Nothing to do.—Positively the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and, next to that, perhaps, good works.
Robert Southey, though one time Poet Laureate, is not to be too highly rated as a writer. His humorous poems are largely of the “jagged categorical” type, and are whimseys rather than wit.
Notwithstanding the aspersion even then cast upon the pun, he regards it as a legitimate vehicle.
THE TEN LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL
That the lost ten tribes of Israel may be found in London, is a discovery which any person may suppose he has made, when he walks for the first time from the city to Wapping. That the tribes of Judah and Benjamin nourish there is known to all mankind; and from them have sprung the Scripites, and the Omniumites, and the Threepercentites.
But it is not so well known that many other tribes noticed in the Old Testament are to be found in this island of Great Britain.
There are the Hittites, who excel in one branch of gymnastics. And there are the Amorites, who are to be found in town and country; and there are the Gadites, who frequent watering-places, and take picturesque tours.
Among the Gadites I shall have some of my best readers, who being in good humour with themselves and with everything else, except on a rainy day, will even then be in good humour with me. There will be the Amorites in their company; and among the Amorites, too, there will be some who in the overflowing of their love, will have some liking to spare for the doctor and his faithful memorialist.
The poets, those especially who deal in erotics, lyrics, sentimentals, or sonnets, are the Ah-oh-ites.