Variety.
The subjoined advertisement, which appeared, we believe, in the Lynchburg Virginian some time since, escaped our notice until recently. We are gratified that the opinion expressed by a correspondent of the "Messenger," in respect to the stanzas referred to, is sustained in so substantial a manner. We feel authorized to say that the name of the author can be communicated by us if desired.
"The author of the piece which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger, recently, commencing—
'I'd offer thee this heart of mine
If I could love the less,' &c. &c.
will receive a Gold Medal, by writing to 'W. B. T.' Lynchburg, Virginia, and giving his name, which the writer of this notice wishes to have engraved upon it."
From Littel's Museum of Foreign Literature.
Byron and Brougham. It may not be generally known that the late Lord Chancellor Brougham is the real author of the famous article in the Edinburgh Review, on Byron's juvenile production "Hours of Idleness," for which Jeffrey was so severely taken to task in the satire "English Bards and Scottish Reviewers." We have this fact from an authority on which we can place the utmost reliance.
Scraps from the "Spirit of the Times."
A SIGNIFICANT QUESTION. Stuart once asked a painter, who had met with a painter's difficulties, "how he got on in the world?" "Oh," said the other, "so, so! hard work—but I shall get through." "Did you ever hear of any body that did not?" was the rejoinder.
CLERICAL ERROR. An ignorant priest celebrating mass, finding in the rubric, "salta per tria," meaning "skip three" (that is, three pages,) took three leaps in front of the altar, to the astonishment of the congregation.
Lady's Reply to an Impertinent.
"Louisa, you've the brightest eyes,
They look me through, just like a dart."
"Do they, Sir Fop?" Louisa cries;
"If so, I'm sure they see no heart."
A scrap from a conversation between too "literary and fashionable characters," in the immediate vicinity of Thorburn's garden.
"Hist now and I'll sing you a solo."
"Well, sing it so low, then, that nobody can hear it."
A wag of the first water closed an amusing and spirited article in the last Knickerbocker with the following "brace" of clever items. I have been sick of poetry since I saw the Vermont editor's quotation from Shakspeare. Speaking of the free negroes in New York, and their depredation on society, he says, that during the fervors of a summer's solstice, they come,
————"from the sweet South,
Stealing and giving odor."
But more especially, since a friend of mine travestied a noble line of Byron's by applying it—while riding along a road which commanded a view of Weathersfield, Connecticut—to that place of onions, tears and pretty maidens:
"Niobe of nations—there she stands!"
The following epigram from the North American Magazine, is a "Bonne bouche."
I'm sorry dear M——, there is a damp to your joy,
Nor think my old strain of mythology stupid,
When I say that your wife had a right to a boy,
For Venus is nothing without a young Cupid.
But since Fate the boon that you wished for refuses,
By granting three girls to your happy embraces,
She meant, while you wandered abroad with the Muses,
Your wife should be circled at home by the Graces.
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