"... And feel by turns the bitter change
Of _fierce extremes, extremes_ by change more _fierce_."
Milton, _Par. Lost_, ii. 599.

9. "His tassell'd horn beside him laid."
_O'Connor's Child._

"... Ere th' odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or _tassell'd horn_
Shakes the high thicket."--Milton, _Arcades_.

10. "The scented wild-weeds and enamell'd moss."
_Theodric._

Campbell thinks it necessary to explain this latter epithet in a note: "The
moss of Switzerland, as well as that of the Tyrol, is remarkable for a
bright smoothness approaching to the appearance of enamel." And yet was no
one, or both, of the following passages floating in his brain when his pen
traced the line?

"O'er the _smooth enamell'd green_
Where no print of sleep hath been."
Milton, _Arcades_.

"Here blushing Flora paints _th' enamell'd ground_."
Pope, _Winsdor Forest_.

W. T. M.

Hong Kong.

* * * * *

"THE HANOVER RAT."

(Vol. vii. p. 206.)

_An Essay on Irish Bulls_ is said to have found its way into a catalogue of
works upon natural history; with which precedent in my favour, and pending
the inquiries of _naturalists_, _ratcatchers_, and _farmers_ into the
history of the above-named formidable invader, I hope MR. HIBBERD will have
no objection to my intruding a bibliographical curiosity under the
convenient head he has opened for it in "N. & Q."

My book, then, bears the appropriate title, _An Attempt towards a Natural
History of the Hanover Rat, dedicated to P***m M******r, M.D., and S----y
to the Royal Society_, 8vo., pp. 24.: London, 1744.

The writer of this curious piece takes his _cue_ from that remarkable
production, _An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Polype_, 1743; in
which the learned Mr. Henry Baker, in a letter to Martin Folkes, of 218
pages, 8vo., illustrated by a profusion of woodcuts, elaborately describes
this link between the animal and vegetable creation, and the experiments he
practised upon the same: commencing with "cutting off a polype's head," and
so on through a series of scientific barbarities upon his _little
creature_, which ended only in "turning a polype inside out!"

Following the plan of Mr. Baker, the anonymous author of _The Hanover Rat_
tells us, that, after thirty ye