These verses are something in the old style, but not the worse for that: not that I mean to call them good: but I am sure they would not have been better, if dressed up in the newest Montgomery fashion, for which I cannot say I have much love. If they are fitted for your paper, you are welcome to them. I send them to you, because I find only in your paper a love of our old literature, which is almost monstrous in the eyes of modern ladies and gentlemen. My verses are certainly not in the present fashion; but, I must own, though there may not be the same merit in the thoughts, I think the style much better: and this with no credit to myself, but to the merry old writers of more manly times. Your humble servant, EPSILON. 'Tis a dull sight To see the year dying, When winter winds Set the yellow wood sighing: Sighing, oh! sighing. When such a time cometh, I do retire Into an old room Beside a bright fire: Oh, pile a bright fire! And there I sit Reading old things, Of knights and lorn damsels, While the wind sings-- Oh, drearily sings! I never look out Nor attend to the blast; For all to be seen Is the leaves falling fast: Falling, falling! But close at the hearth, Like a cricket, sit I, Reading of summer And chivalry-- Gallant chivalry! Then with an old friend I talk of our youth-- How 'twas gladsome, but often Foolish, forsooth: But gladsome, gladsome! Or to get merry We sing some old rhyme, That made the wood ring again In summer time-- Sweet summer time! Then go we to smoking, Silent and snug: Nought passes between us, Save a brown jug-- Sometimes! And sometimes a tear Will rise in each eye, Seeing the two old friends So merrily-- So merrily! And ere to bed Go we, go we, Down on the ashes We kneel on the knee, Praying together! Thus, then, live I, Till, 'mid all the gloom, By heaven! the bold sun Is with me in the room. Shining, shining! Then the clouds part, Swallows soaring between; The spring is alive, And the meadows are green! I jump up, like mad, Break the old pipe in twain, And away to the meadows, The meadows again! I had very little hesitation, from internal evidence alone, in identifying these verses with those which FitzGerald had written, as he said, when a lad, or little more than a lad, and sent to the Athenaeum, but all question has been set at rest by the discovery of a copy in a common-place book belonging to the late Archdeacon Allen, with the heading 'E. F. G.,' and the date 'Naseby, Spring, 1831.' This copy differs slightly from those in the Year Book and in the Athenaeum, and in place of the tenth stanza it has,