BROWNING SOCIETY VERSES.
[Dr. FURNIVALL announces that the Browning Society is about to be dissolved.]
Hark! 'tis the knell of the Browning Society,
Wind-bags are bursting all round us to-day;
FURNIVALL fails, and for want of his diet he
Pines like a love-stricken maiden away.
Long has he fed upon cackle and platitude,
FURNIVALL sauce to a dish full of dearth,
Still, in the favourite FURNIVALL attitude,
Grubbing about like a mole in the earth.
Now must he vanish, the mole-hills are flat again,
(Follies grow fewer it seems by degrees);
Lovers of BROWNING may laugh and grow fat again,
Rid of the jargon of Furnivallese.
NEW AND OLD TERMS.—"Slate, Slite, Slote, Slitten," is the title of an amusing article in the Saturday Review, on the derivation of the verb "to slate." How "slote" comes in is not quite evident, but that when the pages of a dull book are "slitten" by the paper-knife, it will be read and slated by a critic, and then "slited" (or "slighted") by the public, is quite sufficient without "putting a penny in the 'slote'" on the chance of getting something better.
SO LIKE HIM!—Tuesday last week was the seventieth birthday of Professor VIRCHOW. He has refused all titles and emoluments, observing that "VIRCHOW is its own reward."
VERY POP-ULAR!—Through the Times came the information that, since the famine, the Russian Officers have given up drinking champagne. Their conduct is really quite Magnuminous!
