And crushed beneath the furrow’s weight
May be thy doom.
Much more might be written under this heading, for of the humours of living and recent poets I have scarcely dared to speak. Yea, of the humours of those about whom one may write with perfect freedom, the half has not been told; and to the bookish reader, I feel, the chapter will be interesting as much for what it suggests as for what it contains.
As a last item, the following humorous “dig” at the rigid and narrow Sabbatarianism of the early Dissenters, which has had a wonderful vitality—living as it has done for generations, more in the memory of what we may call the “long-headed” order of the community than in printed books—will be enjoyed. Its authorship—presumably a secret from the first—is still unknown; and it has no history or interesting particular other than is expressed by itself, further than this, that it is occasionally sung to a standard Psalm tune, under the old fashion of “reading the line,” and, when so rendered, sounds inexpressibly droll:—
THE CAMERONIAN’S CAT.
There was an auld Seceder’s cat
Gaed hunting for a prey,
And ben the house she catch’d a mouse
Upon the Sabbath day.
The Whig, he being offended