I was desired to be at my Lady Suffolk’s on New-year’s morn, where I found Lady Temple and others.  On the toilet Miss Hotham spied a small round box.  She seized it with all the eagerness and curiosity of eleven years.  In it was wrapped up a heart-diamond ring and a paper in which, in a hand as small as Buckinger’s, who used to write the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, were the following lines:—­

Sent by a sylph, unheard, unseen
A new-year’s gift from Mab our queen: 
But tell it not, for if you do,
You will be pinch’d all black and blue. 
Consider well, what a disgrace,
To show abroad your mottled face
Then seal your lips, put on the ring,
And sometimes think of Ob., the king.

You will easily guess that Lady Temple(429) was the poetess, and that we were delighted with the genteelness of the thought and execution.  The child, you may imagine, was less transported with the poetry than the present.  Her attention, however, was hurried backwards and forwards from the ring to a new coat, that she had been trying on when sent for down; impatient to revisit her coat, and to show the ring to her maid, she whisked up stairs; when she came down again, she found a letter sealed, and lying on the floor—­new exclamations!  Lady Suffolk bade her open it:  here it is:—­

Your tongue, too nimble for your sense,
Is guilty of a high offence;
Hath introduced unkind debate,
And topsy-turvy turned our state. 
In gallantry I sent the ring,
The token of a lovesick king: 
Under fair Mab’s auspicious name
>From me the trifling present came. 
You blabb’d the news in Suffolk’s ear;
The tattling zephyrs brought it here;
As Mab was indolently laid
Under a poppy’s spreading shade. 
The jealous queen started in rage;
She kick’d her crown and beat her page: 
“Bring me my magic wand,” she cries;
“Under that primrose there it lies;
I’ll change the silly, saucy chit,
Into a flea, a louse, a nit,
A worm, a grasshopper, a rat,
An owl, a monkey, hedge-hog, bat. 
Ixion once a cloud embraced,
By Jove and jealousy well placed;
What sport to see proud Oberon stare,
And flirt it with a pet-en Pair!”
Then thrice she stamped the trembling ground,
And thrice she waved her wand around;
When I endowed with greater skill,
And less inclined to do you ill,
Mutter’d some words, withheld her arm
And kindly stoppld the unfinish’d charm
But though not changed to owl or bat,
Or something more indelicate;
Yet, as your tongue has run too fast,
Your boasted beauty must not last,
No more shall frolic Cupid lie
In ambuscade in either eye,
>From thence to aim his keenest dart
To captivate each youthful heart: 
No more shall envious misses pine
At charms now flown, that once were thine: 
No more, since you so ill behave,
Shall injured Oberon be your slave.