Here in England the Circuit always serves to sharpen the wits of those who are waiting, some of them hungrily, and but too many hopelessly, for practice; and as nowhere there is more talent running to seed than at the bar, epigrams circulate there as freely as opinions,—and much more harmlessly. But that the elders of the profession, and the judges should take part in such levities as the _Jeux Poetiques_ of Poictiers, would at all times have been as much out of character in England, as it would be still in character among our lighter-heeled, lighter-hearted, and lighter-headed neighbours. The same facility in composing Latin verse would not now be found at the French bar; but if a flea were started there, a full cry might as easily be raised after it, as it was at the _Grands Jours_ held under the President Harlay; and they who joined in the cry would take exactly the same tone. You would find in their poetry just as much of what Pasquier calls _mignardise_, and just as little exertion of intellect in any other direction. It is not language alone, all but all-powerful in this respect as language is, which makes the difference in whatever belongs to poetry, between the French and the English. We know how Donne has treated this very subject; and we know how Cleveland, and Randolph and Cowley would have treated it, licentiously indeed, but with such a profusion of fantastic thought, that a prodigality of talent would seem even greater than the abuse. In later times, if such a theme had presented itself, Darwin would have put the flea in a solar microscope, and painted the monster with surprizing accuracy in the most elaborate rhymes: he would then have told of fleas which had been taken and tamed, and bound in chains, or yoked to carriages; and this he would have done in couplets so nicely turned, and so highly polished, that the poetical artist might seem to vie with the flea-tamer and carriage-builder in patience and in minute skill. Cowper would have passed with playful but melancholy grace From gay to grave, from lively to severe,