The following epigram by Samuel Rogers, on Lord Dudley's studied speeches in Parliament, was pronounced by Byron, in conversation with Lady Blessington, 66 one of the best in the

English language, with the true Greek talent of expressing, by implication, what is wished to be conveyed:"

Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it:

He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.

On the marriage of Dr. Webb with Miss Gould, a classical friend sent him the following:

Tela fuit simplex statuens decus addere telæ,
Fecit hymen geminam puroque intexuit auro.
[Single no more, a double Webb behold;
Hymen embroidered it with virgin Gould.]

AFTER GOING TO LAW.

This law, they say, great nature's chain connects,
That causes ever must produce effects.

In me behold reversed great nature's laws,—
All my effects lost by a single cause.

SAME JAWBONE.

Jack eating rotten cheese did say,
"Like Samson I my thousands slay."
"I vow," says Roger, "so you do,
And with the selfsame weapon too."

A FUNNY DETERMINATION.

Queenly Miss Quaint, the aim of whose life
Is to die an old maid or a minister's wife,
Grotesquely averred, after hearing young Spread,

"I'll hear him all day, if I walk on my head!”

"Good!" said old Hunx, with a comical smile;

"But please, if you're late, don't come up the broad aisle !"

MARRIAGE À LA MODE.

"Tom, you should take a wife." "Nay, God forbid!"

"I found you one last night."

"Softly! perhaps she'll please

"The deuce you did!"

you." "Oh, of course!"

Witty." "Nay, that's worse!"

"Discreet." "All show!" "Handsome." "To lure the fellows!"

High-born." "Ay, haughty!" "Tender-hearted." "Jealous!" "Talents o'erflowing." "Ay, enough to sluice me!"

"And then, Tom, such a fortune!" "Introduce me!"

QUID PRO QUO.

"Marriage, not mirage, Jane, here in your letter: With your education, you surely know better."

Quickly spoke my young wife, while I sat in confusion, ""Tis quite correct, Thomas: they're each an illusion.”

WOMAN-CONTRA.

When Adam, waking, first his lids unfolds

In Eden's groves, beside him he beholds
Bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and knows
His earliest sleep has proved his last repose.

WOMAN-PRO.

Not she with traitorous kiss her Saviour stung,
Not she denied him with unholy tongue:

She, when apostles shrunk, could danger brave;
Last at the cross, and earliest at the grave.-BARRETT.

ABUNDANCE OF FOOLS.

The world of fools has such a store,
That he who would not see an ass

Must bide at home, and bolt his door,

And break his looking-glass.-LA MONNOYE.

THE WORLD.

'Tis an excellent world that we live in

To lend, to spend, or to give in;

But to borrow, or beg, or get a man's own,

"Tis just the worst world that ever was known.

TERMINER SANS OYER.

"Call silence!" the judge to the officer cries;
"This hubbub and talk, will it never be done?
Those people this morning have made such a noise,
We've decided ten causes without hearing one."

DOUBLE VISION UTILIZED. An incipient toper was checked t'other day, In his downward career, in a very strange way. The effect of indulgence, he found to his trouble, Was that after two bottles he came to see double; When with staggering steps to his home he betook him, He saw always two wives, sitting up to rebuke him. One wife in her wrath makes a pretty strong case; But a couple thus scolding, what courage could face?

Empromptus.

ONE day, as Dr. Young was walking in his garden at Welwyn in company with two ladies, (one of whom he afterwards married,) the servant came to acquaint him that a gentleman wished to speak with him. "Tell him," said the doctor, "I am too happily engaged to change my situation." The ladies insisted that he should go, as his visitor was a man of rank, his patron, and his friend. But, as persuasion had no effect, one took him by the right arm, the other by the left, and led him to the garden-gate; when, finding resistance in vain, he bowed, laid his hand upon his heart, and, in that expressive manner for which he was so remarkable, spoke the following lines:Thus Adam looked when from the garden driven, And thus disputed orders sent from heaven. Like him I go, but yet to go I'm loath;

Like him I go, for angels drove us both.

Hard was his fate, but mine still more unkind:

His Eve went with him, but mine stays behind.

Ben Jonson having been invited to dine at the Falcon Tavern, where he was already deeply in debt, the landlord promised to wipe out the score if he would tell him what God, and the devil, and the world, and the landlord himself, would be best pleased with. To which the ready poet promptly replied :

God is best pleased when men forsake their sin;
The devil is best pleased when they persist therein;

The world's best pleased when thou dost sell good wine;

And you're best pleased when I do pay for mine.

A well-known instance of self-extrication from a dilemma is thus rendered in rhyme :

When Queen Elizabeth desired

That Melville would acknowledge fairly
Whether herself he most admired,

Or his own sovereign, Lady Mary?

The puzzled knight his answer thus expressed:-
"In her own country each is handsomest."

Burns, going into church one Sunday and finding it difficult to procure a seat, was kindly invited by a young lady into her pew. The sermon being upon the terrors of the law, and the preacher being particularly severe in his denunciation of sinners, the lady, who was very attentive, became much agitated. Burns, on perceiving it, wrote with his pencil, on a blank leaf of her Bible, the following:

Fair maid, you need not take the hint,

Nor idle texts pursue:

'Twas only sinners that he meant,
Not angels such as you.

One evening at the King's Arms, Dumfries, Burns was called from a party of friends to see an impertinent coxcomb in the form of an English commercial traveller, who patronizingly invited the Ayrshire Ploughman to a glass of wine at his table. Entering into conversation with the condescending stranger, Burns soon saw what sort of person he had to deal with. About to leave the room, the poet was urged to give a specimen of his facility in impromptu versifying, when, having asked the name and age of the conceited traveller, he instantly penned and handed him the following stanza,-after which he abruptly departed:

In seventeen hundred forty-nine,
Satan took stuff to make a swine,

And cuist it in a corner;
But wilily he changed his plan,

Shaped it to something like a man,

And ca'd it Andrew Horner.

After Burke had finished his extraordinary speech against Warren Hastings, the latter (according to the testimony of his private secretary, Mr. Evans) wrote the following sarcastic impromptu :

Oft have we wondered that on Irish ground
No poisonous reptile ever yet was found;
The secret stands revealed in Nature's work:
She saved her venom to create a Burke !

Dr. Johnson's definition of a note of admiration (!), made on the moment, is very neat :

I see I see I know not what:
I see a dash above a dot,
Presenting to my contemplation
A perfect point of admiration!

An old gentleman named Gould, having married a young lady of nineteen, thus addressed his friend Dr. G. at the wedding festival:

So you see, my dear sir, though eighty years old,
A girl of nineteen falls in love with old Gould.

To which the doctor replied,―

A girl of nineteen may love Gould, it is true,
But believe me, dear sir, it is Gold without U.

When Percy first published his collection of Ancient English Ballads, he was rather lavish in commendation of their beautiful simplicity. This provoked Dr. Johnson to say one evening, at the tea-table of Miss Reynolds, that he could rhyme as well and as elegantly in common narrative and conversation. "For instance," said he,

"As, with my hat upon my head,

I walked along the strand,

I there did meet another man

With his hat in his hand.

Or, to render such poetry subservient to my own immediate

use,

I therefore pray thee, Renny dear
That thou wilt give to me,

With cream and sugar softened well,
Another cup of tea.

Nor fear that I, my gentle maid,

Shall long detain the cup,

When once unto the bottom I

Have drank the liquor up.

Yet hear, alas! this mournful truth,

Nor hear it with a frown;

Thou canst not make the tea as fast

As I can gulp it down."

Mr. Fox, the great orator, was on one occasion told by a lady that she "did not care three skips of a louse for him." He immediately took out his pencil and wrote the following: