sion, and then asked the
parson if he had read Captain Morris's or George Stephens's or Anacreon
Moore's bacchanalian songs; on the other replying in the negative, "Oh,
then," said the general, with a sagacious nod, "if you want a drinking
song, I can furnish you with the latest collection--I did not know you
had a turn for those kind of things; and I can lend you the
Encyclopaedia of Wit into the bargain. I never travel without them;
they're excellent reading at an inn."

It would not be easy to describe the odd look of surprise and perplexity
of the parson at this proposal; or the difficulty the squire had in
making the general comprehend, that though a jovial song of the present
day was but a foolish sound in the ears of wisdom, and beneath the
notice of a learned man, yet a trowl written by a tosspot several
hundred years since was a matter worthy of the gravest research, and
enough to set whole colleges by the ears.

I have since pondered much on this matter, and have figured to myself
what may be the fate of our current literature, when retrieved piecemeal
by future antiquaries, from among the rubbish of ages. What a Magnus
Apollo, for instance, will Moore become among sober divines and dusty
schoolmen! Even his festive and amatory songs, which are now the mere
quickeners of our social moments, or the delights of our drawing-rooms,
will then become matters of laborious research and painful collation.
How many a grave professor will then waste his midnight oil, or worry
his brain through a long morning, endeavouring to restore the pure text,
or illustrate the biographical hints of "Come tell me, says Rosa, as
kissing and kissed;" and how many an arid old book-worm, like the worthy
little parson, will give up in despair, after vainly striving to fill up
some fatal hiatus in "Fanny of Timmol!"

[Illustration: "Come, tell me, says Rosa, as kissing and kissed"]

Nor is it merely such exquisite authors as Moore that are doomed to
consume the oil of future antiquaries. Many a poor scribbler, who is
now apparently sent to oblivion by pastry-cooks and cheesemongers, will
then rise again in fragments, and flourish in learned immortality.

After all, thought I, time is not such an invariable destroyer as he is
represented. If he pulls down, he likewise builds up; if he impoverishes
one, he enriches another; his very dilapidations furnish matter for new
works of controversy, and his rust is more precious than the most cos