A Roman vase, decked with pink ribbons and myrtle, receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival. Six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle.... The collection is printed, published,—yes, on my faith, there are _bouts-rimés_ on a buttered muffin, by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland, receipts to make them, by Corydon the Venerable, alias George Pitt; others, very pretty, by Lord Palmerston; some by Lord Carlisle; many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre.... There never was anything so entertaining or so dull.” It may be added here, that Lord Palmerston’s lines “On Beauty” are more than “very pretty,” and that the duchess could not avoid the subject laughed at, since two of the rhymes given to her were “puffing” and “muffin,” and she came out of the difficulty with skill and dexterity. There are, perhaps, few people in a mixed company at the present time, who could more pleasantly dance such an intellectual hornpipe in similar fetters. Miss Seward modifies Walpole’s satirical account without disturbing the main facts. She adds, with reference to the volumes of these prize poems then published: “The profits have been applied to the benefit of a charity at Bath, so that Lady Miller’s institute” (her husband had been knighted) “was not only calculated to awaken and cultivate ingenuity, but to serve the purposes of benevolence and charity.” Walpole suppressed the fact that any one profited by the assemblies at Lady Miller’s, of whom and of whose husband who presumed to have Walpole’s predilection for _virtu_, Horace says: “They make themselves completely ridiculous, which is a pity, as they are good-natured, well-meaning people.”