'Squire Fudge's clerk presents

To Reverend Sir his compliments;

Is griev'd to say an accident

Has just occurr'd which will prevent

The Squire, though now a little better,—
From finishing this present letter.

Just when he'd got to "Dam 'me, we'll
His Honour, full of martial zeal,

Grasp'd at his crutch, but not being able
To keep his balance or his hold,

Tumbled, both self and crutch, and roll'd Like ball and bat, beneath the table.

All's safe, the table, chair, and crutch ;

Nothing, thank God, is broken much,

But the Squire's head, which, in the fall,
Got bump'd considerably-that's all.

At this no great alarm we feel,

As the Squire's head can bear a deal.

Wednesday Morning.

Squire much the same-head rather light,—

Rav'd about "Barbers' Wigs" all night.

Our house-keeper, old Mrs. Griggs,
Suspects that he meant "barbarous Whigs."

LETTER IX.

FROM LARRY O'BRANIGAN, TO HIS WIFE JUDY.

As it was but last week that I sint you a letther,
You'll wondher, dear Judy, what this is about;
And, throth, it's a letther myself would like betther,
Could I manage to lave the contints of it out;
For sure, if it makes even me onaisy,

Who takes things quiet, 'twill dhrive you crazy.

Oh Judy, that riverind Murthagh, bad scran to him! That ev'r I should come to 've been sarvant-man to him,

Or so far demane the O'Branigan blood,

And my Aunts, the Diluvians (whom not ev'n the

Flood

Was able to wash away clane from the earth)*

As to sarve one whose name, of mere yestherday's

birth,

Can no more to a great O, before it, purtend,
Than mine can to wear a great Q at its end.

But that's now all over-last night I gev warnin',
And, masth'r as he is, will discharge him this mornin'.
The thief of the world!-but it's no use balraggin';†—
All I know is, I'd fifty times rather be draggin'
Ould ladies up hill to the ind of my days,

Than with Murthagh to rowl in a chaise, at my aise,
And be forc'd to discind thro' the same dirty ways.

"I am of your Patriarchs, I, a branch of one of your antediluvian families,-fellows that the Flood could not wash away."-Congreve, Love for Love.

To balrag is to abuse, Mr. Lover makes it ballyrag, and he is high authority: but if I remember rightly, Curran in his national stories, used to employ the word as above.-See Lover's most amusing and genuinely Irish work, the "Legends and Stories of Ireland."

G

Arrah, sure, if I'd heerd where he last show'd his

phyz,

I'd have known what a quare sort of monsther he is; For, by gor, 't was at Exether Change, sure enough, That himself and his other wild Irish showed off; And it's pity, so 't is, that they had n't got no man Who knew the wild crathurs to act as their showman,Sayin'"Ladies and Gintlemen, plaze to take notice, How shlim and how shleek this black animal's coat is; All by raison, we're towld, that the nathur o' th'

baste

Is to change its coat once in its life-time, at laste; And such objiks, in our counthry, not bein' com

mon ones,

Are bought up, as this was, by way of Fine Nome

nons.

In regard of its name,-why, in throth, I'm consarn'd
To differ on this point so much with the Larn'd,
Who call it a Morthimer,' whereas the craythur
Is plainly a 'Murthagh,' by name and by nathur."