I do remember an itinerant, who used to sing a piece of dismal merriment, with a squeaking violin accompaniment, to the appropriate burden of “Heigh ho! fiddle de dee!” and a very wry face at each recurrence of this peculiar interjection. He much affected Knightsbridge and Hyde Park Corner, but was likewise visible at other points of the metropolis. His wife, a diminutive body, with a small whine by way of voice, helped to make “variety of wretchedness” in the exhibition. They looked as if familiar with none but the copper coinage of the realm. Yet they had generally their _côterie_ around them—their “assistance admirative.” To be musical, _any how_, passes for a talent! I will not suppose my readers so oblivious of an elderly joke, as not to recognize the face of that which is about to greet them; but, having found a version of it “turned to numbers,” I present it—a little “rubbed up” for the occasion—to the indulgent attention of those who have only met with it in prosaic statement: A blind man, fed by fiddling, Was known through many a street; His “style,” far short of “middling,” With some did pass for sweet. He priz’d his fiddle greatly; The _case_ had fainter praise— The _case_ by “wife” made lately, With half a yard of baize. One day, when, led by Rover, He had a bridge to pass, His fiddle tumbled over, Stick, case, and all, alas! He straight set up a roaring, And added such grimace, That folks around came pouring, And pitied his sad case. “Sad _case_! Psha! twiddle diddle!” Cried he, with scornful face; “Could I but get my _fiddle_ D’ye think I’d mind _the case_?” Having thus made ourselves familiar with the street fiddler, and thereby, as it were, “sounded the very base-string of humility,” may we not be fairly supposed to have reached the _fag-end_ of our subject? Whilst on this lower level, however—or, in what may be termed the Vale of Cacophony—I cannot conclude, without offering to the patience of my kind readers two more scraps of verse, wherein I have sought to exhibit a pair of specimens that belong, equally with the poor street fiddler, to the class of—those that _might_ be dispensed with: EPIGRAM ON AN UNFORTUNATE MAN, AND BAD FIDDLER. Though DIBBLE is feeble in all that he’s _at_, Few fools ever _fondled a failure_ before, so. In love, as in music, he stands for a _flat_— (For his Fanny is false, and his fiddle is _more_ so), While _he_ still ignoreth—what none can dispute— That his suit’s out of tune, and his tune doesn’t suit! ANOTHER, ON ANOTHER BAD FIDDLER. When SCREECHLEY on that _noise-box_ harshly grates, What, what’s the supposition that must follow? _This_—that by some odd shifting of the Fates, ’Tis _Marsyas_’ turn to flay alive _Apollo_! [Illustration: FINIS] ADDENDUM. FEMALE VIOLINISTS. “Place aux dames!”