“Few classical quotations have ever been more neatly applied than the following. Mr. Burke had been speaking in the House of Commons for some time, and paused. He soon proceeded, and some time afterwards paused again, so long (which with him is very uncommon) that Sir William Bagot thought he had done, and got up to speak. ‘Sir’ (said Mr. B.), ‘I have not finished.’ Sir W. B. made an apology, and said, ‘As the hon. gentleman had spoken a long time, and had paused unusually long also, he imagined that he had concluded, but he found he was mistaken. Some allowance, however, he hoped, would be made for him as a _country_ gentleman, for-- ‘_Rusticus_ expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.’” If the process by which the passage from the poet, “so neatly applied,” was, subsequently to the event, spliced to it, is not apparent to the reader, I confess that it is so to myself; and few things are less probable than the pronunciation of such an _impromptu_ under such conditions. Yet we find Malone, a man of the world and a sagacious critic, setting down the passage in undisturbed credulity and absolute good faith as a fact within his knowledge and as a spontaneous performance in its integrity. It may seem very remarkable that its superficial unlikelihood should not have struck him; but it is the case that entertaining gossip or laughable traits concerning celebrated people usually pass unchallenged, even when a slight scrutiny would suffice to expose their spuriousness either in whole or in part; and it must be remembered that the bulk of our _Ana_ have come to us through channels infinitely more open to corrupting agencies and less discriminating than Malone. But the Jest, in its many varieties, is indulgently regarded, whether by the general public, which takes the matter as proven, or by the literary fraternity itself, for whom it serves as a pleasant relaxation from severer studies. As it is with the Story, so also it fares with the Epigrammatic _bon-mot_ or facetious notion thrown into the metrical form. There is a tolerably familiar one, which carries plainly enough on its front, when we approach the subject in an inquiring temper, the traces of its parentage:-- “A fisherman one morn display’d Upon the Steine his net; Corinna could not promenade, And ’gan to fume and fret. “The fisher cried, Give o’er the spleen, We both are in one line: You spread your net upon the Steine, Why may not I spread mine? “Two of a trade can ne’er agree, ’Tis that which makes you sore: I fish for flat fish in the sea, And you upon the shore.”