_Reviewing_, as a profession by which a certain class of men seek to instruct the public, and to support themselves creditably in the middle order, and to keep their children from falling, after the decease of enlightened parents, on the parish, is at the lowest possible ebb in this country; and many is the once well-fed critic now an hungered--_Blackwood_.
_Oranges_.--It is not perhaps generally known or suspected, that the rabbis of the London synagogues are in the habit of affording both employment and maintenance to the poor of their own persuasion, by supplying them with oranges at an almost nominal price.--Ibid.
_Noble Authors_.--The poor spinsters of the Minerva press can scarcely support life by their labours, so completely are they driven out of the market by the Lady Charlottes and the Lady Bettys; and a rhyming peer is as common as a Birmingham button. It would take ten Horace Walpoles at least to do justice to the living authors of the red book.
_Buying Books_.--Money is universally allowed to be the thing which all men love best; and if a man buys a book, we may safely infer he thinks well of it. What nobody buys, then, we may justly conclude is not worth reading.
_On the Duchess of Devonshire's canvassing for Mr. Fox at the Westminster Election._
Array'd in matchless beauty, Devon's fair In Fox's favour takes a zealous part; But, oh! where'er the pilferer comes beware, She supplicates a vote, and steals a heart.
_Lines sent by a Surgeon, with a box of ointment, to a Lady who had an inflamed eye._
The doctor's kindest wishes e'er attend His beauteous patient, may he hope his friend; And prays that no corrosive disappointment May mar the lenient virtues of his ointment; Of which, a bit not larger than a shot, Or that more murd'rous thing, "a beauty spot," Warmed on the finger by the taper's ray, Smear o'er the eye affected twice a day. Proffer not gold--I swear by my degree, From beauty's lily hand to take no fee; No glittering trash be mine, I scorn such pelf, The eye, when cured, will pay the debt itself.
George III. is said to have observed to a person who approached him in a moment of personal restraint, indispensable in his situation, "Here you see me _checkmated_."