[The authorship of this little poem has at times excited a good deal of attention. It has been attributed, on no very sufficient grounds, to Dr. Joshua Webster, M.D.; but from the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxx., p. 41., it appears that it is the entire production of the
Rev. Thomas Moss, minister of Brierly Hill and Trentham, in Staffordshire, who wrote it at about the age of twenty-three. He sold the manuscript of that, and of several others, to Mr. Smart, printer, in Wolverhampton, who, from the dread which Mr. Moss had of criticism, was to publish them on this condition, that only twenty copies should have his name annexed to them, for the purpose of being presented to his relations and friends.]
"Tiring-irons never to be untied."—To what does Lightfoot (vol. vii. p. 214.) refer when, in speaking of the Scriptures, he says—
"They are not unriddleable riddles, and tiring-irons never to be untied"?
J. Eastwood.
Ecclesfield.
[The allusion is to a puzzle for children—often used by grown children—which consists of a series of iron rings, on to or off which a loop of iron wire may be got with some labour by those who know the way, and which is very correctly designated a tiring-iron.]