Now by the cool declining year condensed,
Descend the copious exhalations, check’d
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
. . . . . . Thence expanding far,
The huge dusk gradual swallows up the plain
Vanish the woods; the dimseen river seems
Sullen and slow to roll the misty wave.
Even in the height of noon oppressed, the sun
Sheds weak and blunt his wide refracted ray;
Whence glaring oft, with many a broadened orb,
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen through the turbid air, beyond the life
Objects appear, and wildered o’er the waste,
The shepherd stalks gigantic.
“Extraordinary News!”
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book.
Sir,—The character and manners of a people may be often correctly ascertained by an attentive examination of their familiar customs and sayings. The investigation of these peculiarities, as they tend to enlarge the knowledge of human nature, and illustrate national history, as well as to mark the fluctuation of language, and to explain the usages of antiquity, is, therefore, deserving of high commendation; and, though occasionally, in the course of those inquiries, some whimsical stories are related, and some very homely phrases and authorities cited, they are the occurrences of every day, and no way seem to disqualify the position in which several amusing and popular customs are brought forward to general view. Under this impression, it will not be derogatory to the Every-Day Book, to observe that by such communications, it will become an assemblage of anecdotes, fragments, remarks, and vestiges, collected and recollected:—
—————Various,—that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change,
And pleas’d with novelty, may be indulged.
Cowper.
Should the following extract, from a volume of Miscellaneous Poems, edited by Elijah Fenton, and printed by Bernard Lintot, without date, but anterior to 1720, in octavo, be deemed by you, from the foregoing observations, deserving of notice, it is at your service.
Old Bennet was an eccentric person, at the early part of the last century, who appears to have excited much noise in London.
On the Death of Old Bennet, the News Cryer.