Of course, in climbing up a tree, On terra firma, or afloat. To mount the giddy top-mast, he Would doff awhile his long-tail'd Coat. What makes you simper, then, and sneer? From out your own eye pull the mote; A pretty thing for you to jeer! Haven't _you_, too, got a long-tail'd Coat? Oh! "Dick's scarce old enough," you mean? Why, though too young to give a vote, Or make a will, yet, sure, Fifteen 's a ripe age for a long-tail'd Coat. What! would you have him sport a chin Like Colonel Stanhope, or that goat O'Gorman Mahon, ere begin To figure in a long-tail'd Coat? Suppose he goes to France--can he Sit down at any _table d'hôte_, With any sort of decency, Unless he's got a long-tail'd Coat? Why Louis Philippe, Royal Cit, There soon may be a _sans culotte_; And Nugents self must then admit The advantage of a long-tail'd Coat. Things are not now as when, of yore, In Tower encircled by a moat, The lion-hearted chieftain wore A corselet for a long-tail'd Coat. Then ample mail his form embraced, Not, like a weazel, or a stoat, "Cribb'd and confined" about the waist, And pinch'd in, like Dick's long-tail'd Coat;-- With beamy spear, orbiting axe, To right and left he thrust and smote-- Ah! what a change! no sinewy thwacks Fall from a modern long tail'd Coat. For stalwart knights, a puny race In stays, with locks _en papillote_, While cuirass, cuisses, greaves give place To silk-net _Tights_, and long-tail'd Coat. Worse changes still! now, well-a-day! A few cant phrases learnt by rote Each beardless booby spouts away, A Solon, in a long-tail'd Coat. Prates of "The march of intellect"-- --"The schoolmaster" _a Patriote_ So noble, who could ere suspect Had just put on a long-tail'd Coat? Alack! Alack! that every thick- skull'd lad must find an antidote For England's woes, because, like Dick. He has put on a long-tail'd Coat. But lo! my rhymes begin to fail, Nor can I longer time devote; Thus rhyme and time cut short the _tale_, The _long tale_ of Dick's long-tail'd Coat. _Blackwood's Magazine_. * * * * * SIR JOHN HAWKINS'S HISTORY OF MUSIC. The fate of this work was decided like that of many more important things, by a trifle, a word, a pun. A ballad, chanted by a fille-de-chambre, undermined the colossal power of Alberoni; a single line of Frederic the Second, reflecting not on the politics but the poetry of a French minister, plunged France into the seven years' war; and a pun condemned Sir John Hawkins's sixteen years' labour to long obscurity and oblivion. Some wag wrote the following catch, which Dr. Callcott set to music:-- "Have you read Sir John Hawkins's History? Some folks think it quite a mystery; Both I have, and I aver That Burney's History I prefer."