"Thou ermin'd judge, pull off that sable cap."
More specific reference will not be necessary for those who have seen the work. Is the writer known? I am somewhat surprised that not one of Byron's friends has, so far as I know, hinted a denial of the authorship; for, scarce as { 67} the work may be, I suppose some of them must have seen it; and, under existing circumstances, it is possible that a copy might get into the hands of a desperate creature who would hope to make a profit, by republishing it with Byron's and Moore's names in the title-page.
_Arms at Bristol._--In a window now repairing in Bristol Cathedral is this coat:--Arg. on a chevron or (_false heraldry_), three stags' heads caboshed. Whose coat is this? It is engraved in Lysons' _Gloucestershire Antiquities_ without name.
_Passage in Thomson._--In Thomson's "Hymn to the Seasons," line 28, occurs the following passage:
"But wandering oft, with brute, unconscious gaze, Man marks not Thee; marks not the mighty hand That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres; Works in the secret deep; shoots, _steaming_, thence The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring," &c.
Can any of your readers oblige by saying whether the word _steaming_, in the fourth line of the quotation, is the correct reading? If so, in what sense it can be understood? if not, whether _teeming_ is not probably the correct word?
"For God will be your King to-day, And I'll be general under."
My grandmother, who was a native of Somersetshire, and born in 1750, used to recite a ballad to my mother, when a child, of which the above lines are the only ones remembered.
Do they refer to the rising under the Duke of Monmouth? And where can the whole of the ballad be found?
"_See where the startled wild fowl._"--Where are the following lines to be found? I copy them from the print of Landseer's, called "The Sanctuary."
"See where the startled wild fowl screaming rise, And seek in martial flight those golden skies. Yon wearied swimmer scarce can win the land, His limbs yet falter on the wat'ry strand. Poor hunted hart! the painful struggle o'er, How blest the shelter of that island shore! There, while he sobs his panting heart to rest, Nor hound nor hunter shall his lair molest."