The English Spy, page 39 by Bernard Blackmantle
<< Return to Title Details & Download40
>Frosty age will o'ercloud, with his mantle of night, The brightest and fairest of nature's gay scene.
Or think while you trip, like some aerial sprite, To pleasure's soft notes on the dew-spangled mead,
That the rose of thy cheek, or thine eyes' starry light, Shall sink into earth, and thy spirit be freed.
Then round the gay circle we'll frolic awhile, And the light of young love shall the fleet hour bless
While the pure rays of friendship our eve-tide beguile, Above fortune's frowns and the chills of distress
~36~~ The most provoking punster and poet that ever turned the serious and sentimental into broad humour. Every quaint remark affords a pun or an epigram, and every serious sentence gives birth to some merry couplet. Such is the facility with which he strings together puns and rhyme, that in the course of half an hour he has been known to wager, and win it--that he made a couplet and a pun on every one present, to the number of fifty. Nothing annoys the exquisite Sextile so much as this tormenting talent of Horace; he is always shirking him, and yet continually falling in his way. For some time, while Horace was in the fourth form, these little jeu-d'esprits were circulated privately, and smuggled up in half suppressed laughs; but being now high on the fifth, Horace is no longer in fear of fagging, and therefore gives free license to his tongue in many a witty jest, which "sets the table in a roar."
Dick Gradus. In a snug corner, at a side table, observe that shrewd-looking little fellow poring over his book; his features seem represented by acute angles, and his head, which appears too heavy for his body, represents all the thoughtfulness of age, like an ancient fragment of Phidias or Praxiteles placed upon new shoulders by some modern bust carver. Dick is the son of an eminent solicitor in a borough town, who has raised himself into wealth and consequence by a strict attention to the principles of interest: sharp practice, heavy mortgag