From doubtful questions of the "Press" He wisely holds aloof; In all polemics, more or less, His argument is "proof." Save in their "case," with High and Low, Small need has he to grapple! Without dissent he still can go To his accustomed "Chapel,"[78] From ills that others scape or shirk, He rarely fails to rally; For him, his most "composing" work Is labour of the "galley." Though ways be foul, and days are dim, He makes no lamentation; The primal "fount" of woe to him Is--want of occupation: And when, at last, Time finds him grey With over-close attention, He solves the problem of the day, And gets an Old Age pension. Note: [78] This, derived, it is said, from Caxton's connection with Westminster Abbey, is the name given to the meetings held by printers to consider trade affairs, appeals, etc, (Printers' Vocabulary). CROSS READINGS--AND CALEB WHITEFOORD Towards the close of the year 1766--not many months after the publication of the Vicat of Wakefield--there appeared in Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall's _Public Advertiser_, and other newspapers, a letter addressed "To the Printer," and signed "PAPYRIUS CURSOR." The name was a real Roman name; but in its burlesque applicability to the theme of the communication, it was as felicitous as Thackeray's "MANLIUS PENNIALINUS," or that "APOLLONIUS CURIUS" from whom Hood fabled to have borrowed the legend of "Lycus the Centaur." The writer of the letter lamented--as others have done before and since--the barren fertility of the news sheets of his day. There was, he contended, some diversion and diversity in card-playing. But as for the papers, the unconnected occurrences and miscellaneous advertisements, the abrupt transitions from article to article, without the slightest connection between one paragraph and another--so overburdened and confused the memory that when one was questioned, it was impossible to give even a tolerable account of what one had read. The mind became a jumble of "politics, religion, picking of pockets, puffs, casualties, deaths, marriages, bankruptcies, preferments, resignations, executions, lottery tickets, India bonds, Scotch pebbles, Canada bills, French chicken gloves, auctioneers, and quack doctors," of all of which, particularly as the pages contained three columns, the bewildered reader could retain little or nothing. (One may perhaps pause for a moment to wonder, seeing that Papyrius could contrive to extract so much mental perplexity from Cowper's "folio of four pages"--he speaks specifically of this form,--what he would have done with _Lloyd's_, or a modern American Sunday paper!) Coming later to the point of his epistle, he goes on to explain that he has hit upon a method (as to which, be it added, he was not, as he thought, the originator[79]) of making this heterogeneous mass afford, like cards, a "_variety_ of entertainment." Note: