“RAP SENIOR’s given it up at last, With thanks for ev’ry favour past; Alias ‘ANTIQUARIAN HALL’ Will never more be heard to brawl; As auctioneer no more will lie, But’s thrown his wicked hammer by. Should you prefer him to appraise, He’s licensed for future days; Or still employ him on commission, He’ll always treat on fair condition, For goods brought to him at his stand. Or at your home, to sell by hand; Or should you want his _pen’s_ assistance, He’ll wait on you at any distance, To lot, collect, in place of clerk, Or prevent moving goods i’ th’ dark; In short, for help or counsel’s aid, You need not of him be afraid.” The harvest of 1816 proved wet and unfavourable, and he thought “it almost exceeded any thing in his memory;” wherefore the world was favoured with “Reflections upon Times, and Times and Times! or a more than Sixty Years’ Tour of the Mind,” by “_Low-Fen-Bill-Hall_.” This was an octavo pamphlet of sixteen pages, in prose, quite as confused as his other productions, “transmitting to posterity,” as the results of sixty years’ experience, that “the frequency of thunderstorms in the spring,”--“the repeated appearance of water-spouts,”--“an innumerable quantity of black snails,”--“an unusual number of field mice,”--and “the great many snakes to be seen about,” are _certain_ “indications of a wet harvest.” To these observations, intermingled with digression upon digression, he prefixed as one of the mottoes, an extremely appropriate quotation from _Deut._ c. 32. v. 29, “O that they were wise, that they _understood_ this!” In the spring of 1818, when in his seventieth year, or, as he says, “David’s gage being near complete,” he determined on an attempt to publish his “Low Fen Journal,” in numbers; the first of which he thus announced: “_A Lincolnshire rais’d medley pie_, An original miscellany, Not meant as canting, _puzzling mystery_, But for a general true FEN HISTORY, Such as design’d some time ago, By him ’yclept _Will_. _Will-be-so_; Here’s Number ONE for publication, If meet the public’s approbation, _Low-Fen-Bill-Hall_ his word engages To send about two hundred pages, Collected by his gleaning pains, Mix’d with the fruit of his own brains.” This specimen of the work was as unintelligible as the before-mentioned introductory “Sketch,” partaking of the same autobiographical, historical, and religious character, with acrostic, elegiac, obituarian, and other extraneous pieces in prose and rhyme. His life had been passed in vicissitude and hardship, “oft’ pining for a bit of bread;” and from experience, he was well adapted to ------------------------- “tell, To whom most extra lots befell; Who liv’d for months on stage of planks, ’Midst captain Flood’s most swelling pranks, Five miles from any food to have, Yea often risk’d a wat’ry grave;”