In the course of a conversation upon words intractable to rhyme, it was admitted that no counterpart could be found for the word month, by all of the company except one, who instantly repeated the following:

Among our numerous English rhymes,

They say there's none to "month:"
I tried and failed a hundred times,

But succeeded the hundred and onth.

"And why not onth?" he responded to the hearty laugh which saluted him; "why not onth, as well as fourth, fifth, tenth? why not say the hundred and onth time as well as the hundred and first?"

Who will undertake to find a rhyme for the word silver? Butler's facility in overcoming stubborn words is amusing. For instance :

There was an ancient sage philosopher,

Who had read Alexander Ross over.

Hood's Nocturnal Sketch presents a remarkable example of la difficulté vaincue. Most bards find it sufficiently difficult to obtain one rhyming word at the end of a line; but Hood secures three, with an ease which is as graceful as it is surprising:

Even has come; and from the dark park, hark
The signal of the setting sun-one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime-prime time
To go and see the Drury Lane Dane slain,
Or hear Othello's jealous doubt spout out,
Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade,
Denying to his frantic clutch much such;
Or else to see Ducrow, with wide tide, stride
Four horses as no other man can span;
Or in the small Olympic pit, sit split,

Laughing at Liston, while you quiz his phiz.

Anon night comes, and with her wings brings things
Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung:
The gas up blazes with its bright white light,
And paralytic watchmen prowl, howl, growl,
About the streets, and take up Pall-Mall Sal,
Who, trusting to her nightly jobs, robs fobs.

Now thieves do enter for your cash, smash, crash,
Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep,
But, frightened by policeman B 3, flee,

And while they're going, whisper low, "No go!"

Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads,
And sleepers grumble, Drat that cat!

Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls
Some feline foe, and screams in shrill ill will.

Now bulls of Bashan, of a prize size, rise
In childish dreams, and with a roar gore poor
Georgy, or Charles, or Billy, willy nilly;

But nurse-maid, in a night-mare rest, chest-pressed,
Dreameth of one of her old flames, James Groomes,
And that she hears-what faith is man's-Ann's banns
And his, from Reverend Mr. Rice, twice, thrice;
White ribbons flourish, and a stout shout out,

That upward goes, shows Rose knows those beaux' woes.

Conformity of Sense to Sound.

In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;

In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.-COLERIDGE: trans. Schiller.

ARTICULATE IMITATION OF INARTICULATE SOUNDS.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.

POPE: Essay on Criticism.

O'er all the dreary coasts!

Dreadful gleams,

Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,

Sullen moans,

Hollow groans,

And cries of tortured ghosts.

POPE: Ode on St. Cecilia's Day.

On a sudden open fly,

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.-MILTON: Paradise Lost, ii.

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.-MILTON: Lycidas.
His bloody hand

Snatched two unhappy of my martial band,

And dashed like dogs against the stony floor.-POPE: Hom. Odys.
The Pilgrim oft

At dead of night, 'mid his orison, hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitous down-dashed,

Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon.

DYER: Ruins of Rome.

What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce,

With arms, and George, and Brunswick, crowd the verse,
Rend with tremendous sounds your ears asunder,

With drum, gun, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder?
Then all your muse's softer art display:

Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay,

Lull with Amelia's liquid name the nine,

And sweetly flow through all the royal line.-POPE: Sat. I. Remarkable examples are afforded by Dryden's Alexander's Feast, and The Bells of Edgar A. Poe.

IMITATION OF TIME AND MOTION.

When the merry bells ring round,

And the jocund rebecs sound

To many a youth and many a maid

Dancing in the checkered shade.-MILTON: L'Allegro.

Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

POPE: Hom. Odys.

Which urged, and labored, and forced up with pain,
Recoils and rolls impetuous down, and smokes along the plain.

DRYDEN: Lucretius.

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

POPE: Essay on Criticism.

POPE: Essay on Criticism.

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS FROM UNFAMILIAR SOURCES. 367

Oft on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfew sound,

Over some wide-watered shore,

Swinging slow with sullen roar.-MILTON: Il Penseroso.

The well-known hexameters of Virgil, descriptive respectively of the galloping of horses over a resounding plain, and of the heavy blows in alternately hammering the metal on the anvil, afford good examples,-the dactylic, of rapidity, the spondaic, of slowness.

Quadrupe- dante pu- | trem soni- | tu quatit | ungula | campum,

Eneid, viii. 596. Illi in- ter se- | se mag- na vi | brachia | tollunt.-Eneid, viii. 452.

IMITATION OF DIFFICULTY AND EASE.

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,

The line, too, labors, and the words move slow, &c.-POPE: Ess. on Criticism.
He through the thickest of the throng gan threke.-CHAUCER: Knight's Tale.
And strains from hard-bound brains six lines a year.-POPE: Sat. Frag.
Part huge of bulk,

Wallowing, unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Tempest the ocean.-MILTON: Paradise Lost, vii.

He came, and with him Eve, more loath, though first
To offend, discountenanced both, and discomposed.

So he with difficulty and labor hard

MILTON: Paradise Lost, x.

Moved on, with difficulty and labor he.-MILTON: Paradise Lost, ii.

Familiar Quotations from Unfamiliar
Sources.

CHRISTMAS Comes but once a year.-THOMAS TUSSER, 1580.
It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Originally written,

It is an ill wind turns none to good.-THOMAS TUSSER.

368 FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS FROM UNFAMILIAR SOURCES.

Look before you leap.

Originally,

Look ere thou leap.-THOMAS TUSSER.

And

Look before you ere you leap.-BUTLER: Hudibras, c. 2.
Bid the devil take the hindmost.-Hudibras, c. 2.

Count the chickens ere they're hatched.-Hudibras, c. 3.
Necessity, the tyrants' plea.-MILTON.
Peace hath her victories, &c.—MILTON.

The old man eloquent.-MILTON: Tenth Sonnet.
On the light fantastic toe.-MILTON: L'Allegro.
The devil may cite Scripture for his purpose.

SHAKSPEARE: Merchant of Venice.

Assume a virtue though you have it not.-Hamlet.
Brevity is the soul of wit.-Hamlet.

The sere,

the yellow leaf.-Macbeth.

Curses not loud, but deep.-Macbeth.
Make assurance doubly sure.-Macbeth.

Thereby hangs a tale.-As You Like It.

Good wine needs no bush.-As You Like It.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.-Troilus and Cressida.
And made a sunshine in a shady place.-SPENSER: Fairy Queen.
Exhausted worlds and then imagined new.

DR. JOHNSON: Prologue at the Opening of the Drury Lane Theatre, 1747.
To point a moral or adorn a tale.

DR. JOHNSON: Vanity of Human Wishes.
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no fibs.-GOLDSMITH.
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

GOLDSMITH: Retaliation.

Winter lingering chills the lap of May.-GOLDSMITH: The Traveller.

Of two evils I have chose the least.-PRIOR.

His (God's) image cut in ebony.-THOMAS FULLER.

Richard's himself again.-COLLEY CIBBER.
Building castles in the air.

Originally written,

Building castles in Spain.-SCARRON.

Hope, the dream of a waking man.-BASIL.
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.

CONGREVE: The Mourning Bride.

Let who may make the laws of a people, allow me to write their ballads,

and I'll guide them at my will.-SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war. Originally,

When Greeks joined Grecks, then was the tug of war.

NAT LEE: Play of Alexander the Great, 1692. Westward the course of empire takes its way.-BISHOP BERKELEY.