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 gutterals, is now
Taken for grunted.

Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine,
The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth -
If
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 Colman! Kenny! Planche! Poole! Peake ! Pocock! Reynolds ! Morton!

O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett!

Hume! Wilmot Horton!

Think of your prose and verse, and worse

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 the 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

-de

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, [Baillie! And thought that she had hung herself.

Miss

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

"LOVE LAYS AND LYRICS

BY

A. P. I. G."

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
The day," as Beattie has it," when the ham
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 Shaksperian readings daily,-
O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog's Nor-

ton!

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