With a chain and a trundle bed following at th' heels, And will they not cry, then, the world runs a-wheels?" * Yet would I take the stars to be cruel, If the crab and the rope-maker ever fight duel, So we say, and so, no doubt, say our readers; but as 66 nonsense has so much to do with Poetry in almost every shape, we should have been guilty of an unpardonable omission, had we neglected to give them a taste (although, perhaps, it may have been a surfeit) of what are, professedly, "NONSENSE VERSES." POPE'S NURSE. THERE is in Twickenham Church-yard an inscription to the memory of the woman who nursed Pope, of which the following is a copy: "To the Memory of Mary Beach, who died November 5, 1725, aged 78. "Alexander Pope, whom she nursed in his infancy, and whom she affectionately attended for twenty-eight years, in gratitude for such a faithful old servant, erected this stone." It is to this epitaph that Lady Mary Wort ley Montague alludes in the following sarcastic lines, written on her quarrel with Pope. "No wonder our poet's so stout and so strong, Since he lugg'd and he tugg'd at the bubby so long." DRINKING CUPS. EVERY reader of poetry has heard of Lord Byron's celebrated goblet, at Newstead Abbey, formed of a human skull, on which the fine verses beginning, "Start not, nor deem my spirit fled," are inscribed. It is mounted in silver, somewhat after the fashion of the winecups formed of the shell of the ostrich-egg, and in depth and capaciousness would, probably, rival the great and blessed Bear of the Baron Bradwardine, should that memento of ancient Scottish hospitality be yet upon the face of the earth. A superabundance of gratuitous horror has been expended on the circumstance of Lord Byron's having converted the head-piece of one of his ancestors into a stoup to hold his wine. But this fancy of the noble Bard is, by no means, an original one. Mandeville tells us of the old Guebres, who exposed the dead bodies of their parents to the fowls of the air, reserving only the skulls, of which, says he, "the son maketh a cuppe, and therefrom drynkethe he with gret devocion." The Italian Poet, Marino, to whom our own Milton owes many of the splendid situations in "Paradise Lost," makes the conclave of devils, in his "Pandemonium," quaff wine from the cranium of Minerva; and we have, also, a similar allusion in a Runic Ode, preserved by Wormius, where Lodbrog, disdaining life, and thinking of the joys of immortality, which he was about to share in the hall of Odin, exclaims, "Bibamus cerevisiam Ex concavis craniorum crateribus." In Middleton's "Witch," the Duke takes out a bowl of a similar description, when the Lord-Governor ejaculates, "A skull, my Lord!” and his Grace replies, "Call it a soldier's cup. * Our Duchess, I know, will pledge us, though the cup The same singular appropriation of dead men's sconces is referred to, on one or two occasions, by Massinger; and from the following quotation from a speech of Torrenti, in Dekker's "Wonder of a Kingdom," we may presume, that Lord Byron was not the first person who mounted human skulls in silver. "Would I had here ten thousand soldiers' heads, Their skulls set all in silver to drink healths To his confusion who first invented war." ADDISON, AND THE FAMOUS DUKE OF WHARTON. "IT was the Marquis of Wharton who first got Addison a seat in the House of Commons; and soon after carried him with him to Winchelsea. Addison was charmed with his son, (afterwards Duke of Wharton,) not only as his patron's son, but for the uncommon degree of genius that appeared in him. He used to converse, and walk often with him. One day, the little Lord led him to see some of their fine running-horses. There were very high gates to the fields; and, at the first of them, his young friend fumbled in his pockets, and seemed vastly concerned that he could not find the key. Addison said it was no matter; he could easily climb over it. As he said this, he began mounting the bars, and when he was on the very top of the gate, the little Lord whips out his key, and sets the gate a-swinging, and so, for some time, kept the great man in that ridiculous situation." SPENCE. 66 A FEW years hence, prior to the heroes of the Prize-ring attaining that great degree of popularity which it has latterly been their good fortune to enjoy, no Bard arose to celebrate their achievements, to exult in their triumphs, or to console the beaten unfortunate on the withering of his laurels. Pugilistic Pindars have, at length, sprung up, and the Flash Poetry that has emanated from their pens will, decidedly, (in many instances, at least,) descend to posterity, and be read by new aspirants to the honours of a four-and-twenty foot ring, when the great characters who have called it forth shall be (as Shakspeare hath it) "sleeping with their ancestors." In a book of this description, whose avowed object is to treasure up as many gems connected with Poets and Poetry, of every class, sex, and age, as can be conveniently contained in three volumes, it would be an omission of the most conspicuous and glaring description, if we did not notice "the Flash Poetry" of the moderns. Thomas Moore, a name imperishable in lyric verse and flash poetics, struck, we believe, the |