the power of pursuing it." What Johnson has further said on this
melancholy subject, shows perhaps more nature and feeling than anything
he ever wrote; and yet it is remarkable that among the causes to which
the poet's malady was ascribed, he never hints at the most exciting of
the whole. He tells us how Collins "loved fairies, genii, giants, and
monsters;" how he "delighted to roam through the meanders of enchantment,
to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls
of Elysian gardens." But never does he seem to have imagined how natural
it was for a mind of such a temperament to give an Eve to the Paradise
of his Creation. Johnson, in truth, though, as he tells us, he gained
the confidence of Collins, was not just the man into whose ear a lover
would choose to pour his secrets. The fact was, Collins was greatly
attached to a young lady who did not return his passion; and there seems
to be little doubt, that to the consequent disappointment, preying on
his mind, was due much of that abandonment of soul which marked the
close of his career. The object of his passion was born the day before
him; and to this circumstance, in one of his brighter moments, he made
a most happy allusion. A friend remarking to the luckless lover, that
his was a hard case, Collins replied, "It is so, indeed; for I came into
the world _a day after the fair_."

* * * * *

MOORE'S EPIGRAM ON ABBOTT.

Mr. Speaker Abbott having spoken in slighting terms of some of Moore's
poems, the poet wrote, in return, the following biting epigram:

"They say he has no heart; but I deny it;
He _has_ a heart--and gets his speeches by it."

* * * * *

NEGROES AT HOME.

When Lord Byron was in Parliament, a petition setting forth, and calling
for redress for, the wretched state of the Irish peasantry, was one
evening presented to the House of Lords, and very coldly received. "Ah!"
said Lord Byron, "what a misfortune it was for the Irish that they were
not born black! they would then have had plenty of friends in both
Houses"--referring to the great interest at the time being taken by some
philanthropic members in the condition and future of the negroes in our
West Indian colonies.

* * * * *

A STRING OF JERROLD'S JOKES.

At a club of which Jerrold was a member, a fierce Jacobite, and a
friend, as fierce, of the Orange cause, we