Stanza III, line 8. _Houyhnhnms_. A race of horses endowed with human reason, and bearing rule over the race of man--a reference to Dean Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726). _Sonnets For The Fancy_ Pierce Egan, the author of the adventures of Tom and Jerry was born about 1772 and died in 1849. He had won his spurs as a sporting reporter by 1812, and for eleven years was recognised as one of the smartest of the epigrammatists, song-writers, and wits of the time. _Boxiana_, a monthly serial, was commenced in 1818. It consisted of 'Sketches of Modern Pugilism', giving memoirs and portraits of all the most celebrated pugilists, contemporary and antecedent, with full reports of their respective prize-fights, victories, and defeats, told with so much spirited humour, yet with such close attention to accuracy, that the work holds a unique position. It was continued in several volumes, with copperplates, to 1824. At this date, having seen that Londoners read with avidity his accounts of country sports and pastimes, he conceived the idea of a similar description of the amusements pursued by sporting men in town. Accordingly he announced the publication of _Life in London_ in shilling numbers, monthly, and secured the aid of George Cruikshank, and his brother, Isaac Robert Cruikshank, to draw and engrave the illustrations in aquatint, to be coloured by hand. George IV had caused Egan to be presented at court, and at once accepted the dedication of the forthcoming work. This was the more generous on the king's part because he must have known himself to have been often satirised and caricatured mercilessly in the _Green Bag_ literature by G. Cruikshank, the intended illustrator. On 15 July 1821 appeared the first number of _Life in London_; or, 'The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Jem, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis.' The success was instantaneous and unprecedented. It took both town and country by storm. So great was the demand for copies, increasing with the publication of each successive number, month by month, that the colourists could not keep pace with the printers. The alternate scenes of high life and low life, the contrasted characters, and revelations of misery side by side with prodigal waste and folly, attracted attention, while the vivacity of dialogue and description never flagged.