The paper was a success. Aytoun was taken by it, and sought an introduction to me by our common friend Edward Forbes the eminent Naturalist, then a leading spirit among the students of the Edinburgh University, beloved and honoured by all who knew him. Aytoun's name was familiar to me from his contributions to 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and I was well pleased to make his acquaintance, which rapidly grew into intimate friendship, as it could not fail to do with a man of a nature so manly and genial, and so full of spontaneous humour, as well as of marked literary ability. His fancy had been caught by some of the things I had written in this and other papers under the name of Bon Gaultier, and when I proposed to go on with articles in a similar vein, he fell readily into the plan and agreed to assist in it. Thus a kind of Beaumont and Fletcher partnership was formed, which commenced in a series of humorous papers that were published in Tait's and Fraser's Magazines during the years 1842, 1843, and 1844. In these papers appeared, with a few exceptions, the verses which form the present volume. They were only a portion, but no doubt the best portion, of a great number of poems and parodies which made the chief attraction of papers under such headings as "Puffs and Poetry," "My Wife's Album," "The Poets of the Day," and "Cracknels for Christmas." In the last of these the parody appeared under the name of "The Jilted Gent, by Theodore Smifzer," which, as "The Lay of the Lovelorn," has become perhaps the most popular of the series. I remember well Aytoun bringing to me some ten or a dozen lines of admirable parody of "Locksley Hall." That poem had been published about two years before, and was at the time by no means widely known, but was enthusiastically admired by both Aytoun and myself. What these lines were I cannot now be sure, but certainly they were some of the best in the poem. They were too good to appear as a fragment in the paper I was engaged upon, and I set to work to mould them into the form of a complete poem, in which it is now known. It was introduced in the paper thus:--