Look out, you know, be ready, Bill-just when she takes
The sand-O Lord! to stop my mouth! how every thing is planned !
The handspike, Bill-quick, bear a hand! now Ma'am, just step ashore!
What! an't I going to be killed-and weltered in my gore? Well, Heaven be praised! but I'll not go a sailing any more!
A GENUINE BROWN STUDY AFTER NATURE, BY R. M.
How sweet thus clad, in Autumn's mellow Tone,
With serious Eye, the russet Scene to view!
No Verdure decks the Forest, save alone
The sad green Holly, and the olive Yew.
The Skies, no longer of a garish Blue,
Subdued to Dove-like Tints, and soft as Wool,
Reflected show their slaty Shades anew
In the drab Waters of the clayey Pool.
Meanwhile yon Cottage Maiden wends to School,
In Garb of Chocolate so neatly drest,
And Bonnet puce, fit object for the Tool,
And chastened Pigments, of our Brother West;
Yea, all is silent, sober, calm, and cool,
Save gaudy Robin with his crimson Breast.
LITERARY AND LITERAL.
THE March of Mind upon its mighty stilts,
(A spirit by no means to fasten mocks on,)
In travelling through Berks, Beds, Notts, and Wilts,
Hants-Bucks, Herts, Oxon,
Got
up a thing our ancestors ne'er thought on,
A thing that, only in our proper youth,
We should have chuckled at-in sober truth,
A Conversazione at Hog's Norton!
A place whose native dialect, somehow,
Has always by an adage been affronted,
And that it is all gutturals, is now
Taken for grunted.
Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine,
The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth-
you have ever heard such creature dine— And-for Hog's Norton, make a mix of both !—
O shades of Shakspeare! Chaucer! Spenser!
Milton! Pope! Gray! Warton!
O Coleman! Kenny! Planche! Poole! Peake!
Pocock! Reynolds! Morton!
O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett!
Hume! Wilmot! Horton!
Think of your prose and verse, and worse-delivered in
Hog's Norton !-
The founder of Hog's Norton Athenæum
Framed her society
With some variety
From Mr. Roscoe's Liverpool museum;
Not a mere pic-nic for the mind's repast,
But tempting to the solid knife-and-forker,
It held its sessions in a house that last
Had killed a porker.
It chanced one Friday,
One Farmer Grayley stuck a very big hog,
A perfect Gog or Magog of a pig-hog,
Which made of course a literary high day
Not that our Farmer was a man to go
With literary tastes so far from suiting 'em,
When he heard mention of Professor Crowe,
Or Lalla-Rookh, he always was for shooting 'em!
In fact in letters he was quite a log,
With him great Bacon
Was literally taken,
And Hogg the Poet-nothing but a Hog!
As to all others on the list of Fame,
Although they were discussed and mentioned daily,
He only recognized one classic name,
And thought that she had hung herself-Miss Baillie!
To balance this, our Farmer's only daughter
Had a great taste for the Castalian water—
A Wordsworth worshipper-a Southey wooer-
(Though men that deal in water-color cakes
May disbelieve the fact-yet nothing's truer)
She got the bluer
The more she dipped and dabbled in the Lakes.
The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver,
At future Authorship was apt to hint,
Producing what some call the Type-us Fever,
Which means a burning to be seen in print.
Of learning's laurels-Miss Joanna Baillie-
Of Mrs. Hemans-Mrs. Wilson-daily
Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley;
And Fancy hinting that she had the better
Of L.E.L. by one initial letter,
She thought the world would quite enraptured see
Accordingly, with very great propriety,
She joined the H. N. B., and double S.,
That is Hog's Norton Blue Stocking Society;
And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited,
Contributed
Her pork and poetry towards the mess.
This feast, we said, one Friday was the case,
When Farmer Grayley-from Macbeth to quote-
Screwing his courage to the "sticking-place,"
Stuck a large knife into a grunter's throat:-
A kind of murder that the law's rebuke
Seldom condemns by shake of its peruke,
Showing the little sympathy of big-wigs
With pig-wigs!
The swine-poor wretch !—with nobody to speak for it,
And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it;
So like the fabled swan-died singing out,
And, thus, there issued from the farmer's yard
A note that notified without a card,
An invitation to the evening rout.
And when the time came duly-" At the close of
"when the ham-"
The day," as Beattie has it,
Bacon, and pork were ready to dispose of,
And pettitoes and chit'lings too, to cram—
Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.'s,
All in appropriate and swinish dresses,
For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke,
Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it,
They came-each "Pig-faced Lady," in that bonnet
We call a poke.
The Members all assembled thus, a rare woman
At pork and poetry was chosen chairwoman ;-
In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey,
Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy,
She always named the authoress of "Psyche”—
As Mrs. Tiggey!
And now arose a question of some moment—
What author for a lecture was the richer,
Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont,
But some for Flitcher;
While others, with a more sagacious reasoning,
Proposed another work,
And thought their pork
Would prove more relishing from Thomson's Season-ing!
But, practised in Shakspearian readings daily—
O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog's Norton!—
Miss Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley
Selected him that evening to snort on.
In short, to make our story not a big tale,
Just fancy her exerting
Her talents, and converting
The Winter's Tale to something like a pig-tale!
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