[The following Sonnet, with the lines which succeed it, were written for the "Forget-me-Not" for 1830.]

SONNET

FOR THE 14TH OF FEBRUARY.

No popular respect will I omit
To do thee honour on this happy day,
When every loyal lover tasks his wit
His simple truth in studious rhymes to pay,
And to his mistress dear his hopes convey.
Rather thou knowest I would still outrun
All calendars with Love's,-whose date alway
Thy bright eyes govern better than the Sun,-
For with thy favour was my life begun ;
And still I reckon on from smiles to smiles,
And not by summers, for I thrive on none
But those thy cheerful countenance compiles :
Oh! if it be to choose and call thee mine,
Love, thou art every day my Valentine.

A BUNCH OF FORGET-ME-NOTS.

FORGET me not! It is the cry of clay,
From infancy to age, from ripe to rotten;
For who, "to dumb forgetfulness a prey,"
Would be forgotten?

Hark the poor infant, in the age of рар,
A little Laplander on nurse's lap,

Some strange, neglectful, gossiping old Trot,
Meanwhile on dull Oblivion's lap she lieth,
In her shrill Baby-lonish language crieth-
What?

"Forget me not!"

The schoolboy writes unto the self-same tune,
The yearly letter, guiltless of a blot,
"We break up on the twenty-third of June;"
And then, with comps. from Dr. Polyglot,
"P.S. Forget me not!"

When last my elder brother sailed for Quito,
My chalky foot had in a hobble got-
Why did he plant his timber toe on my toe,
To stamp on memory's most tender spot
"Forget me not!"

The dying nabob, on whose shrivelled skin
The Indian "mulliga" has left its "tawny,"
Leaving life's pilgrimage so rough and thorny,
Bindeth his kin

Two tons of sculptured marble to allot-
A small "Forget me not!"

The hardy sailor parting from his wives,
Sharing among them all that he has got,
Keeps a fond eye upon their after-lives,
And says to seventeen-"If I am shot,
Forget me not."

Why, all the mob of authors that now trouble
The world with cold-pressed volumes and with hot,

They all are seeking reputation's bubble,

Hopelessly hoping, like Sir Walter Scott,
To tie in fame's own handkerchief a double
Forget-me-knot!

A past past tense,

In fact, is sought for by all numan kind,

And hence

Our common Irish wish-to leave ourselves behin

Forget me not!-It is the common chorus
Swell'd by all those behind and before us;
Each fifth of each November

Calls out "Remember!"

And even a poor man of straw will try
To live by dint of powder and of plot.
In short, it is the cry of every Guy-
"Forget me not!"

[The following lines were written in the album of Miss S., I conjecture the sister of Horace Smith, one of the authors of " Rejected Addresses," a warm friend of my father's, of long standing. They were, I think, written in this year while my father was at Brighton on a visit to the Smiths.]

WRITTEN IN A YOUNG LADY'S ALBUM.

A PRETTY task, Miss S-, to ask

A Benedictine pen,

That cannot quite at freedom write
Like those of other men.

No lover's plaint my Muse must paint
To fill this page's span,

But be correct and recollect

I'm not a single man.

Pray only think for pen and ink

How hard to get along,

That may not turn on words that burn

Or Love, the life of song!

Nine Muses, if I chooses, I

May woo all in a clan,

But one Miss S-- I daren't address

I'm not a single man.

Scribblers unwed, with little head

May eke it out with heart, And in their lays it often plays A rare first-fiddle part.

They make a kiss to rhyme with bliss,

But if I so began,

I have my fears about my ears-—

I'm not a single man.

Upon your cheek I may not speak,
Nor on your lip be warm,

I must be wise about your eyes,
And formal with your form,
Of all that sort of thing, in short,
On T. H. Bayly's plan,

I must not twine a single line

I'm not a single man.

A watchman's part compels my heart
To keep you off its beat,

And I might dare as soon to swear

At you as at your feet.

I can't expire in passion's fire

As other poets can

My life (she's by) won't let me die

I'm not a single man.

Shut out from love, denied a dove,
Forbidden bow and dart,
Without a groan to call my own,
With neither hand nor heart,
To Hymen vow'd, and not allow'd
To flirt e'en with your fan,
Here end, as just a friend, I must-
I'm not a single man.

[In the September of this year I find in the "Athenæum" the first of the whimsical announcements of the " 'Comic," which, from this time until it ceased to appear, my father annually made in the columus of that paper. The success of the first volume had led to the publication of many imitations-to one of which the first paragraph doubtless refers.]

ANNOUNCEMENT OF ANNUAL FOR 1831.

A RUMOUR having been privately circulated in the whispering gallery of St. Paul's, that a publishing firm of that neighbourhood intended to bring forward a New Comio Annual, the Proprietor of the Old Ditto Ditto feels anxious. that the new work should not be mistaken for a new volume of the original perennial.