But bide a gliff-ae wee word mair
Ye're sure 'tis amor patriæ fair?
Nae crowlin', lyin', lust o' gear,

Or speculation,

Nae Crystal Palace showman's rair

To catch the nation?

If sae, ye dowie, heartless carles,

The deevil's gold be a' your arles,

The downward wind, wi rantin' squalls,

Sit in your sterns,

That wearied wi' your peddling brawls

The shade of Burns.

EPIGRAM ON ELPHINSTONE'S TRANSLATION OF MARTIAL.

O Thou, whom Poetry abhors,

Whom Prose has turned out of doors,

Heard'st thou that groan? proceed no further;

'Twas laurell'd Martial roaring murder.

BURNS.

Tu, quem Musa odit numeris astricta canoris,
Egit præcipites Musa soluta vias,

Audistin' gemitus illos? Ne scribere pergas!
Bilbilicus vates, se periisse, fremit.

A. H. W.

THE MATCH OF LIFE.

Not by wishing but by willing:
Not by playing but by milling :
Not by talking but by working:
By braving not by shirking:
By hoping not by fearing :

Not by funking but by daring:
By acting not by dreaming:
By being not by seeming :

Not by fancying but by thinking:
By facing not by shrinking:

By waiting not by hasting:

By saving not by wasting:

So play your match and win your goal:
So live your life and save your soul.

8.

THE REWARD OF CRITICISM.

A STORY FROM THE "SPECTATOR."

A critic presented Apollo one day

With a bouquet intended his taste to display,

Not of flowers, but of faults, which, delighted to show it,

He had culled from the works of an eminent poet.

Apollo was pleased, and determined to make

An equal return, for his dignity's sake;

So he caused to be brought from the Muses' domain

A sack full of yellow and beautiful grain,

And the man of minutiæ to separate told

The husk from the seed, as the dross from the gold.
The critic triumphant soon finished his task,

And attended, some boon in requital to ask;

When the god, with a sly and satirical laugh,

For reward of his industry gave him-THE CHAff.

A SONG OF CABS.

What the heart of the Schoolboy said to the Master.

Tell me not, in prose pedantic,

Cabs can never profit me ;

You may think me foolish-frantic,
I but use what lights I see.

Cabs are honest! cabs are faithful!
Never despicable loans:

"Cabs are useless and untruthful"
Is not said of H. G. Bohn's.
Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles,
(Often stiff without his aid,)
By the aid of T. A. Buckley's
Cabs are light and easy made.
Not enjoyment, and not cricket,
Is my destined lot to-day,
Locking up in school's the ticket,
If my work I cannot say.

Tasks are long and time is fleeting,

And our hearts, tho' game for play, Now like muffled drums are beating, From the fear of "floors " to-day. Trust no construes, howe'er fluent, Construe-givers fail themselves; Bohn's blue books prove never truant,

They're the thing to stock your shelves.

"Floors" of others all remind us

We may blunders make, and then,
Hence departing leave behind us,
Stories often told again :

Blunders that perhaps another,
Stumbling on thro' dreary prose,
Some forlorn and cabless brother
Hearing may despise his woes.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a cab for every book;

With the aid of Bohn's "blue ruin "

Learn to construe at a look!

N or M.

THE

NEW RUGBEIAN.

No. V.

MARCH, 1859.

MISTAKES AND MISSTATEMENTS.*

AMONGST Our philosophical German cousins, it oftentimes comes to pass, that some knotty Greek sentence, or it may be even word, becomes the parent of a still more knotty dissertation, and that from this is begotten quite a line of literary posterity, each more vehement, more lengthy, and more metaphysical than its predecessor, till at last the war of words, like the Kilkenny battle of old, dies out from the sheer exhaustion of the combatants. But this happens in Germany, and scarcely ever amongst us; so let not the wearisome remembrance of those "tomes upon tomes," (if, kind reader, you have ever fallen in with any,) prejudice you against this present paper, which, unlike its brethren, is not "started upon its own hook," but rather, "like a wise child," "knows its own father;"-nay, can

* 1. "The Book of Rugby School; its History and Daily Life."-Crossley and Billington's, 1856.

2. "Mistakes and Misstatements in a Book called The Book of Rugby School, its History!"-Crossley and Billington's, 1859.

U

even point to such a remote ancestor as its grandfather, claiming as that relative none other than "The Book of Rugby School; towards whom indeed, it must be confessed, we look with greater affection than towards the immediate "author of our existence." Indeed, like ourselves, it came into the world but to censure its parent, bearing upon itself, while yet as it were in paper swaddling clothes, (not yet having attained the "boards" which are to a book as the toga virilis,) the title-" Mistakes and Misstatements in a Book called the Book of Rugby School, its History." We may observe that the rest of the title here quoted, the words "and its Daily Life," are left out, an omission, which, if supplied, would unfortunately take away much of the point of the sneer (in the first page of the pamphlet) at the "bulk" of "the thick octavo volume," which, it is insinuated, is devoted to "The History" of Rugby School; though one would think that the large print and larger margin of that volume had not left much to be sneered at, as to "bulk," without such explanation. One other thing on the first page is noticeable,—that "when the head of an institution comes forward to give its history. we are entitled to expect from him correct and exact information,”—and more to the same effect,noticeable, because the inference we naturally draw from it is-" how much more must we look for correct and exact information, in the critic and corrector of everything faulty in the book which he thinks is so miserably found lacking."

.....

The great fault which our critic censures in "The Book" seems to be, that, according to his opinion, it exalts the Rugby of the old times at the expense of the Rugby of Dr. James. In support of this opinion, we find much