View, though confin'd,-nay, rule this earthly ball,
And travel o'er the wide expanded all.

Dead letters thus with living notions fraught,
Prove to the soul the telescope of thought;
To mortal life immortal honour give,

And bid all deeds and titles last and live.
In scanty life, Eternity we taste,

View the first ages, and inform the last;
Arts, History, Laws, we purchase with a look,
And keep, like Fate, all nature in a Book.

MRS. GRIERSON.*

SONNET.

ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

SOME laws there are too sacred for the hand
Of man to approach; recorded in the blood
Of Patriots; before which, as the rood
Of faith, devotional we take our stand;
Time-hallow'd laws! magnificently plann'd

When freedom was the nurse of public good,
And power paternal! laws that have withstood
All storms, like faithful bulwarks of the land:
Unshackled will, frank utterance of the mind,
Without which freedom dies and laws are vain,
On such we found our rights, to such we cling:
In these should power his surest safeguard find.
Tread them not down in passion or disdain-
Make man a reptile he will turn and sting!
A. DE V.

Dublin.

These lines were annually printed from a press fixed upon a car, and distributed in the street-procession of printers, on the Lord Mayor's Day, in Dublin. Constantia Grierson was the wife of George Grierson, Esq., King's printer for Ireland. In the early part of her life she was an excellent compositor, and an admirable adept in the art of printing. She died in the year 1733. See Printers and Printing, p. 648.

TOM TYMPAN,

A COCKNEY PRESS-ROOM BALLAD.

Том Tympan was a pressman gay,
Who liv'd in Ward Portsoken,
Than whom none better frisket fly'd,
Or quicker pull'd a token.

Tom's chapel was of Roman form :
And weekly at confession,
He on the mind of Father Paul
Produc'd a good impression.

Now Tom, like all true Catholics,
Each week must fast, on sole,
Cod, salmon, herrings, white or red,
As suited best his pole.

This led him oft, as well it might,
To deal with one call'd Molly,
Who in the fish-stones daily stood-
A damsel fair and jolly.

Now Molly's cheeks were red and white,

In colour like the rose,

Which in each floral gard'ner's bed,

In summer daily blows.

The true shade of her hair I've slipt

Or auburn, red or black,

But round her head in heaps it hung,

And turned up at the back.

Her form was straight, and though her ribs

With fat were overlaid,

Her step was light, her carriage free,

And well her shape display'd.

Poor Tom, like ev'ry love-sick swain,
When Molly was in sight,

Could not tell why, but so it was,
His heart beat quick and light.

At length the thought came in his head,
No other fill'd his mind,

That if to Molly he were tied,

No bar his bliss could find.

Tom, therefore, to his love set off,
And dwelt so on her charms,'
That soon her heart and hand he won,
And press'd her in his arms.

To chapel, in due course of law,
They both in haste repair,

Where book-work, clerk, and Father Paul

Soon join'd this happy pair.

The honeymoon roll'd sweetly on,—
For four months all was joy-
When, on the sly, the doctor brought
A full-faced, bouncing boy.

Though Molly, like a type that's new,
Work'd clear enough at first,
This slip made Tom quite furious grow -
He stampt, and rav'd, and curst.

When told of her misdeeds, she strove
To stop him with her kisses:

And in her turn she swore that she
Would show him who was misses.

The girths of love thus sudden broke,
Tom seldom spoke to Molly,

Who round the house her spouse would chase
To drive out melancholy.

Moll spent her time in drinking gin,
To spoil Tom of his riches;
And when his furniture was gone,
She pawn'd his only breeches.

While thus serv'd out, Tom lay in bed—
Poor soul, what could he do!
His cap, coat, hose, she bundled up
And sold them to a Jew.

When Tom, her errors to correct,
Would in the wool-hole put her,
She tore and swore his ears she'd pull,
And draw him through the gutter.

To such a point things came at last,
A coffin Tom would make her;
For if on tramp he went, her legs
Would after him soon take her.

His pray'r was heard: returned one night,

A full pint in each eye,

She in the blankets roll'd herself,
And then thought fit to die.

A jury on her body sat,

A twelves form, quite complete : And in this verdict each man join'd,, "Found dead, wrapt in a sheet.”

Four bearers took her to the grave,

Twelve feet in depth they made it!

And lest her head might rise again
With stone Tom overlaid it.

Though skin and bone, poor Tom's quite glad,

That off his rib was carried,

And swears by all the gods that he

Liverpool.

Will ne'er again be married.

J. HARDING.

ADDRESS TO THE ALPHABET.

I WONDER, O Alphabet, what could have been
The fate of this world as we mortals pass through,
And what would have cheer'd, and what sadden'd the scene,
Had not Cadmus, or somebody else, thought of you?
As matters now stand, or in sorrow or joy,

Almost all that affects, those who read must agree,
The news that delights, the commands that employ,
We gain at thy hands, potent, famed A B C.

A B C, mind, I take as the name of the firm,
You're entitled to claim, or to sue or be sued,
Initials that now form a popular term,

With Alphabet mostly synonymous view'd,
Had you not been fashion'd our planet to glad,

What different amusements, and studies, and ways. Must needs have been sought, if we could not have had Novels, histories, newspapers, poems, and plays.

They little foresaw, who first call'd for your use,
The part you would have to perform in late times;
The odd combinations that scribes would produce,

By their labours in prose, or their frolics in rhymes;
If the nonsense which you have on all countries hurl'd,
Had never been written-of course never read-
Had so much of folly been spared to the world,

Or would it have burst forth in actions instead?

The mischief you've done, as I cannot now write,
Of folio volumes a thousand or two,

I will not approach at this time of the night,

For the terrible task I should never get through; But just in a general way I may hint,

Though Liberty's interests by you may prevail, Your agency giving opinions to print,

Has doom'd many hundreds to languish in gaol.