red loads.

"'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;
The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.

"He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,--
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed--
All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.

"That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'"

In his _Nux Postcoenatica_ he gives us his reflections on being invited
to a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" by
reading funny verses. He submits it to the judgment and common sense of
the importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad-
making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his reputation as
a medical professor.

"Besides, my prospects. Don't you know that people won't employ
A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy,
And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
As if Wisdom's oldpotato could not flourish at its root?

"It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching out a smile
On a copperplate of faces that would stretch into a mile.
That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs from friends,
It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends."

There are, as might be expected, some commonplace pieces in the volume,--
a few failures in the line of humor. The _Spectre Pig_, the _Dorchester
Giant_, the _Height of the Ridiculous_, and one or two others might be
omitted in the next edition without detriment. They would do well enough
for an amateur humorist, but are scarcely worthy of one who stands at the
head of the profession.

It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he had
not been a witty man, he would have been a great man." Hood's humor and
drollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his sober
productions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among a
large class of readers than he now does had he never