He bounded forth against the prowling sinner,
And, uninvited, came to the Fox Dinner.
Sly Reynard, heedful of the coming doom,
Thought, self-deceived,
He should not be perceived,
Hiding his brush within a neighbouring broom;
But quite unconscious of a Poacher's snare,
And caught in copper noose,
And looking like a goose,
Found that his fate had "hung upon a hare;"
His tricks and turns were render'd of no use to him,
And, worst of all, he saw old surly Tray
Coming to play
Tray, an old Mastiff bred at Dunstable,
Under his Master, a most special constable,
Instead of killing Reynard in a fury,
Seized him for legal trial by a Jury;
But Juries-Æsop was a sheriff then-
Consisted of twelve Brutes and not of Men.
But first the Elephant sat on the body-
I mean the Hen-and proved that she was dead,
To the veriest fool's head
Of the Booby and the Noddy.
And then the Owl was call'd-for, mark,
The Owl can witness in the dark.
To make the evidence more plain,
The Lynx connected all the chain.
In short there was no quirk or quibble
At which a legal Rat could nibble;
The Culprit was as far beyond hope's bounds,
As if the Jury had been packed-of hounds.
Reynard, however, at the utmost nick,
Is seldom quite devoid of shift and trick;
Accordingly our cunning Fox,
Through certain influence, obscurely channel'd,
A friendly Camel got into the box,
When 'gainst his life the Jury was impanel'd..
Now, in the Silly Isles such is the law,
If Jurors should withdraw,
They are to have no eating and no drinking,
Till all are starved into one way of thinking.
Thus Reynard's Jurors, who could not agree,
Were lock'd up strictly, without bit or mummock,
Till every Beast that only had one stomach,
Bent to the Camel, who was blest with three.
To do them justice, they debated
From four till ten, while dinner waited,
When thirst and hunger got the upper,
And each inclined to mercy, and hot supper:
"Not guilty" was the word, and Master Fox
Was freed to murder other hens and cocks.
What moral greets us by this tale's assistance
But that the Solon is a sorry Solon,
Who makes the full stop of a Man's existence
Depend upon a Colon?
AN ASTRONOMICAL ANECDOTE.
"I cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this self-same Starling." STERNE'S SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.
AMONGST professors of astronomy,
Adepts in the celestial economy,
The name of H******
****I's very often cited;
And justly so, for he is hand and glove
With ev'ry bright intelligence above;
Indeed, it was his custom so to stop,
Watching the stars upon the house's top,
That once upon a time he got be-knighted.
In his observatory thus coquetting
With Venus- or with Juno gone astray,
All sublunary matters quite forgetting
In his flirtations with the winking stars,
Acting the spy-it might be upon Mars-
A new André ;
Or, like a Tom of Coventry, sly peeping,
At Dian sleeping;
Or ogling thro' his glass
Some heavenly lass
Tripping with pails along the Milky Way;
Or looking at that Wain of Charles the Martyrs:-
Thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky,
When lo! a something with a tail of flame
'My stars!"-he always puts that stress on my-
My stars and garters!"
"A comet, sure as I'm alive!
A noble one as I should wish to view;
It can't be Halley's though, that is not due
Till eighteen thirty-five.
Magnificent!-how fine his fiery trail!
Zounds! 'tis a pity, though he comes unsought-
Unask'd-unreckon'd,-in no human thought-
He ought he ought-he ought
To have been caught
With scientific salt upon his tail!"
"I look'd no more for it, I do declare,
Than the Great Bear!
As sure as Tycho Brahe is dead,
It really enter'd in my head
No more than Berenice's Hair!"
Thus musing, Heaven's Grand Inquisitor
Sat gazing on the uninvited visiter
Till John, the serving-man, came to the upper
Regions, with "Please your Honour, come to supper."
"Supper! good John, to-night I shall not sup Except on that phenomenon-look up!"
"Not sup!" cried John, thinking with consternation That supping on a star must be starvation, Or ev'n to batten
On Ignes Fatui would never fatten.
His visage seem'd to say,-that very odd is,-
But still his master the same tune ran on,
"I can't come down,-go to the parlour, John,
And say I'm supping with the heavenly bodies."
"The heavenly bodies!" echoed John, "Ahem!"
His mind still full of famishing alarms,
"Zooks, if your Honour sups with them,
In helping, somebody must make long arms!"
He thought his master's stomach was in danger,
But still in the same tone replied the Knight,
"Go down, John, go, I have no appetite,
Say I'm engaged with a celestial stranger."
Quoth John, not much au fait in such affairs,
"Wouldn't the stranger take a bit down stairs?"
"No," said the master, smiling, and no wonder, At such a blunder,
"The stranger is not quite the thing you think, He wants no meat or drink,
And one may doubt quite reasonably whether He has a mouth,
Seeing his head and tail are join'd together, Behold him, there he is, John, in the South."
John look'd up wtih his portentous eyes,
Each rolling like a marble in its socket,
At last the fiery tad-pole spies,
And, full of Vauxhall reminiscence, cries,
"A rare good rocket!"
"A what! A rocket, John! Far from it! What you behold, John, is a comet;
One of those most eccentric things
That in all ages
Have puzzled sages
And frighten'd kings;
With fear of change that flaming meteor, John, Perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range""Do he?" cried John;
"Well, let him flare on,
I haven't got no sovereigns to change!"
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