Write with them all your days,
Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays -
(No Dramatist should ever be without 'em) —
And, just conceive the bliss,-

There is so little of the goose about 'em,
One's safe from any hiss!

VIII.

Ah! who can paint that first great awful night,
Big with a blessing or a blight,

When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret,
Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright,

Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness more f's yet: Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat,Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that; Funeral, fate-foreboding sits in doubt,

Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage,
To see his Play upon the stage come out ;
No stage to him! it is Thalia's carriage,
And he is sitting on the spikes behind it,
Striving to look as if he didn't mind it!

IX.

Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt: He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat, Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt That went a Beaver in, comes out a Rat! Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright, Upon Rienzi's night,

Gnawed up one long kid glove, and all her bag,

Quite to a rag.

Knowles has confessed he trembled as for life, Afraid of his own "Wife;"

Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail
Of water backing him, all down his spine,-
"The ice-brook's temper "- pleasant to the
chine! -

For fear that Simpson and his Co. should fail.
Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental prayer,
Wishing devoutly he was Lord knows-where?
Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth,
While doubtful of Nell Gwynne's eventful luck,
Squeeze out and suck

More oranges with his one fevered mouth,
Than Nelly had to hawk from North to South?
Yea, Buckstone, changing color like a mullet,
Refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice,
From his best friend, an ice,

Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet!

X.

Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints, During their trial?

'Tis past denial.

And does not Pocock, feeling, like a peacock, All eyes upon him turn to very meacock? And does not Planché, tremulous and blank, Meanwhile his personages tread the boards,

Seem goaded by sharp swords,

And called upon himself to "walk the plank?"
As for the Dances, Charles and George to boot,
What have they more

Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot,
Than bear that capers on a hotted floor?

XI.

Thus pending does not Mathews, at sad

shift

For voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny? -
Serle seem upon the surly seas adrift?
And Kenny think he's going to Kilkenny? -
Haynes Bayley feel Old ditto, with the note
Of Cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple

About his arms, and Adam's apple,
Big as a fine Dutch codling, in his throat?
Did Rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire
Or not to take a jump into the fire?

Did Wade feel as composed as music can?
And was not Bernard his own Nervous Man?
Lastly, don't Farley, a bewildered elf,
Quake at the Pantomime he loves to cater,
And ere its changes ring, transform himself?
A frightful mug of human delf?

A spirit-bottle- empty of "the cratur"?
A leaden-platter ready for the shelf?
A thunderstruck dumb-waiter?

XII.

To clench the fact,

Myself, once guilty, of one small rash act,
Committed at the Surrey

A hissing at some dull imperfect dunce

There's no denying,

I felt in all four elements at once!

My head was swimming, while my arms were

flying,

My legs for running — all the rest was frying!

XIII.

Thrice welcome, then, for this peculiar use
Thy pens so innocent of goose!

For this shall Dramatists, when they make merry,
Discarding Port and Sherry,

Perry, whose fame, pennated, is let loose

To distant lands,

Perry, admitted on all hands,

Text, running, German, Roman,

For Patent Perryans approached by no man!

And when, ah, me! far distant be the hour!
Pluto shall call thee to his gloomy bower,
Many shall be thy pensive mourners, many!
And Penury itself shall club its penny,
To raise thy monument in lofty place;
Higher than York's, or any son of War;
Whilst Time all meaner effigies shall bury,
On due pentagonal base,

Shall stand the Parian, Perryan, perriwiged Perry,

Perched on the proudest peak of Penman Mawr!

THE UNDYING ONE.

"He shall not die." UNCLE TOBY.

I.

Or all the verses, grave or gay,
That ever wiled an hour,

I never knew a mingled lay

At once so sweet and sour,

As that by Ladye Norton spun,
And christened the "Undying One."

II.

I'm very certain that she drew

A portrait, when she penned