ECHO VERSES.
Some years ago I chanced upon a magazine article containing a dissertation upon a now almost obsolete kind of versification, much affected by Ben Jonson and some of the last century poets, in which the first two or three lines of each verse ask a question, and the echo of the concluding words gives an answer more or less appropriate. An amusing example was given in the article above mentioned, which was equally rough on the great violinist of the past and his audience, thus:
"What are they who pay six guineas
To hear a string of Paganini's?"
(Echo) "Pack 'o ninnies!"
I read this and a few other examples, and was straightway stricken with a desire to emulate this eccentric and somewhat difficult species of versification, and now with considerable diffidence, and a choking prayer for mercy at the hands of the critic, I lay my attempt before the reader. The following echo-verses are not on any account whatever to be understood as reflecting on the present or any past Government of this Colony. They are merely to be taken as shadowing forth a state of things possible in the remote future.