Quips and Quiddities Part 13

Marriage is a Bishop, choral service, Messrs.

Hanc.o.c.k, and Brussels lace.

ANNA C. STEELE.

How beautifully blue the sky, The gla.s.s is rising very high, Continue fine I hope it may, And yet it rained but yesterday; To-morrow it may pour again (I hear the country wants some rain); Yet people say, I know not why, That we shall have a warm July.

W. S. GILBERT, _Pirates of Penzance_.

The Dowager-d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond went one Sunday with her daughter to the Chapel Royal at St. James's, but, being late, they could find no places. After looking about some time, and seeing the case was hopeless, she said to her daughter, "Come away, Louisa; at any rate we have done the civil thing."

R. R. HAYDON, _Diary_.

_ON NORTHERN LIGHTS._

To roar and bore of Northern wights The tendency so frail is, That men do call those Northern Lights Au-ror-a Bor-ealis.

JEKYLL, in MISS MITFORD's _Letters_.

I'm forced to wink a good deal, for fear of seeing too much, for a neighbourly man must let himself be cheated a little.

_Parson Lingon_, in GEORGE ELIOT's _Felix Holt_.

_Dulce_ it is, and _decorum_, no doubt, for the country to fall,--to Offer one's blood an oblation to Freedom, and die for the Cause; yet Still, individual culture is also something, and no man Finds quite distinct the a.s.surance that he of all others is called on, Or would be justified even, in taking away from the world that Precious creature himself.

_Claude_, in CLOUGH's _Amours de Voyage_.

Notre repentir n'est pas tant un regret du mal que nous avons fait, qu'une crainte de celui qui nous en peut arriver.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, _Reflexions_.

_ON AN INANIMATE ACTRESS._

Thou hast a score of parts not good, But two divinely shown: Thy Daphne a true piece of wood, Thy Niobe a stone.

PALLADAS, trans. by R. GARNETT.

We as often repent the good we have done as the ill.

W. HAZLITT, _Characteristics_.

The speech of Old England for me; It serves us on every occasion; Henceforth, like our soil, let it be Exempted from foreign invasion.

It answers for friends.h.i.+p and love, For all sorts of feeling and thinking, And lastly, all doubt to remove-- It answers for singing and drinking.

LORD NEAVES, _Songs and Verses_.

A compliment is usually accompanied with a bow, as if to beg pardon for paying it.

_Guesses at Truth._

_THE TRAVELLER AND THE GORILLA._

The gifts by Nature boon supplied This pair unequally divide: The traveller's tale is far from small, The monkey has no tail at all.

R. GARNETT, _Idylls and Epigrams_.

The more a man's worth, the worthier man he must be.

_Dudley Smooth_, in LORD LYTTON's _Money_.

Now to the banquet we press, Now for the eggs and the ham!

Now for the mustard and cress, Now for the strawberry jam!

Now for the tea of our host, Now for the rollicking bun, Now for the m.u.f.fin and toast, And now for the gay Sally Lunn!

W. S. GILBERT, _The Sorcerer_.

It was in my schoolboy days that I failed as an actor. The play was the "Ruins of Pompeii."

I played the Ruins. It was not a very successful performance, but it was better than the "Burning Mountains."

He was not good. He was a bad Vesuvius.

C. F. BROWNE, _Artemus Ward's Lecture_.

He cannot be complete in aught Who is not humorously p.r.o.ne,-- A man without a merry thought Can hardly have a funny bone.

FREDERICK LOCKER, _London Lyrics_.

An actor named Priest was playing at one of the princ.i.p.al theatres. Some one remarked at the Garrick Club that there were a great many more in the pit--"Probably clerks who have taken Priest's orders."

ABRAHAM HAYWARD, _Essays_.

And she? she marries money and a man.