shell of the ostrich-egg, and in depth and capaciousness would, probably, rival the great and blessed Bear of the Baron Bradwardine, should that memento of ancient Scottish hospitality be yet upon the face of the earth. A superabundance of gratuitous horror has been expended on the circumstance of Lord Byron's having converted the head-piece of one of his ancestors into a stoup to hold his wine. But this fancy of the noble Bard is, by no means, an original one.

Mandeville tells us of the old Guebres, who exposed the dead bodies of their parents to the fowls of the air, reserving only the skulls, of