You should study the bards of to-day Who in England are now all the rage; You should try to be piquant and gay; Your lines are too solemn and sage. You should try to fill only a page, Or two at the most with your lay; And revive the quaint verse of an age That is fading forgotten away. Study Lang, Gosse, and Dobson, I pray―― That their rhymes and their fancies engage Your thought to be witty as they. You must stand on the popular stage. In the bars of an old fashioned cage We must prison the birds of our May, To carol the notes of an age That is fading forgotten away. Now this is a ‘Ballade’――I say, So one stanza more to our page, But the “Vers de Société,” If you can are the best for your ‘wage.’ Though the purists may fall in a rage That two rhymes go thrice in one lay, You may passably echo an age That is fading forgotten away. _Envoy._ Bard――heed not the seer and the sage, ‘Afflatus’ and Nature don’t pay; But stick to the forms of an age That is fading forgotten away. C. P. CRANCH. ――――:o:―――― In an amusing little collection of poems quite recently published, there are several parodies and three ballades, all on legal topics, from which the following extracts are quoted by the kind permission of Messrs. Reeves and Turner. The title of the book is _The Lays of a Limb of the Law_, by the late John Popplestone, Town Clerk of Stourmouth, edited by Edmund B. V. Christian. London: Reeves and Turner, 1889. It contains Law Reports in the shape of parodies of Cowper’s “Alexander Selkirk;” of Pope’s translation of Homer, “The Splendid Shilling,” and of other poems in a manner somewhat similar to those contained in Professor Frederick Pollock’s well-known, but scarce little work, “Leading Cases Done into English.” Of the three ballades perhaps the following is the best:―― BALLADE OF OLD LAW BOOKS. _“I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield, said Uriah. ‘I am going through Tidd’s Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master Copperfield.’”_ The law books are standing in dingy array, They fill every shelf from ceiling to floor, Old guides to a silent and grass-covered way Which never a traveller now shall explore, Save delvers for antiquarian lore, Who painfully search where their treasures lie hid, In pages that else had been closed evermore, Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful TIDD! Great Blackstone is put up aloft, far away (The Whig, first edition, in calf, volumes four); The Doctor and Student alike are at play; And Perkins is now but a profitless bore. Old Viner’s abridgment is over the door ’Mid dust-begrimed wines that fetch never a bid; Even Fearne on Remainders we vainly deplore Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful TIDD!