Shall have, when death's sables have veil'd you and I.
As the club was literary as well as convivial, such of the members as the gods had made poetical, critical, or historical, favoured the company at these appointed meetings with their lucubrations. Uncle Timothy's had been antiquarian and critical, Mr. Bosky's facetious and vocal:—
A merry song is better far
Than sharp lampoon or witty libel.
One brother, Mr. Boreum, who had got the scientific bee in his bonnet, was never so happy as when he could detect a faux pas in the sun's march, discover a new mountain in the moon, or add another stick to the bundle that has been so long burthensome to the back of the man in it! and Mr. Pigtail Paddlebox, a civil engineer, maintained, by knock-me-down-proof-positive, that Noah's Ark was an antediluvian steamer of some five hundred horse-power! The evening's contribution was Uncle Timothy's, The Second Part of the Merrie Mysteries of Bartlemy Fair, which Mr. Bosky having promised to read with good emphasis and discretion, the President's hammer commanded silence, and he proceeded with his task.
CHAPTER VI.
The world is a stage; men and women are the players; chance composes the piece; Fortune (blind jade!) distributes the parts; the fools shift the scenery; the philosophers are the spectators; the rich occupy the boxes; the powerful, the pit; and the poor, the gallery. The forsaken of Lady Fortune snuff the candles,—Folly makes the concert,—and Time drops the curtain!
In a half sportive, half melancholy mood, we record this description of the tragi-comedy of human life. To weep, like Heraclitus, might exalt us to philanthropists; to make the distresses of mankind a theme of derision would brand us as buffoons. Though inclining to the example of Democritus,—for life is too short seriously to grapple with the thousand absurdities that daily demand refutation,—we take the middle course.