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This Pope had in his thoughts, but, not knowing how to use what was not his own, he spoiled it, thus:

The well-sung woes shall soothe my ghost;
He best can paint them who can feel them most.

"Martial exploits may be painted; perhaps woes may be painted: but they are surely not painted by being well sung: it is not easy to paint in song, or to sing in colors."

Johnson's method in these excerpts was anticipated by Dryden, who thus took to pieces two lines in Elkanah Settle's tragedy "The Empress of Morocco:"

To flattering lightning our feigned smiles conform
Which, backed with thunder, do but gild a storm.

"Conform a smile to lightning," says Glorious John, "make a smile imitate lightning, and flattering lightning; lightning, sure, is a threatening thing. And this lightning must gild a storm. Now if I must conform my smiles to lightning, then my smiles must gild a storm too: to gild with smiles is a new invention of gilding. And gild a storm by being backed with thunder. Thunder is part of the storm; so one part of the storm must help to gild another part, and help by backing; as if a man would gild a thing the better for being backed, or having a load upon his back. So that here is gilding by conforming, smiling, lightning, backing, and thundering. The whole is as if I should say thus: I will make my counterfeit smiles look like a flattering horse, which, being backed with a trooper, does but gild the battle." And Dryden concludes, "I am mistaken if nonsense is not here pretty thick-sown." But Dryden, too, has laid himself open to the same kind of criticism, as in the lines where he speaks of seraphs that

unguarded leave the sky,

And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie,

a verse upon which a critic says, "I have heard of anchovies dissolved in sauce, but never before of an angel dissolved in hallelujahs."

Perhaps nowhere in all poetic literature, in the same limited space at least, can there be found such an extraordinary confusion of metaphors as in Long. fellow's "Psalm of Life." Here is how a critic in the Saturday Review once exposed this confusion. "The Psalm of Life,' if there be any meaning in the English language, is gibberish. Let us analyze two of the verses:

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"Even if one can conceive of life as a 'solemn main' bordered by the 'sands of time,' how can the mariners on the main leave their footprints on the sands? And what possible comfort can footprints on the sands be to a shipwrecked brother who, despite his shipwreck, still keeps persistently sailing o'er life's solemn main? The brother must have very sharp eyes if he could see footprints on the sand from his raft, for his ship is supposed to have been wrecked long ago. Perhaps Mr. Longfellow was thinking of the footstep which Robinson Crusoe found on the sand of his desert island. But Robinson was not sailing when he detected that isolated phenomenon; nor, when he saw it, did he 'take heart again.'

But Macaulay deemed that he had found the worst of all possible similitudes. In his review of Robert Montgomery's "Poems" he cites these lines:

712

And he goes on to

The soul, aspiring, pants its source to mount,
As streams meander level with their fount.

say, "We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander, level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting upward."

Meteor in the troubled air. Gray, describing his Bard, has the lines,—
Loose his beard and hoary hair

Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air.

The Bard, i. 2.

Milton had already said of the imperial ensign of the tall cherub Azazel, advanced full high over the hosts of the fallen archangel, that it

Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,

Paradise Lost, Book i., l. 537:

and Milton's contemporary, Cowley, in his " Davideis," Book ii., l. 95, says,—
An harmless flaming meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.

These various coincidences have been more frequently noted than the resemblance of all three passages to a line in Heywood's "Four Prentices of London," written certainly not later than 1599. Turnus, the envoy of the Persian Sophi, speaking of his master's victorious flag, that hangs blowing defiance on Sion towers, tells us that it shows

Like a red meteor in the troubled air.

That Milton unconsciously copied Heywood is quite possible; but it is evident that Gray had both Milton and Heywood in mind, for his lines are produced by a neat eclecticism from both.

Michael Angelo's Visiting-Card, the name popularly given to a large charcoal head drawn by Michael Angelo on a wall in the Borghese palace. The story, as told by Vasari, runs that the artist called on Raphael while he was engaged in painting the fresco of La Galatea. Raphael, as it happened, had just stepped out. Thereupon the visitor mounted the ladder, and with a fragment of charcoal drew a colossal head on the wall beneath the cornice. On Raphael's return his Then he departed, refusing to give his name to the servant, but saying, "Show your master that, and he will know who I am." Raphael looked up, servant told him a small black-bearded man had been there and drawn a head A similar story is told on the wall by which he said he would recognize him. saw the head, and exclaimed, "Michael Angelo!" The point of it is that Apelles, on by Pliny of Apelles and Protogenes. arriving at Rhodes, immediately went to call upon Protogenes, but found him absent. The studio was in charge of an old woman, who, after Apelles had looked at the pictures, asked the name of the visitor to give to her master on his return. Apelles did not answer at first, but, observing a large black panel prepared for painting on an easel, he took up a pencil and drew an extremely delicate outline on it, saying, "He will recognize me by this," and departed. On the return of Protogenes, being informed of what had happened, he looked at the outline, and, struck by its extreme delicacy, exclaimed, “That is Apelles: no one else could have executed so perfect a work."

Mickle-Muckle. "Many a mickle makes a muckle," a thrifty Scotch proverb, mainly used to express the same meaning as the English "Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves." Nevertheless

it has a larger application, like the English proverb which it has almost superseded, but which was popular in Chaucer's time:

The proverbe saith that many a smale maketh a grate.

The Persones Tale.

This wider meaning is emphasized by Young in his "Love of Fame," vi., 1. 208: Think naught a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles life.

Frances S. Osgood's poem on "Little Things" has acquired a popularity which is out of all proportion to its literary merit. These lines, especially, have become household words:

Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
Thus the little minutes, humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages of eternity.

*

*

*

Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,

Make our earth an Eden like the heaven above.

Middle Kingdom. China is so called sometimes with the sense of the Land of the Happy Mean, from the habits of mediocrity its inhabitants are supposed to have imbibed from the Confucian philosophy teaching the choice of the middle course in all things. The name is, however, a translation of Tchang-Kooe, as the land is sometimes called by the Chinese, from the notion that they are the true hub of the universe, or that their kingdom is the centre of the world.

Midnight Judges. After their defeat in the Presidential election of 1800, the Federalists in Congress, as one of their last acts, passed a measure creating twenty-three new federal judgeships. The public interests did not demand any increase in the numbers of the judiciary, and the sole purpose of the act was to provide places for Federalist partisans. The retiring President, John Adams, was occupied until after midnight on the last day of his term signing commissions for these newly-created Daniels, who consequently were contemptuously called "Midnight Judges."

Mileage Exposé. An allowance of a certain percentage per mile is provided by law to public functionaries, witnesses subpoenaed from a distance, and the like, as an indemnity for travelling expenses from their homes to the place where their services are required and home again. A similar provision is made to pay travelling expenses to members of Congress to attend the sessions at the national capital. It had been a practice among members, condemned by some of the more conscientious, but adhered to by the large majority, as the unwritten law regulating their perquisites, to exact payment of "constructive" mileage, whether the journey had in fact been undertaken or not, as when an extra session of Congress was called, the members still being present at the capital. In computing their mileage fees, furthermore, members had not been very careful to base their pay on the shortest existing mail-route so that in his exposé of December 22, 1848, Horace Greeley was able to show that the total excess, from this reason, paid to the members of the Thirtieth Congress was seventy-three thousand four hundred and ninetytwo dollars and sixty cents, and the excess in miles was one hundred and eighty-three thousand and thirty-one. Almost every Congressman had failed to make his journey as short as possible. The revelations of Greeley caused considerable ill feeling against him, but resulted in an appreciable reduction of mileage charges, and a few years later the rate of allowance was reduced one-half, and the charge for "constructive" mileage prohibited by law.

Mill will never grind again with the water that has passed, a proverb which has been borrowed from the East. In Trench's Poems," under the head of "Proverbs, Turkish and Persian," it is given as follows: Oh, seize the instant time; you never will

With waters once passed by impel the mill.

Compare the Spanish proverb "Agua pasada no muele molino."

Listen to the water-mill

Through the livelong day,
How the clicking of its wheels
Wears the hours away!
Languidly the autumn wind
Stirs the forest leaves,

From the fields the reapers sing,
Binding up the sheaves;

And a proverb haunts my mind
As a spell is cast,-

"The mill can never grind

With the water that is past."

SARAH DOUDNEY: The Water-Mill.

The proverb is also used by Jean Ingelow, in "A Parson's Letter to a Young Poet:"

The mill can grind no more

With water that hath passed.

Mill-Boy of the Slashes, a political nickname of Henry Clay, who was born in the neighborhood of a region in Hanover County, Virginia, known as "the Slashes" (a local term for low, swampy country), where there was a mill, to which he was often sent on errands, and where he was presumed to have been employed, when a boy.

Miller, Joe, the feigned author of a famous book of jests. Hence a Joe Miller, in vernacular English, is a chestnut, a twice-told tale.

Joe Miller himself was a comedian who flourished in the reign of George the First, and who, off the boards, was so exceptionally grave and taciturn that when any joke was related his friends would father it on him. They even kept up the practice after his death, which occurred in 1738. It appears that he left his family totally unprovided for, and John Mottley was employed to collect all the stray jests current about town and publish them for the benefit of the widow and children, under this title :

"JOE MILLER'S JESTS: OR, THE WITS VADE-MECUM. Being a Collection of the most Brilliant Jests; the Politest Repartees; the most Elegant Bons Mots, and most pleasant short Stories in the English Language. First carefully collected in the Company, and many of them transcribed from the Mouth of the Facetious Gentleman, whose Name they bear; and now set forth and published by his lamentable Friend and former Companion, Elijah Jenkins, Esq.; most Humbly Inscribed to those Choice-Spirits of the Age, Captain Bodens, Mr. Alexander Pope, Mr. Professor Lacy, Mr. Orator Henley, and Job Baker, the Kettle-Drummer. London: Printed and Sold by T. Read, in Dogwell-Court, White- Fryars, Fleet-Street. MDCCXXXIX. (Price One

Shilling.)

Mottley doubtless had a fellow-feeling for the destitute family, for he was himself "a man that hath had losses, go to!" He was the son of Colonel Mottley, who was a favorite with James II. and who followed the fortunes of that prince to France. By the influence of his relative, Lord Howe, the son got a place in the Excise Office at sixteen years of age, but, being obliged to resign on account of unfortunate speculations, he applied to his pen, which had hitherto been only his amusement, for the means of immediate support. In that day plays occupied the place now held by novels, and Mottley natu

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rally turned his attention to the drama. He was tolerably successful as a writer, though his " 'Imperial Captive," Antiochus," 'Penelope," "The Craftsman," and "The Widow Bewitched" are no longer acted. After the question of authorship is settled, the inquiry naturally arises, Who was Elijah Jenkins, Esq., and who were those Choice-Spirits of the Age, Captain Bodens, Mr. Professor Lacy? and above all, who was Job Baker, the Kettle-Drummer? Job stands patiently on the title-page without even a Mr." before his name. As to Mr. Alexander Pope, he is too well known to be mistaken, and Mr. Orator Henley was immortalized in the "Dunciad" as "the Zany of the age." He figures also in one of Hogarth's prints, gesticulating on a platform, a monkey by his side, with the motto "Amen." Disappointed of preferment in the Church, Henley formed the plan of giving lectures or orations, to which the admission was one shilling. On Sundays he took theological subjects, and on Wednes days he poured out his gall in political harangues. On one occasion he filled his Oratory, as he called it, with shoemakers, by announcing to them that he would teach a new and short way of making shoes, which was to cut off the tops of ready-made boots. With regard to the contents, the plain-spoken words used make it impossible to quote many of the anecdotes. To give the reader some idea, however, of the character of the genuine Joe Miller, take the following:

Colonel who made the fine Fire-Works in St. James's Square, upon the peace of Reswick, being in Company with some Ladies, was highly commending the Epitaph just then set up in the Abbey on Mr. Purcel's Monument,

He is gone to that Place where only his own Harmony can be exceeded. Lord, Colonel, said one of the Ladies, the same Epitaph might serve for you, by altering one Word only:

He is gone to that Place where only his own Fire-Works can be exceeded. Again :

Two Brothers coming to be executed once for some enormous Crime: the Eldest was first turned off, without saying one word: The other mounting the Ladder, began to harangue the Crowd, whose Ears were attentively open to hear him, expecting some Confession from him. Good People, says he, my Brother hangs before my Face, and you see what a lamentable Spectacle he makes; in a few Moments shall be turned off too, and then you'll see a Pair of Spectacles.

But here we have a regular "old Joe :"

A poor man, who had a termagant Wife, after a long Dispute, in which she was resolved to have the last Word, told her, if she spoke one more crooked Word he'd beat her Brains out: Why then Ram's Horns, you Rogue, said she, if I die for't.

There are few good jokes among the whole one hundred and ninety-eight that make up the volume. The majority turn chiefly on the mistakes of Irishmen, the thriftlessness of sailors, the simple resource of calling one's opponent an ass, the evils of matrimony, and the failings of parsons. From the earliest to the latest jokers the two latter themes have proved inexhaustibly fruitful. They all assume as an incontestable basis of wit that husbands are heartily tired of their wives, and as women either do not make such broad jokes, or do not succeed in getting them recorded, the point is always against the wives and for the husbands. It is always taken for granted that the husband is the loser in the matrimonial bargain, and that he feels an unaffected and unconcealed delight when the death of his incumbrance sets him free. There are many stories like that of the wild young gentleman who, "having married a very discreet, virtuous young lady, the better to reclaim him, she caused it to be given out at his return that she was dead and had been buried. In the mean time she had so placed herself in disguise as to be able to observe how he took the news; and finding him still the gay, incon

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