Mlle. Cico was summoned before a court to bear witness in favor of some cosmetic assailed as a poison by victims and their physicians. All the youngest actresses of Paris were there, and they reckoned upon a good deal of merriment and profit when Mlle. Cico came to disclose her age. She was called to the stand—sworn—gave her name and profession. When the judge said “How old are you?” she quitted the stand, went up to the bench, stood on tip-toe, and whispered in the judge’s ear the malicious mystery. The bench smiled, and kept her secret.
The Cento.
A cento primarily signifies a cloak made of patches. In poetry it denotes a work wholly composed of verses, or passages promiscuously taken from other authors and disposed in a new form or order, so as to compose a new work and a new meaning. According to the rules laid down by Ausonius, the author of the celebrated Nuptial Cento, the pieces may be taken from the same poet, or from several; and the verses may be either taken entire, or divided into two, one half to be connected with another half taken elsewhere; but two verses are never to be taken together.
The Empress Eudoxia wrote the life of Jesus Christ in centos taken from Homer. Proba Falconia, and, long after him, Alexander Ross, both composed a life of the Saviour, in the same manner, from Virgil. The title of Ross’ work, which was republished in 1769, was Virgilius Evangelizans, sive historia Domini et Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi Virgilianis verbis et versibus descripta.
Subjoined are some modern specimens of this literary confectionery, called in modern parlance
MOSAIC POETRY.
| I only knew she came and went | Lowell. |
| Like troutlets in a pool; | Hood. |
| She was a phantom of delight, | Wordsworth. |
| And I was like a fool. | Eastman. |
| “One kiss, dear maid,” I said and sighed, | Coleridge. |
| “Out of those lips unshorn.” | Longfellow. |
| She shook her ringlets round her head, | Stoddard. |
| And laughed in merry scorn. | Tennyson. |
| Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky! | Tennyson. |
| You hear them, oh my heart? | Alice Cary. |
| ’Tis twelve at night by the castle clock, | Coleridge. |
| Beloved, we must part! | Alice Cary. |
| “Come back! come back!” she cried in grief, | Campbell. |
| “My eyes are dim with tears— | Bayard Taylor. |
| How shall I live through all the days, | Mrs. Osgood. |
| All through a hundred years?” | T. S. Perry. |
| ’Twas in the prime of summer time, | Hood. |
| She blessed me with her hand; | Hoyt. |
| We strayed together, deeply blest, | Mrs. Edwards. |
| Into the Dreaming Land. | Cornwall. |
| The laughing bridal roses blow, | Patmore. |
| To dress her dark brown hair; | Bayard Taylor. |
| No maiden may with her compare, | Brailsford. |
| Most beautiful, most rare! | Read. |
| I clasped it on her sweet cold hand, | Browning. |
| The precious golden link; | Smith. |
| I calmed her fears, and she was calm, | Coleridge. |
| “Drink, pretty creature, drink!” | Wordsworth. |
| And so I won my Genevieve, | Coleridge. |
| And walked in Paradise; | Hervey. |
| The fairest thing that ever grew | Wordsworth. |
| Atween me and the skies. | Osgood. |
Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,