thanks to Mr. G. W. Bonner, for doing all that Wood could. or should, for my designs; he has acted, in fact, a practical paradox, by being most friendly in cutting me, and has thereby rendered me his debtor, both in impression and expression.

To divide myself amongst those to whom I owe questions, suggestions, and good wishes, I should be like a hashed hare with many friends. The major part of my book, however, is miner than mine last year; and as such, I commend it to its course, sincerely hoping that what is my Work may be the amusement and relaxation of others, in Town, in Country, and in the Suburbs.

SONNET.

"Sweets to the sweet-farewell."—Hamlet.

TIME was I liked a cheesecake well enough—
All human children have a sweetish taste;

I used to revel in a pie, or puff,

Or tart-we all were Tartars in our youth;
To meet with jam or jelly was good luck,
All candies most complacently I crumped,

A stick of liquorice was good to suck,

And sugar was as often liked as lumped!
On treacle's "linked sweetness long drawn out,"
Or honey I could feast like any fly;

I thrilled when lollipops were hawked about;

How pleased to compass hard-bake or bull's-eye; How charmed if Fortune in my power cast

Elecampane-but that campaign is past.

[The next poem was written for "The Forget-Me-Not" for this year, to accompany a picture by J. Knight.]

THE PAINTER PUZZLED.

"Draw, Sir !"-Old Play.

WELL, Something must be done for May,
The time is drawing nigh,

To figure in the catalogue

And woo the public eye.

Something I must invent and paint ;

But oh my wit is not

Like one of those kind substantives

That answer Who and What?

Oh, for some happy hit! to throw

The gazer in a trance:
But posé là-there I am posed,
As people say in France.

In vain I sit and strive to think,
I find my head, alack!
Painfully empty, still, just like,
A bottle "on the rack."

In vain I task my barren brain
Some new idea to catch,
And tease my hair-ideas are shy
Of "coming to the scratch."

In vain I stare upon the air,
No mental visions dawn;
A blank my canvas still remains,
And worse a blank undrawn:

An "aching void" that mars my rest,
With one eternal hint,

For, like the little goblin page,
It still keeps crying "Tint!"

But what to tint ay, there's the rub,
That plagues me all the while,
As, Selkirk-like, I sit without
A subject for my i'le.

"Invention's seventh heaven" the bard Has written-but my case

Persuades me that the creature dweus In quite another piace.

Sniffing the lamp, the ancients thought

Demosthenes must toil ;

But works of art are works indeed,
And always" smell of oil."

Yet painting pictures, some folks think.

Is merely play and fun;

That what is on an easel set

Must easily be done.

But, zounds! if they could sit in this

Uneasy easy-chair,

They'd very soon be glad enough

To cut the Camel's hair.

Oh! who can tell the pang it is
To sit as I this day—

With all my canvas spread, and yet
Without an inch of way.

Till, mad at last to find I am
Amongst such empty skullers,

I feel that I could strike myself

But no-I'll "strike my colours."

[The succeeding Address to Mr. Wrench, like the one to Gibbon Wakefield, exists in my possession as a newspaper cutting. It might have been extracted from some other source by the Editor-but I have been unable to trace it.]

TO MR. WRENCH AT THE ENGLISH OPERA
HOUSE*

Oh very pleasant Mr. Wrench,-
The first, upon the pit's first bench,
I've scrambled to my place,

To hail thee on these summer boards
With joy, even critic-craft affords,
And watch thy welcome face!

Ere thou art come, how I rejoice
To hear thy free and easy voice,
Lounging about the slips;

Aud then thy figure comes and owns

The voice as careless as the tones

That saunter from thy lips.

The Adelphi.

VOL. VI.

14

Oh come and cast a quiet glance,

To glad a nameless friend, askance
The lamps' ascending glare;

Better it is than bended knees,

Heart-squeezing, and profound conges

That old familiar air.

Even in the street, in that apt face,
Full of gay gravity, I trace

The soul of native whim;

A constant, never-failing store

Of quiet mirth, that ne'er runs o'er,
But ay is near the brim.

Quoth I, "There goes a happy wight.
Inimical to spleen and spite,

And careless of all care;

Who oils the ruffled waves of strife,
And makes the work-day suit of life
Of very easy wear.

Lord! if he had some people's ills

To cope their hungry bonds and bills,

How faintly they would tease;

Things that have cost both tears and sighsTheir foes, as motelings in his eyes-

Their duns, his summer fleas !

The stage, I guess, is not thy school—
Thou dost not antic like the fool
That wept behind his mask;
Thy playing is thy play-a sport-
A revel, as perform'd at Court,
And not a trade—a task!