WIDOWS.
As in India, one day, an Englishman sat
With a smart native lass at the window,
“Do your widows burn themselves? pray tell me that?”
Said the pretty, inquisitive Hindoo.
“Do they burn? ah, yes,” the gentleman said,
“With a flame not so easy to smother:
Our widows, the moment one husband is dead,
Immediately burn for another!”—Canning.
The following epigram by Samuel Rogers, on Lord Dudley’s studied speeches in Parliament, was pronounced by Byron, in conversation with Lady Blessington, “one of the best in the English language, with the true Greek talent of expressing, by implication, what is wished to be conveyed:”—
Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it:
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.
On the marriage of Dr. Webb with Miss Gould, a classical friend sent him the following:—
Tela fuit simplex statuens decus addere telæ,
Fecit hymen geminam puroque intexuit auro.
[Single no more, a double Webb behold;
Hymen embroidered it with virgin Gould.]