He should perish, he swore, did his suit not succeed,
And a barber to slay was a barbarous deed.

"Then he altered his tone, and was heard to declare,

If valor deserved the regard of the fair,

That his courage was tried, though he scorned to disclose How many brave fellows he'd took by the nose.

"For his politics, too, they were thoroughly known, A patriot he was to the very backbone;

Wilkes he gratis had shaved for the good of the nation, And he held the Whig club in profound veneration.

"For his tenets religious—he could well expound Emanuel Swedenborg's myst'ries profound,

And new doctrines could broach with the best of 'em all, For a periwig-maker ne'er wanted a caul.

"Indignant she answered: 'No chin-scraping sot
Shall be fastened to me by the conjugal knot;
No! to Tyburn repair, if a noose you must tie,
Other fish I have got, Mr. Tonsor, to fry:

"Holborn-bridge and Blackfriars my triumphs can tell,
From Billingsgate beauties I've long borne the bell;
Nay, tripemen and fishmongers vie for my favor:
Then d'ye think I'll take up with a two-penny shaver?

"Let dory, or turbot the sov'reign of fish,

Cheek by jowl with red-herring be served in one dish;
Let sturgeon and sprats in one pickle unite,
When I angle for husbands, and barbers shall bite.'

"But the barber persisted (ah, could I relate 'em!)
To ply her with compliments soft as pomatum;
And took every occasion to flatter and praise her,
Till she fancied his wit was as keen as his razor.

"He protested, besides, if she'd grant his petition,
She should live like a lady of rank and condition;
And to Billingsgate market no longer repair,
But himself all her business would do to a hair.

"Her smiles, he asserted, would melt even rocks,

Nay, the fire of her eyes would consume barbers' blocks;

On insensible objects bestow animation,

And give to old periwigs regeneration.

"With fair speeches cajoled, as you'd tickle a trout,
'Gainst the barber the fish-wife no more could hold out;
He applied the right bait, and with flattery he caught her,
Without flattery a female's a fish out of water.

"The state of her heart, when the barber once guessed,
Love's siege with redoubled exertion he pressed,
And as briskly bestirred him, the charmer embracing,
As the wash-ball that dances and froths in his basin.

"The flame to allay that their bosoms did so burn,
They set out for the church of St. Andrew in Holborn,
Where tonsors and trulls, country Dicks and their cousins,
In the halter of wedlock are tied up by dozens.

"The nuptials to grace, came from every quarter,
The worthies at Rag-fair, old caxons who barter,
Who the coverings of judges' and counsellors' nobs
Cut down into majors, queues, scratches, and bobs.

"From their voices united such melody flowed,

As the Abbey ne'er witnessed, nor Tott'nham Court-road;
While St. Andrew's brave bells did so loud and so clear ring,
You'd have given ten pounds to 've been out of their hearing.

"For his fee, when the parson this couple had joined,
As no cash was forthcoming, he took it in kind:

So the bridegroom dismantled his rev'rence's chin,

And the bride entertained him with pilchards and gin."

Thomson was a wonderfully good-natured man, and so patient that, even when his friends bribed his servants to annoy him, he was never known to lose his temper. He did not live long to enjoy his peaceful home, for, taking cold from a boat-ride after a long walk one August after

noon, a fever ensued, which proved fatal. The year of his death was 1748. It was of him that Lord Lyttleton said, he left

"No line which, dying, he could wish to blot."

THOMAS GRAY, of all English poets perhaps the most finished artist, was born in that noisy part of London, Cornhill, on a December's day, in 1716.

His father, like Milton's, was a scrivener, but, unlike that good man, failed to make his home happy-in fact, drove his wife away from it by his harshness and ill-temper. She was a noble, energetic woman, as are almost all

the mothers of the good and great, and, when forced to separate from her husband, at once opened a millinery store, with her sister for a partner, supporting herself and her children. She had a large family, twelve in all, but all except Thomas died in infancy from suffocation, caused by a fullness of blood. He, too, was attacked in the same terrible way, and was only saved by his mother's courage and devotion, for she opened a vein in his neck with her own hand, thus bringing him back from the very grasp of death.

"Her brother being a master at Eaton, the lad went there, and soon found among his school-fellows young Horace Walpole, with whom he soon struck up a close friendship. Many a time no doubt Walpole, Gray, and West, another chum of the scrivener's son, did their Latin verses together, and many a golden summer evening they passed merrily with bat and ball in the meadows of the smoothly-flowing Thames."

In his nineteenth year Gray was admitted pensioner at Cambridge, maintained both at school and college by the industry of his mother. But he did not enjoy the three years he spent at Cambridge, and complained, in a seriocomic way, of the course of study there:

Must

Must I pore into metaphysics? Alas! I cannot see in the dark. Nature has not furnished me with the optics of a cat. I pore into mathematics? Alas! I cannot see in too much light. I am no eagle. It is very possible that two and two make four, but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly, and if these be the profits of life, give me the amusements of it." He gave almost all his time to the languages, ancient and modern, writing a little poetry now and then.

Walpole was with him also at college, and when Gray left, in 1739, his friend proposed that they should visit the Continent in company. They did travel together through