EPIGRAM on the occasion of the duel between Tom Moore, the poet, and Francis Jeffrey:-- When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said, A reverse he displayed in his vapor, For while all his poems were loaded with lead, His pistols were loaded with paper. For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank, Such a _salvo_ he should not abuse; For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank, Which is fired away at _Reviews_. MDLXXIX.--SERMONS IN STONES. THE Duke of Wellington having had his windows broken by the mob, continued to have boards before the windows of his house in Piccadilly. "Strange that the Duke will not renounce his political errors," said A'Beckett, "seeing that _no pains have been spared_ to convince him of them." MDLXXX.--EARLY HABITS. THERE was in Wilkes's time a worthy person, who had risen from the condition of a bricklayer to be an alderman of London. Among other of his early habits, the civic dignitary retained that of eating everything with his fingers. One day a choice bit of turbot having repeatedly escaped from his grasp, Wilkes, who witnessed the dilemma, whispered, "My lord, you had better take your _trowel_ to it." MDLXXXI.--LAW AND THE SCOTTISH THANE. DURING the representation of "Macbeth," an eminent special pleader graced the boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, to see it performed. When the hero questions the _Witches_, as to what they are doing: they answer, "a deed without a name." Our counsellor, whose attention was at that moment directed more to Coke upon Littleton than to Shakespeare, catching, however, the words in the play, repeated, "A _deed_ without a _name_! why, 't is _void_." MDLXXXII.--NOT TO BE BELIEVED. THE following lines were addressed to a gentleman notoriously addicted to the vice which has been euphemistically described as "the postponement of the truth for the purposes of the moment":-- Whoe'er would learn a fact from you, Must take you by contraries; What you deny, _perhaps_ is true; But nothing that you _swear_ is. MDLXXXIII.--A REASON FOR POLYGAMY. AN Irishman was once brought up before a magistrate, charged with marrying six wives. The magistrate asked him how he could be so hardened a villain? "Please your worship," says Paddy, "I was just trying to _get a good one_." MDLXXXIV.--BYRON LIBELLOUS. THE conversation at Holland House turning on first love, Thomas Moore compared it to a potato, "because it shoots from the eyes."--"Or rather," exclaimed Lord Byron, "because it becomes less by _pairing_." MDLXXXV.--A TERRIBLE POSSIBILITY. AN acquaintance remarked to Dr. Robert South, the celebrated preacher at the court of Charles the Second, "Ah! doctor, you are such a wit!" The doctor replied, "Don't make game of people's infirmities: _you_, sir, might have been born a wit!" MDLXXXVI.--ATTIRED TO TIRE.