The Portrait; being an apology for not making an Attempt on my own Life 369 The Compass, with Variations 375 Summer--A Winter Eclogue 382 Pair’d _not_ match’d 390 The Duel--A Serious Ballad 394 The Rope Dancer--An Extravaganza, after Rabelais 397 Sonnet to Vauxhall 410 Ode to Mr. Malthus 411 A Good Direction 416 The Pleasures of Sporting 418 There’s no Romance in that 424 The Abstraction 429 A Waterloo Ballad 435 Miller Redivivus 440 A Zoological Report 444 Literary Reminiscences 448 Shooting Pains 458 The Schoolmaster’s Motto 462 HOOD’S OWN: OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR. [Illustration: A PASTORALE IN A FLAT.] THE PUGSLEY PAPERS. How the following correspondence came into my hands must remain a Waverley mystery. The Pugsley Papers were neither rescued from a garret, like the Evelyn,--collected from cartridges, like the Culloden,--nor saved, like the Garrick, from being shredded into a snow storm at a Winter Theatre. They were not snatched from a tailor’s shears, like the original parchment of Magna Charta. They were neither the Legacy of a Dominie, nor the communications of My Landlord,--a consignment, like the Clinker Letters, from some Rev. Jonathan Dustwich,--nor the waifs and strays of a Twopenny Post Bag. They were not unrolled from ancient papyri. They were none of those that “line trunks, clothe spices,” or paper the walls of old attics. They were neither given to me nor sold to me,--nor stolen,--nor borrowed and surreptitiously copied,--nor left in a hackney coach, like Sheridan’s play,--nor misdelivered by a carrier pigeon,--nor dreamt of, like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan,--nor turned up in the Tower, like Milton’s Foundling MS.,--nor dug up,--nor trumped up, like the eastern tales of Horam harum Horam, the son of Asmar,--nor, brought over by Rammohun Roy,--nor translated by Doctor Bowring from the Scandinavian, Batavian, Pomeranian, Spanish, or Danish, or Russian, or Prussian, or any other language dead or living. They were not picked from the Dead Letter Office, nor purloined from the British Museum. In short, I cannot, dare not, will not, hint even at the mode of their acquisition: the reader must be content to know, that, in point of authenticity, the Pugsley