LITERARY AND LITERAL.

HE March of Mind upon its mighty stilts, (A spirit by no means to fasten mocks on,) In travelling through Berks, Beds, Notts, and Wilts, Hants—Bucks, Herts, Oxon, Got up a thing our ancestors ne’er thought on, A thing that, only in our proper youth, We should have chuckled at—in sober truth, A Conversazione at Hog’s Norton! A place whose native dialect, somehow, Has always by an adage been affronted, And that it is all gutturals, is now Taken for grunted. Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine, The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth— If you have ever heard such creature dine— And—for Hog’s Norton, make a mix of both!— O shades of Shakspeare! Chaucer! Spenser! Milton! Pope! Gray! Warton! O Colman! Kenny! Planche! Poole! Peake! Pocock! Reynolds! Morton! O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett! Hume! Wilmot Horton! Think of your prose and verse, and worse—delivered in Hog’s Norton!— The founder of Hog’s Norton Athenæum Framed her society With some variety From Mr. Roscoe’s Liverpool museum; Not a mere pic-nic, for the mind’s repast, But tempting to the solid knife-and-forker, It held its sessions in the house that last Had killed a porker. It chanced one Friday, One Farmer Grayley stuck a very big hog, A perfect Gog or Magog of a pig-hog, Which made of course a literary high day,— Not that our Farmer was a man to go With literary taste—so far from suiting ’em, When he heard mention of Professor Crowe, Or Lalla-Rookh, he always was for shooting ’em! In fact in letters he was quite a log, With him great Bacon Was literally taken. And Hogg—the Poet—nothing but a Hog! As to all others on the list of Fame, Although they were discuss’d and mention’d daily, He only recognised one classic name, And thought that she had hung herself—Miss Baillie! To balance this, our Farmer’s only daughter Had a great taste for the Castalian water— A Wordsworth worshipper—a Southey wooer,— (Though men that deal in water-colour cakes May disbelieve the fact—yet nothing’s truer) She got the bluer The more she dipped and dabbled in the Lakes. The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver, At future Authorship was apt to hint, Producing what some call the Type-us Fever, Which means a burning to be seen in print. Of learning’s laurels—Miss Joanna Baillie— Of Mrs. Hemans—Mrs. Wilson—daily Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley; And Fancy hinting that she had the better Of L.E.L. by one initial letter, She thought the world would quite enraptur’d see