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The greatest wit of our company, next to myself, is a Bencher, of the neighbouring Inn, who in his youth frequented the ordinaries about Charing Cross, and pretends to have been intimate with Jack Ogle. He has about ten distichs of Hudibras without book, and never leaves the club till he has applied them all.
I found also, that my good friend the Bencher had already spent three of his distichs; and only waiting an opportunity to hear a sermon spoken of that he might introduce the couplet where "a stick" rhymes to "ecclesiastic." At my entrance into the room, they were naming a red petticoat and a cloak, by which I found that the Bencher had been diverting them with a story of Jack Ogle.
Look, how many plumes are placed On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise In the report, as many tongues she wears." Compare with these jagged misshapen distichs the neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlimited abundance. We take the first lines on which we open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better nor worse than the rest:
More remarkable, however, is his Geistreiche Sinn-und Schluss-reime , afterwards called Cherubinischer Wandersmann . This is a collection of "Reimsprüche" or rhymed distichs embodying a strange mystical pantheism drawn mainly from the writings of Jakob Böhme and his followers. Silesius delighted specially in the subtle paradoxes of mysticism.
Two bits of writing have come down to give us a glimpse of the boy's mind during these two years of helpless floundering. A detestable practice of the school authorities required the pupils to criticise one another in moral disquisitions. On one occasion the duke gave out the theme: 'Who is the meanest among you? Schiller did his task in Latin distichs which have been preserved.
But when she had finished, Abu Isa said, "O Commander of the Faithful," And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When it was the Four Hundred and Eighteenth Night, Quoth the Caliph, "Yes, say what thou wilt to her." So he swallowed his tears and sang these two distichs,
All our readers have doubtless seen the two distichs of Sir William Jones, respecting the division of the time of a lawyer. One of the distichs is translated from some old Latin lines; the other is original. The former runs thus: "Six hours to sleep, to law's grave study six, Four spend in prayer, the rest on nature fix." Rather," says Sir William Jones,
It is said to be a series of epigrams, but, if it be, it is what the author intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and pointed sentences, and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiments, and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.
"Here we are to dance so gay, While the fiddlers play away." Other appropriate distichs, which I have now forgotten, were framed in the same way on each of the other compartments. But the dining-room was the chef d'oeuvre. It was formed into a bower, with evergreens, and on the evergreen boughs were stuck real apples and oranges in all directions, so that you could help yourself.
Formerly there was nothing but the Parables of Alan <of Lille, fl. 1200>, the moral distichs of Cato, Aesop's Fables, and a few others, whom the moderns despise; but the boys worked hard, and made their own way over difficulties. Now when even in small schools the choicest authors are read, ancient and modern, prose and poetry, there is not the same profit; for virtue and industry are declining.
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