But D----n's strains should tell the sad reverse, When Business calls, inveterate foe to verse! Tell how 'the Demon claps his iron hands', 'Waves his lank locks, and scours along the lands.' Through wintry blasts, or summer's fire I go, To scenes of danger, and to sights of woe. Even when to Margate every Cockney roves, And brainsick-poets long for sheltering groves, Whose lofty shades exclude the noontide glow, While Zephyrs breathe, and waters trill below, The rigid Fate averts, by tasks like these, From heavenly musings, and from lettered ease. Such wholesome checks the better genius sends, From dire rehearsals to protect our friends: Else when the social rites our joys renew, The stuffed portfolio would alarm your view, Whence volleying rhymes your patience would o'ercome, And, spite of kindness, drive you early home. So when the traveller's hasty footsteps glide Near smoking lava on Vesuvio's side, Hoarse-muttering thunders from the depths proceed, And spouting fires incite his eager speed. Appalled he flies, while rattling showers invade, Invoking every saint for instant aid: Breathless, amazed, he seeks the distant shore, And vows to tempt the dangerous gulf no more. J. FERRIAR. _The Bibliomania._ BIBLIOSOPHIA I will begin, by designating the high and dignified passion in question by its true name--BIBLIOSOPHIA,--which I would define--_an appetite for_ COLLECTING _Books_--carefully distinguished from, wholly unconnected with, nay, absolutely repugnant to, all idea of READING them. Observe, then, with merited admiration, the several points of superiority, which distinguish the _Collector_, when brought into fair and close comparison with the _Student_. As First; the said _Collector_ proceeds straight forward to his object, and (with one only exception which will hereafter be shown) under the most rational hopes of accomplishing it. There is but a certain, and limited, number of books to which he and his inquisitive fraternity have agreed to consecrate the epithet 'curious'; and all of these--with the requisite allowance of cash, cunning, luck, patience, and time--he is within the 'potentiality' of drawing, sooner or later, within his clutches:--whereas the _Student_, granting him the wealth of a brewer, the cunning of a horse-dealer, the luck of a fool, the patience of Jerry Sneak, and the longevity of the Wandering Jew, can never hope even to _taste_ an hundredth part of the volumes which he meditates to devour.