Such primitive practice, I venture to say, had never before been applied to the noble science of backgammon. I use the word advisedly, because, with skill and judgment, what is called bad luck does not very materially affect the game. The art is to conquer, despite bad throwing.
Lynch succeeded a worthy named Hearne—a nom de guerre, his enemies averred, for the less euphonious one of Herring. Whatever his name, the man was quite a character. He fancied himself a poet, and was particularly fond of taking his favourite pupils aside to communicate to them in a confidential manner, sotto voce, the latest productions of his muse,—it being expected that, a little later in the evening, the favoured individuals should delicately draw him out and solicit him to a public recital of his verses. After a good deal of pressing on their part, and a show of resistance on his, (which every one understood,) the little dancing-master would mount on a table, deliver a flourishing preface in prose, and then go through the recitation, in a manner which set description at defiance. At the conclusion of this feat, which was duly encored, Hearne was wont to distribute copies of his composition printed on whity-brown paper, and the tribute of a five-penny bit was expected in acknowledgment of the same—simply, as he said, "to pay for the printing." He had such a peculiar system of orthography—spelling the words by the sound—that I venture, with all due diffidence, to put forward his claim to take precedence of the interesting and worthy founders of the newspaper-nondescript, The Fonetic Nuz, at which the Londoners laughed heartily a dozen years ago. By some accident, I have preserved a copy of one of Hearne's poetical compositions, in which his own mode of spelling is carefully preserved, and I subjoin it as a curiosity,—a specimen of what emanated, some thirty years ago, from one who belonged to the peculiar class (of which Grant Thorburn is the head) worthy of being called The Illiterate Literati!
"A few lions addressed in prease of Mr. Jon Anderson, Esquire, by his humble servant, and votary of the Muses, Wm. Ahearne, profesor of dancing.
"Who lives in this Eaden wich lyes to the easte
Of Fermoy ould bridge and its pallasades;
He is the best man on the Blackwater's breast,
As thousans from povirty he has razed.
"There's no grand Pear in all Urop this day,
With him can compare most certinly,
In bilding a town of buty and sweay