Unless she's dull and middle-aged, no sympathy have we with her,
Her sole excitement is to ask a plainer friend to tea with her!
He thinks, were Pickwick written now, we'd view it with a cooler eye,
And term the Trial Scene a piece of "riotous tomfoolery;"
While Jane Eyre's thrilling narrative of Rochester's sad revelries
Of "shilling shockers" scarcely would to-day above the level rise!
An age that's given up its gas to read by Electricity
Would naturally be repelled by Thackeray's causticity,
And scorn the characters of Scott, because they had Glengarries on,
An inference which is obvious—to Mr. Frederic Harrison!