When Time began to play his usual tricks:
My locks, once comely in a virgin's sight,
Locks of pure brown, now felt th' encroaching white;
Gradual each day I liked my horses less,
My dinner more—I learnt to play at chess.'
'That's very good!' cried the bard;—'whose is it?' 'Your own.' 'Indeed! hah! well, I had quite forgotten it.' Was this affectation, or was it not? In sooth, he seemed to push simplicity to puerility. This imitation contained in manuscript the following lines, after describing certain Sunday-newspaper critics who were supposed to be present at a new play, and who were rather heated in their politics:—
'Hard is his task who edits—thankless job!
A Sunday journal for the factious mob:
With bitter paragraph and caustic jest,
He gives to turbulence the day of rest;