To conclude my life,--“upon my life,”--is not worth giving or taking. The principal just suffices for me to live upon; and of course, would afford little interest to anyone else. Besides, I have a bad memory; and a personal history would assuredly be but a middling one, of which I have forgotten the beginning and cannot foresee the end. I must, therefore, respectfully decline giving my life to the world--at least till I have done with it--but to soften the refusal, I am willing, instead of a written character of myself, to set down all that I can recall of other authors, and, accordingly, the next number will contain the first instalment of MY LITERARY REMINISCENCES. [2] He perhaps took the hint from Dibdin, who lays down the rule in his Sea Songs, that a Naval Hero ought to be a Lion in battle, but afterwards a Lamb. [3] On a march to Berlin, with the 19th Prussian Infantry, I could never succeed in passing myself off as anything but the Regimental Chaplain. THE COMPASS, WITH VARIATIONS. “The Needles have sometimes been fatal to Mariners.” PICTURE OF ISLE OF WIGHT. One close of day--’twas in the Bay Of Naples, bay of glory! While light was hanging crowns of gold On mountains high and hoary, A gallant bark got under weigh, And with her sails my story. For Leghorn she was bound direct, With wine and oil for cargo, Her crew of men some nine or ten, The Captain’s name was Iago; A good and gallant bark she was, La Donna (call’d) del Lago. Bronzed mariners were hers to view, With brown cheeks clear or muddy, Dark, shining eyes, and coal-black hair, Meet heads for painter’s study; But ’midst their tan their stood one man, Whose cheek was fair and ruddy. His brow was high, a loftier brow Ne’er shone in song or sonnet, His hair a little scant, and when He doff’d his cap or bonnet, One saw that Grey had gone beyond A premiership upon it. His eye--a passenger was he, The cabin he had hired it,-- His eye was gray, and when he look’d Around, the prospect fired it-- A fine poetic light, as if The Appe-Nine inspired it. His frame was stout, in height about Six feet--well made and portly; Of dress and manner just to give A sketch, but very shortly, His order seem’d a composite Of rustic with the courtly. [Illustration: A STORM IN TABLE BAY.] He ate and quaff’d, and joked and laugh’d, And chatted with the seamen, And often task’d their skill and ask’d “What weather is’t to be, man?” No demonstration there appear’d That he was any demon. No sort of sign there was that he Could raise a stormy rumpus, Like Prospero, make breezes blow, And rocks and billows thump us,-- But little we supposed what he Could with the needle compass!