This no extraordinary fact is,

For who'd the self-denial practise

at length clearly ascertained to have written the lives of two other illustrious Jacks, viz. JACK THE GIANT-KILLER, and JACK HICKATHRIFT; and although we can at this day authentically enumerate no other subjects whom his Muse has immortalized besides himself, his cat, and a venerable cotemporary matron, Mistress Joan Cole, yet certain erudite peripatetic philosophers (who are wont to lecture gratis upon questions of similar importance in the shop of Mr. Tho. Paine, bookseller, at the Mews Gate) scruple not to attribute to his pen the terse and masterly epitaph on a descendant of the great Tom Thumb, who had figured as a subaltern sheriff's officer in the county of Stafford :

Here lies Toм THUMB,

A Baily-bum:

When he was dead

The Devil said,

"Come, Tom, come!"

It is not indeed to be denied, that those sagacious "friends" of Jack the Second, at whose "intercession" he has been induced to offer himself for the vacant chair of Vice President of the Society of Arts (see a printed circular Address to the several Members of that society, dated December 30, 1800, and subscribed, John Holliday), are desirous of decorating their favourite author with this additional wreath of glory, maintaining, that from his professional habits and pursuits, he is more likely to have been conversant with the merits, and interested in the fate of the deceased practitioner, than his proto-type, and rival biographer, Jack Sprat, or Jack the First; and appealing, in support of their hypothesis, to the internal evidence of the epitaph itself, which they aver to be conceived and indited with the very same

That goes to constitute a dunce,

Where youths can eat and learn at once?

At once in wisdom grow and stature

By batt'ning upon literature ?

Where league 'twixt belly 's form'd and head
By alphabet of gingerbread;

Pindaric boldness and spirit which Jack the Second so happily arrogates to himself in his advertisement of the British Oak before-mentioned.

When, however, we regard the respective merits of each of these Literary Phænomena in the aggregate, and candidly consider " quare sibi nectat uterque coronam," it is presumed that no one will be so rash as to attempt to decide, at least within the present century, whether the palm of pre-eminence belongs to Jack the First or to Jack the Second, but will leave a point of such vast moment, as an inexhaustible fund of controversy for the learned, till the commencement, or rather till the close, of the Millennium.

To have started so grand an argument is a sufficient honour for the writer of this note, whose enthusiastic admiration of Jack Sprat and his Cat, and of Jack Holliday and his British Oak, can only be equalled by the veneration which the latter professes for the British Nisus and Euryalus, Anglice, Lords St. Vincent and Nelson, (see British Oak, p. 40,) and who, not to be sparing of sauce for such a SUPERFINE BRACE OF JACKS, will wind up his eulogy in the words of a poet far inferior to either of them.

FELICES AMBO! si quid mea carmina possint,
Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet ævo!

Whose erudition appertains

To chitterlings as well as brains,

Which boys, whom matrons sage commend,

Digest before they comprehend:

Dry-nurses, and Doctores blandi*

Instruction blend with sugar-candy;

Puerile propensities discerning,

Make the red-lane the road to learning;

With spice and treacle in alliance

They mould the elements of science;
Economists of birch, cajole us
With many a literary bolus,
Whose more refin'd ingredients gain
A lodgement in the pericrane,

And would full oft betray our fancies

To literate extravagancies,

If not prevented, ere we grow men,

By Ballast-learning in abdomen.

Hence school-boys scout the birchen tree:

That weed of aristocracy,

-Ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi

Doctores; elementa velint ut discere prima.

VOL. II.

F

Hor. Sat. 1.

So many ages misapplied,

No longer wounds tyronic hide.-
In these enlighten'd days is birch
Preparative for state or church?

No.

-Let us be no more beguil'd

By "spare the rod and spoil the child,"
Nor heed the cry of surly Sam :*
Who tells us-tho' 'tis all a flam-

"Boy's heads, where flagellation fails,
Discharge the ransom of their tails."
Though Greek and Latin heretofore

Were in request, they're now a bore.

We skim, from abstract and translation,
The cream of classic information:

Like cream from London cows translated,
Or butter-milk sophisticated.

+What lad of spirit cares a groat,
How Diomed and Ajax fought,

*The late Dr. Samuel Johnson.

"There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there: so that what the boys

get at ONE END they lose at THE OTHER."

Boswell, Life of Johnson, 8vo. Vol. II. p. 285.

+ Nunc Athletarum studiis.

Hor. E. lib. ii. Ep. 1.

While at each other hurl defiance

The sons of pugilistic science;

Who on black eyes and bloody nose

Read lectures to our Bond-street beaux ;
Instruct clerks-militant and laymen
To spar with coal-heavers and draymen;
Make lords and crop-ear'd petit-maitres
Their prowess prove on tavern waiters;
Challenge their corn-cutter and taylor
To arms, and catch contagious valour
From contact with each ragamuffin.
Big Ben, Mendoza, and the Ruffian.
Who with Demosthenes or Tully
The lining of his skull would sully,
While Demagogues of mickle worth

At Anniversaries hold forth?

While T**rn*y, Gr****n, G**y, and J*k**l,
Esk**e, law's cock, its Chicken Michael,

*These appellations of our modern pugilists assimilate more happily with the sounding names of Homer's warriors than those of Justice Shallow's juvenile associate champions : "There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black "George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele a "Cotswold man.-You had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns of court again." Shakspeare, Hen. IV.