"In vain for him th' officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence! Alas! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home."--_Winter_, 311. But this is a less pointed imitation than that of Gray, which succeeded it. Gray had his eye on Lucretius: "For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share." Next followed Collins, in his Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands, who, however, seems to have had Thomson chiefly in view: "For him, in vain, his anxious wife shall wait, Or wander forth to meet him on his way; For him, in vain, at to-fall of the day, His babes shall linger at th' unclosing gate: Ah! ne'er shall he return." To him succeeded Dyer: "The little smiling cottage, when at eve He meets his rosy children at the door, Prattling their welcomes, and his honest wife, -------------------------------- intent To cheer his hunger after labour hard." __Fleece_, Book I. 120._ Burns has a picture equal to any of these: "At length his lonely cot appears in view Beneath the shelter of an aged tree: _Th' expectant wee things, todlin', stacher through To meet their dad with flichterin' noise and glee:_ His wee-bit ingle blinkin' bonnilie, His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile, _The lisping infant prattling on his knee_, Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil." _Cotter's Saturday Night._ Burns may have taken the thought from Gray, or some other English source. But he has not disgraced it by his mode of treating it. Allen Ramsay, in his _Gentle Shepherd_, has a very pretty allusion to children, which I have not at hand to consult, but which concludes with, "While all they ettle at, their greatest wis', Is to be made o', and obtain a kiss." J. S. W. Stockwell. A GLOUCESTER DITTY. (_From an Old Broadside without date._) Come, my very merry gentle people, only list a minute, For tho' my song may not be long there's something comic in it; A stranger I, yet, by the bye, I've ventured in my ditty, To say a word at parting, just in praise of Gloucester city. The Romans they this city built, and many folks came down here, Kings Richard, Henry, John, and Ned, did visit Glo'ster town here; King William dined each Christmas here, and Glo'ster folks it pleases, To know the food he relished most was double Berkeley cheeses.