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and the volumes now submitted to the public. From his poems I have made such a selection as will afford a fair sample of his general powers in this department of literature. They exhibit much smoothness and facility in the versification, and no small diversity of style, since they are perfectly free from the forced conceits and artificial glitter of his prose compositions. Respecting the Tales, he left no instructions-and future circumstances must decide whether any of them shall ever see the light; but it was one of his last requests that, "The Tin Trumpet" should be prepared for immediate publication. The quantity and the confusion of the materials, rendered their selection and arrangement a matter of no small difficulty and of some unexpected delay; but I have executed my task to the best of my ability and judgment, and I now commit the work to the indulgence of the reader, again requesting him to bear in mind that I broadly dissent from many of the crude notions and fanciful theories broached by my late excellent but eccentric friend.

J. S.

HARROWGATE, February, 1836.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

Ad Candidum Lectorem.

CUM legis hunc nostrum, Lector studiose, libellum,
Decedat vultu tetrica ruga tuo.

Non sunt hæc tristi conscripta Catonibus ore,
Non Heraclitis, non gravibus Curiis:
Sed si Heracliti, Curii, si fortè Catones,
Adjicere huc oculos et legere ista velint,
Multa hic invenient quæ possint pellere curas,
Plurima quæ mæstos exhilarare queant.

THE TIN TRUMPET;

OR

HEADS AND TALES.

A.B.C.DARIAN-seems to have been an ancient term for a pedagogue. Wood, in his Athenæ Oxoniensis, speaking of Thomas Farnabie, says-" When he landed in Cornwall, his distresses made him stoop so low, as to be an A.b.c.darian,` and several were taught their horn books by him." By assu ming this title, its wearer certainly proves himself to be a man of letters; but my friend T. H. suggests, that the schoolmaster who wishes to establish his aptitude for his office, instead of taking the three first, had better designate himself by the two last letters of the alphabet.

ABLATIVE CASE-one that now is, or very soon will be, applicable to usurped power, to unjust privileges, and to abuses of all sorts. Though the schoolmaster is abroad, the times are more ungrammatical than ever. A boroughmonger has ceased to be in the nominative case; there is no longer a dative case to the Pension list; and when the public is in the accusative case, it governs the party or thing implicated, and makes it fall into the ablative case absolute. Though corruptions are nouns substantive, they cannot stand by themselves; and abuses, which used to be plural, will soon become singular. The verb "to love" is declined, not conjugated. Standard words, to which the utmost importance was attached by

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