But what with my Nivernois hat can compare, The one is of paper, the other of paste; And my stockings of silk are just come from the hosier, For to-night I'm to dance with the charming Miss Toser. He goes to the ball. After two or three pages of rhapsodies: But hark! now they strike the melodious string, Like a hollyhock, noble majestic and tall, Sir Boreas Blubber first opens the ball. Sir Boreas, great in the minuet known, Since the day that for dancing his talents were shown How he puts on his hat with a smile on his face To a tune that they played us a hundred times o'er? I must find room for some scraps of a public breakfast. Simkin invokes the desire of popularity: 'Twas you made my Lord Ragamuffin come here, Who they say has been lately created a peer, And to-day with extreme complaisance and respect asked All the people at Bath to a general breakfast. You've heard of my Lady Bunbutter, no doubt, At a snug private party her friends to divert; But they say that of late she's grown sick of the town Now my lord had the honour of coming down post How the misses did huddle and scuddle and run, And 'twas pretty to see, how like birds of a feather And Madam Van Twister, Her Ladyship's sister; Lord Cram and Lord Vulter, Sir Brandish O'Culter, With Marshal Carouser, And old Lady Drouser, And the great Hanoverian Baron Pansmouser, Now why should the Muse, my dear mother, relate In landing old Lady Bumfidget and daughter But a nymph of the flood brought him safe to the boat A worse disaster than that which befel Lord Ragamuffin is in store for our good-humoured letter-writer. His friend, Captain Cormorant, who by the way turns out to be no captain at all, and who had undertaken, amongst other fashionable accomplishments, to initiate him in the mysteries of lansquenet, cheats him out of seven hundred pounds; so that Miss Jenny loses her lover and her cousin his money at one stroke. Prudence and Tabitha also come in for their share of misadventures; and the whole party return, crestfallen and discomfited, to the good old Lady Blunderhead and their Yorkshire Manor House. XI. AMERICAN POETS. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER-FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. I DID a great injustice the other day when I said that the Americans had at last a great poet. I should have remembered that poets, like sorrows: "Come not single spies But in battalions." There is commonly a flight of those singingbirds, as we had ourselves at the beginning of the present century; and besides Professor Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Lowell and Poe do the highest honour to America. The person, however, whom I should have most injured myself in forgetting, for my injustice could not damage a reputation such as his, was John G. |