* * * * *

PRIVATE MEMOIRS OF GEORGE III.

It was well known to be the habit of Geo. III. to write in various folios, for an hour after he rose in the morning.  This practice was not obviously consistent with his want of facility and taste in any sort of composition; but his manuscripts were only registers of names, with notes annexed of the services, the offences, and the characters, as he judged them, of the respective persons.  “In addition,” says a publication of 1779 “to the numerous private registers always kept by the king, and written with his own hand, he has lately kept another, of all those Americans who have either left the country voluntarily rather than submit to the rebels, and also of such as have been driven out by force; with an account of their losses and services.”  It is somewhat cruel to lay bare “the bosomed secrets” of any man, even after the grave has closed upon his passions and weaknesses; but if these registers of George III. still exist, and should ever come to light, they will be as curious private memoirs as have ever appeared:  they doubtless promoted the remembrance and compensation of losses and services; but they also produced his petty long-cherished resentments, less hurtful to their objects than injurious to his own character and torturing to his breast.—­Ibid.

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

  A snapper up of unconsidered trifles. 
  SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

SUPPOSED POSTHUMOUS WORK OF DR. JOHNSON’S.

An Ode written April 15, 1786.

  St. Paul’s deep bell, from stately tower,
  Had sounded once and twice the hour—­
    Blue burnt the midnight taper;
  Hags their dark spells o’er cauldrons hewed,
  While Sons of Ink their work pursued,
    Printing “the Morning Paper.”

  Say, Herald, Chronicle, or Post,
  Which then beheld great Johnson’s ghost,
    Grim, horrible, and squalid? 
  Compositors their letters dropt,
  Pressmen their printing engines stopt,
    And devils all grew pallid.

  Enough! the spectre cried, Enough! 
  No more of your fugacious stuff,
    Trite anecdotes and stories! 
  Rude martyrs of Sam.  Johnson’s name,
  You rob him of his honest fame,
    And tarnish all his glories.

  First in the fertile tribe is seen
  Tom Tyres, in the Magazine,
    That teazer of Apollo! 
  With goose-quill he, like desperate knife,
  Slices, as Vauxhall beef, my life,
    And calls the town to swallow.

  The cry once up, the dogs of news,
  Who hunt for paragraphs the stews,
    Yelp out “Johnsoniana!”
  Their nauseous praise but moves my bile,
  Like tartar, carduus, camomile,
    Or ipecacuanha.