Dear Thomas, didst thou never pop Thy head into a tin-man’s shop? There, Thomas, didst thou never see (’Tis but by way of simile) A squirrel spend his little rage, In jumping round a rolling cage? The cage, as either side turned up, Striking a ring of bells a-top?-- Mov’d in the orb, pleas’d with the chimes, The foolish creature thinks he climbs: But here or there, turn wood or wire, He never gets two inches higher. So fares it with those merry blades, That frisk it under Pindus’ shades. In noble songs, and lofty odes, They tread on stars, and talk with gods; Still dancing in an airy round, Still pleased with their own verses’ sound; Brought back, how fast soe’er they go, Always aspiring, always low. _PHILLIS’ AGE_ How old may Phillis be, you ask, Whose beauty thus all hearts engages? To answer is no easy task: For she has really two ages. Stiff in brocade, and pinch’d in stays, Her patches, paint and jewels on; All day let envy view her face, And Phillis is but twenty-one. Paint, patches, jewels laid aside, At night astronomers agree, The evening has the day belied; And Phillis is some forty-three. Prior delighted in epigrams on ladies who wore false hair and teeth, and who attempted to retain the beauty of youth by means of paint and dye. They are generally imitated from Martial. _A REASONABLE AFFLICTION_ In a dark corner of the house Poor Helen sits, and sobs, and cries; She will not see her loving spouse, Nor her more dear picquet allies: Unless she find her eye-brows, She’ll e’en weep out her eyes. FRENCH HUMOR The first French humorist of note in the seventeenth century was Cyrano de Bergerac. His History of the Moon and History of the Sun are of the nature of _Gulliver’s Travels_. _THE SOUL OF THE CABBAGE_ We laid ourselves along upon very soft quilts, covered with large carpets; and a young man that waited on us, taking the oldest of our philosophers led him into a little parlor apart, where my Spirit called to him to come back to us as soon as he had supped. This humor of eating separately gave me the curiosity of asking the cause of it. “He’ll not relish,” said he, “the steam of meat, nor yet of herbs, unless they die of themselves, because he thinks they are sensible of pain.” “I wonder not so much,” replied I, “that he abstains from flesh, and all things that have had a sensitive life. For in our world the Pythagoreans, and even some holy Anchorites, have followed that rule; but not to dare, for instance, cut a cabbage, for fear of hurting it--that seems to me altogether ridiculous.” “And for my part,” answered my Spirit, “I find a great deal of reason in his opinion.