and the metaphysical Lord D. offend in the double capacity of Lords and of Irishmen. Why the devil don't they write in Irish? they would be just as intelligible; or some professional writer might live by their translation. Is it not enough to put commoner authors down in person, but we must have vicarious authors into the bargain in high life? Besides, is not this fraudulent putting forward of a great name a getting of money under false pretences a cheat on the public, who pay so generously for aristocratic books, which would be left for ever on the shelf if not written by a Right Honourable? Does his Lordship hope that any plebeian can so far imitate the style of a peer as to deceive the people of fashion? Oh! my dear dear, Lord, this is indeed "too bad." It is pleasant, but wrong-" reform it altogether." But, to come back to the lost sheep of Parnassus,-this overstocking of the literary population is the more grievous, inasmuch as there is so little prospect of a remedy, natural or parliamentary, short of an ad internecionem starvation. Writers are shut out of almost every European state. Austria, which has provided so liberally for fighting Irishmen,-making one a Field-marshal and another a Count of the Holy Roman Empire,-would look very queer át a publishing recruit. The Pope, maugre his Catholicity, would put him on the Index as one of the radicali del secolo; and the Spaniard would clap him into the Inquisition for treating Emancipation as a revolutionary and unjesuitical question. In France they have also pretty well overstocked their own market, and the booksellers give no prices. Then again, literature, unlike agriculture, has no spade cultivation to provide for superfluous hands; and if an Irish author should strive to earn a livelihood by dropping back into the rear ranks of society, and should turn his ambitious tendencies at climbing up a bricklayer's ladder, he will but escape out of the frying-pan into the fire. In America, a market is scarcely yet open sufficient to meet the views of the literary emigrant. Yet this is all that remains for us; and I would press it upon Mr. Wilmot Horton, since he will take the bull by the horns, to begin with this the least unmanageable branch of the subject. If he can reduce the literary population of Ireland, it will encourage him to proceed with the rest of the peasantry. It would only require to engage Murray or Colburn to settle in America, and the authors would follow instinctively, like flies after the honey. But then, it will be said, how are we to do this, and keep the home-market in a supply of bibliopoles? "Ay, that's the rub!" Suppose, then, we have a joint-stock company for the encouragement of literature in the back-settlements. Jointstock companies, to be sure, are out of fashion, but the case is desperate. Over-population is the master-vice of the nineteenth century; and Hippocrates writes that extreme diseases require extreme remedies. M. August.-VOL. XXIII. NO. XCH. L LONDON LYRICS. Table Talk. To weave a culinary clue, With flat colloquial pressure: He who can only talk with one, At all events, to strangers, He ought to cry, " Long time I bore," They ask about your wife, who's dead, Who died last week for coining. And thus my lee-way fetch up- I'd thank you for the ketchup!" When folks like these sit next to me, One cannot chew while yawning. Seat not good talkers one next one, Poets are dangerous to sit nigh; And when you think you're stirring They scratch amid their purring.) By wondering folks can touch port wine: Relations mix not kindly; shun Or supereloquent, or dumb, As horses in a stable. When men amuse their fellow guests The host, beneath whose roof they sit, Who grants them a new trial. I knew a man, from glass to delf, The party who beheld him "floor'd," And cried, "Hic jacet ego." Some aim to tell a thing that hit Jokes are like trees; their place of birth Think, reader, of the few who groan The world, from peer to peasant, Nay, even the very soil that nursed Close to that spot where Stuart turns The earth, a marble fixture, We dined: well match'd, for pleasure met, In miscellaneous mixture. Each card turn'd up a trump, the glee, We joked, we banter'd, laugh'd, and roar'd, Care kept aloof, each social soul Till Royal Charles, roused by the fun, "Gad, John, this is a glorious joke-" Would give an eye for this night's freak- The day arrived-'twas seven-we met : And doing is another. Nature unkind, we turn'd to Art; Zug sang a song in German : We might as well have play'd at chess: Ah! Merriment! when men entrap The rich, who sigh for thee; the great, But clasp thy cloudy follies: I've known thee turn, in Portman-square, Races at Ascot, tours in Wales, To wake thee from thy slumbers. MISADVENTURES OF A SHORT-SIGHTED MAN. "It was in ignorance, Glo'ster's eyes being out." King Lear, Act iv. Scene 5. I DO believe I am the most unfortunate man alive. I am ashamed of my name, and dare not use it. I have lost my fortune, my friends, my honour, and my wife. I am reviled as a spendthrift, pointed at as a pick-purse, and shunned as a libertine; and yet I am as guiltless of waste, of theft, and of profligacy, as the babe that has never seen this wasteful, thieving, and profligate world. Neither can I justly blame others for any of my misfortunes, excepting in one instance, and that the one to which I am the least sensible-the loss of fortune. I once even attributed that in part, and all the rest wholly, to my miserable luck in having been born extremely short-sighted. Unless I relate the principal adventures of my life, I cannot expect that any one should take my word for what sounds so improbable: I shall therefore write my story. It may reach the eyes or ears of some of my early friends, who may thus be induced to attend to an explanation of facts, and to do me a tardy justice. It may chance to cause some slight interest or amusement to the public. At all events, the recital will beguile a few hours of my tedious and solitary existence, and procure me once again, before I die, a feeling of my own importance, while I make myself the sad hero of the following sheets: Reader, have I not said I am ashamed of my name? Then, do not expect me to divulge it. Thus much will I confess-it begins with a B; and, courteously allowing the confidence between us to be limited in this single respect, suffer me to be known to you only as Mr. B. of London; for I was born and bred in London, was apprenticed to a teamerchant in that city, went into business myself in the same place, lived and married there (only going to Islington for a very short honeymoon), and in London I probably shall die, shrouded in that obscurity in which I am now carefully hid, and where I am by this time (I almost hope) forgotten. My father was a man well to do in the tea-trade. I was his only child; and, although he could have afforded to make a gentleman of me much better than probably he could have done had he been himself a gentleman, still his pride was not of that sort. It was to be respectable and respected in that walk of life in which his birth had cast him. He considered Trade and Wealth as elder and younger sisters, and would |