Lobster red as setting sun, Duck destroy'd by faithful gun; But of all it did contain, As was ever taken up; Form'd of pettitoes and tail On the gentle banks of Banna, Who with tail of little pig, Thus can run a rhyming rig. AN HOLY SISTER. ABRAHAM COWLEY. Abraham Cowley, the author of the following piece of satire, was born in London in 1618. He was educated at Westminster School and Cambridge, and became a poet very early in life. He attributed this direction of his genius to the perusal of Spenser, whose works were wont to lye in his mother's parlour.' Johnson in his Lives speaks very highly of Cowley as a poet. He died in 1667, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. 6 SHE that can sit three sermons in a day, And of those three scarce bear three words away; Damn at first sight, and proudly dares to say, And judge men's hearts according to their hair; That could afford to doubt, who wrote best sense, She that can sigh, and cry 'Queen Elizabeth,' SCHNAPPS. SELBER. This spirited translation from the German of SELBER appeared anonymously in the Dublin University Magazine a few years ago. I'm rather slow at extravaganzas, And what your poets call thunderclaps ; Schnapps is, you know, the genteelest liquid For I quote Horace when lauding Schnapps. I've but one pocket for quids and coppers, Yet 'midst my ha'pence and pipes and stoppers Or ten half-naggins ;-but, when with chaps Being fifty, sixty, or therebetwixt, I Guess many midnights cannot now elapse Imbibing hogwash, or whey perhaps, THE DEVIL'S WALK. RICHARD PORSON. Richard Porson, the eminent Greek scholar and critic, was born at East Ruston in Norfolk, on Christmas day 1759, and died in London on September 25, 1808. The circumstances under which the following jeu-d'esprit was written, are supposed to have been these :-One evening Porson attended a party at the house of Dr. Vincent, and on being cut out at a whist table, he rose to take his leave. Mrs. Vincent pressed him to stay, saying, 'Do stay, the rubber will soon be over, when you may go in. In the meantime, take a pen and ink at another table, and write us some verses.' Dr. Vincent seconded this request, and added, 'I will give a subject. You shall suppose that the Devil is come among us to see what we are doing, and you shall tell us what observations he makes.' Porson obeyed the injunctions, and this humorous effusion was the result. The Devil's Walk has also been claimed for Southey and Coleridge, but there can be no doubt that it originated with Porson, and in all probability it was afterwards amplified by them. FROM his brimstone bed, at break of day, A-walking the Devil is gone, To visit his snug little farm of the earth, And over the hill, and over the dale, And backwards and forwards he switch'd his long tail, And pray, how was the Devil drest? Oh! he was in his Sunday's best; His coat was red, and his breeches were blue, With a little hole behind where his tail came through. He saw a lawyer killing a viper, On a dunghill, beside his own stable ; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind An apothecary, on a white horse, 'Oh !' says the Devil, there's my old friend He saw a cottage, with a double coach-house, |