Volume 158 — THE LIBERAL BREACH.

When dog with dog elects to fight I take no hand in such disputes, Knowing how hard they both would bite Should I attempt to part the brutes. So in the case of man and wife My rooted habit it has been, When they engage in privy strife, Never to go and barge between. Nor do I join the fighting front When Liberal sections disagree, One on the Coalition stunt And one on that of Freedom (Wee). Though tempted, when I see them tear Each other’s eyes, to say, “Be good!” As an outsider I forbear, Fearing to be misunderstood. Fain would I use my gift of tact And take a mediatorial line, But shrewdly recognise the fact That this is no affair of mine. Yet may I venture to deplore A great tradition cheaply prized, And yonder, on the Elysian shore, The ghost of Gladstone scandalised. But most for him I mourn in vain Whom Fate has dealt so poor a fist (Recalling Shakspeare’s gloomy Dane, That solid-fleshed soliloquist)— O curséd spite that he was born (Asquith, I mean) to close the breach And save a party all forlorn By mere rotundity of speech. O. S.