When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, Ye know that the summer is nigh.—Matthew, xxiv. 32. UNINTENTIONAL RHYMES OF PROSERS. The delicate ear of Addison, who would stop the press to add a conjunction, or erase a comma, allowed this inelegant jingle to escape his detection:— What I am going to _mention_, will perhaps deserve your _attention_. Dr. Whewell, when Master of Trinity College, fell into a similar trap, to the great amusement of his readers. In his work on _Mechanics_, he happened to write _literatim_ and _verbatim_, though not _lincatim_, the following tetrastich:— There is no force, however great, Can stretch a cord, however fine, Into a horizontal line, Which is accurately straight. A curious instance of involuntary rhythm occurs in President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:— Fondly do we hope, Fervently do we pray, That this mighty scourge of war May speedily pass away: Yet if be God’s will That it continue until— but here the strain abruptly ceases, and the President relapses into prose. In the course of a discussion upon the involuntary metre into which Shakspeare so frequently fell, when he intended his minor characters to speak prose, Dr. Johnson observed; “Such verse we make when we are writing prose; We make such verse in common conversation.” Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, from their habit of committing to memory and reciting dramatic blank verse, unconsciously made their most ordinary observations in that measure. Kemble, for instance, on giving a shilling to a beggar, thus answered the surprised look of his companion:— “It is not often that I do these things, But _when_ I do, I do them handsomely.” And once when, in a walk with Walter Scott on the banks of the Tweed, a dangerous looking bull made his appearance, Scott took the water, Kemble exclaimed:— “Sheriff, I’ll get me up in yonder tree.” The presence of danger usually makes a man speak naturally, if anything will. If a reciter of blank verse, then, fall unconsciously into the rhythm of it when intending to speak prose, much more may an habitual writer of it be expected to do so. Instances of the kind from the table-talk of both Kemble and his sister might be multiplied. This of Mrs. Siddons,— “I asked for water, boy; you’ve brought me beer,——” is one of the best known. The Humors of Versification. THE LOVERS. IN DIFFERENT MOODS AND TENSES. Sally Salter, she was a young teacher who taught, And her friend, Charley Church, was a preacher, who praught! Though his enemies called him a screecher, who scraught.