Churchill, Cowper, Shelley, and has been advanced upon mightily in the various measures of Byron. Dryden was a great Poet in an artificial age. That he was not greater we may lament; but, take him as he is, and we learn that he has strengthened, and given point as well as purpose to our English tongue :

SMITH AND HIS SCRIPTOGRAPH.

It is usual to attach the moral to the end of a narrative, but, to save trouble, and, in case I should forget to do so, I will at once state, the moral of this strictly authentic incident is, that it is both unwise and unprofitable to spend a pound in the endeavour to save a shilling.

My hero, Mr. John Smith, requiring some time ago a few copies of a business circular, was casting about for the most economical method of obtaining them. In an evil moment, (perhaps his guardian angel was taking his "forty winks" at the time), instead of going straight to his printer like a sensible man, and getting his work done for a few shillings without further trouble, he must needs consult Brown, his bosom friend, (a clerk in the sealing wax and wafer office), about the matter. "Why not make a scriptograph and copy your circular yourself; you can knock off a hundred impressions in no time, and so save the expense of printing?"—" If you'll promise never to tell anybody I'll get you the receipt, quite a secret, I can tell you," continued the enthusiastic Brown.

After some delay, Smith procured the wonderful recipe, which Brown assured him was only known to three persons besides himself, viz :—a bedridden old lady in the workhouse; a gentleman who was at that moment most assiduously studying practical geology at Portland at the expense of a generous and sympathetic country; and the manufacturer of the Royal Scriptographic Copying Process, who would infallibly call down all the terrors and penalties of the law, Brown said, if he found any daring being attempting to make a scriptograph of his own. The ingredients composing the recipe were as follow:

I give the actual component parts fearlessly, because, after reading this veritable narrative, no one will be likely to infringe the rights of the patentee of the Royal Scriptographic Copying Press, or any other

man.

When Mr. Smith went to the nearest chemist to buy the necessary chemicals, he was rather astonished at being greeted with: "I see you are going to make a scriptograph, sir." "I thought there were only three persons who knew how to make one," reflected Smith as he wended his way home to Calphurnia Villa, " Brown has deceived me, that is certain," and he hummed a bar or two of " Murmur, gentle Liar," to soothe his ruffled feelings. After sending for all the available weights and measures in the neighbourhood-for those in use at Calphurnia Villa were few in number and defective in quality, and the work to be successful depended on perfect accuracy in its composition-behold, the worthy, but ill-fated Smith, now duly embarked in his enterprise. Packets, and jars, and phials of all shapes and sizes were piled upon the kitchen table-for it was in that humble but useful apartment Smith was compelled to set up his laboratory-the drawing room and parlour being strictly forbidden him by Arabella, his lawful spouse. So the mixing went on to the disgust of Anna Maria, the servant girl, and Thomoso, the cat, who were both naturally indignant at the invasion of their joint domain.

The operation was performed with fair success until the sulphate of dynamite had to be duly handled and weighed out, when Smith, dropping a little by accident on the floor, it unfortunately exploded. No lives were lost, but the casualties were several-Anna Maria's "lunatic fringe" was singed off her head, Thomoso's whiskers were blown off, as were also the baby Montmorency Smith's ears. However, it might have been worse, and in the investigation and prosecution of scientific studies such little contre-temps are, I believe, not unfrequent.

At last all was complete; the compound was placed in a jar, and that again in a large saucepan, to undergo that mysterious culinary agency known as simmering; whilst Smith père, and the little Smiths, like Shakespeare's witches round about the cauldron, threw in the poisoned messes; and, as the scriptograph that was to be, began to simmer, Onesimus Smith, the eldest boy, solemnly pronounced the incantation: "Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” And bubble it did with a vengeance; and, more than bubble, it stank intolerably. The worst offender was the oil of Arabia, ironically so called, probably, as it possessed, in a quiescent and dormant state, the odour of decomposed fish, and, when excited by simmering, it became, as Mrs. Smith remarked, "perfectly polecatty." The mingled and consolidated perfume became at last so powerful, that the Smith family, like the Home Rulers are reported to do at Westminster, "left the house in a body." The poet who complained of the numerous stinks besides several stenches of Cologne, had never been present at the fabrication of a scriptograph, or he would have hailed that ancient city with feelings of relief. At last the scriptographic gruel was turned out, "thick and slab," and left to cool in the lid of a biscuit tin, that being the nearest approach to the Royal Scriptographic Copying Press, which could be devised so as to be strictly inexpensive. A bottle of patent scriptographic ink having been purchased, Smith

sat down to try his prowess. He began at ten o'clock a.m., with a flourish of his pen to write Birmingham at the head of his paper; he got as far as Birm-then the pen refused to proceed; at eleven he reached Birming-but it was not until past noon that the word was completed. Smith, now in accents, not loud but deep, anathematised the name of Brown. He was not a very learned mathematician, but, at this rate of progress he calculated it would take about six weeks to complete his circular. To rush from Calphurnia Villa, to jump on the bus, and to reach the sealing wax and wafer office was the work of exactly twenty-three minutes. Brown couldn't understand his failure at all, but suggested a different kind of pen; Smith, acting upon his advice, returned home, provided with all kinds of pens-steel, gold, aluminium, in fact, every material known to Mr. Gillott and his competitors. After a good evening's work, he succeeded in covering the table-cloth, his fingers and face with scriptographic ink, whilst the paper remained spotless, except where the word Birmingham had been laboriously scratched in. But, next morning, the indefatigable Smith was rewarded by a nearly complete success. Discarding the bronze, the aluminium, even the gold, he bethought himself of the simple and humble goose-quill, and was soon delighted by the appearance of his circular on the paper. He placed it carefully face downwards on the scriptograph, then rubbed it firmly all over so as to get a good impression.

"It must

To his unutterable dismay, however, when he proceeded to remove the paper, the composition, which had taken so much trouble to make; which had cost Montmorency his ears; which had deprived the worthy Thomoso of those appendages so long the admiration of the tabbies of the neighbourhood; and which, finally, had emitted such an intolerable odour-came off, positively peeled off like an onion, and, in a moment, the scriptograph was a dismal wreck. Most men would have succumbed after such a disaster, but not the heroic Smith. With the courage of a Spartan he determined to "simmer" the mess once more. have been the bichromate of putty that did it," he remarked to his wife, more in sorrow than in anger, "I believe there was a fly got in after İ weighed it, and that must have thrown it out." In vain his wife implored him to abandon the enterprise; she adjured him by all that was most sacred to stay his hands-to think of the furniture, the imperilled limbs of the little Smiths; aye, even poor injured and outraged Thomoso. In vain, Smith père was inflexible. "Go," he thundered to Anna Maria, " prepare me once more the largest saucepan, and the empty preserve jar;" and, as that exemplary maiden left his awful presence she muttered savagely, "Scriptigrams or no scriptigrams, I ain't a going to stop here to have me 'ed dinnymited off every five minits, not if they crouned me."

This time, Smith having added a fly's weight more of the bichromate of putty, all went well. The oil of Arabia again asserted its presence very forcibly, and an old gentleman passing on the other side of the road was so upset by the odour that he went home and wrote a long

letter to the papers, in which he referred at length to Mr. Avery and certain unpopular vehicles in no measured or sparing terms. A next door neighbour sent in to say that if the dead horse was not removed, he should, and summon Smith for creating a nuisance. But the spirit of Smith was not to be broken by threats; he thought of his ancestors-they had been military button makers-and he swore to be worthy of them. In spite of family tears and neighbourly denunciations, a scriptograph he would have if it cost him all he had in the world.

Once more the gruel, "thick and slab," reposed in the biscuit tin lid, and Smith began his task again with renewed energy; but the fates and the scriptographic ink seemed to be united against him; the pen would trace two or three words, and then refuse to proceed any further.

Every day Smith called on Brown; he bullied, he implored, he threatened him to reveal the secret of the scriptograph; he even pursued that gentleman to his home with some query concerning the scriptograph; he waylaid him as he left church to ask what would be the effect of a double portion of bichromate of putty, and numerous other absurd questions; so that finally, Brown cut him dead, and refused him entrance into the sealing-wax office on any pretence what

ever.

If the iron had not entered the soul of Smith, at least the scriptographic ink had got about his body, for the blue colour was made to stay its stains and held on like a bull dog. The little Smiths had got, according to their mother's belief, the nasty stuff into their systems, and their faces and hands presented a beautiful marbly appearance, which might, perhaps, in a few years' time, gradually wear off. But it is time to bring this veracious narrative to a conclusion, and we must leave Smith and his scriptograph.

We might dwell further on his mishaps. Are there not traces to be found throughout Calphurnia Villa? How he simmered his ingredients again and again; how he tried to improve upon the recipe by adding other and still more pungent substances, with the same result as beforefailure-how the sulphate of dynamite exploded and blew the kitchen roof off; how Thomoso, disgusted by the spectacle of his domestic comfort wrecked and utterly destroyed, went to the bad altogether, and spent his evenings on the tiles, and shortly after perished in a midnight broil; how the neighbours brought actions against Smith, and his business declined from neglect; all this I must omit to detail, suffice it that he at last gave up the idea of making a scriptograph, but, still thinks, if life were not so short, it would be possible, in a hundred years or so, to make one that would work. In fine, he has arrived at the conclusion, that in future he will call in the aid of the printer, should he need one again, and so save fifty pounds at the very least.

W. H. T.