Ultimately I fell, to find myself in my
bed, and to learn that I had merely dreamed
a dream. But the last object I beheld was
the faceless figure, which, as it gradually
faded away in my bedroom, growled forth:
"The best cure of vice is to make it
ridiculous."

POMONA.

SHE comes, all laden with the teeming wealth
Of harvest yet unreaped. Her golden hair
Braided with scarlet poppies, flowing waves
In sunny ripples o'er her shoulders white,
As holding Earth in her embrace, she moves
On in triumphal progress.

She is crowned,
Crowned with the mellow russet apple globes,
Red-streaked with scarlet veins, her brown hands stored
With purple plums, whereon the ash bloom sits
Unbrushed by envious fingers. In her lap
Nestles the queenly peach, her crimson down
Coy-mingling with the amber apricot,
And the rich treasures of the bending vine,
Blue-black and white, in beaded clusters, add
Their glories to the store.

King Autumn bows,
Wheat-crowned, his ruddy head, at the approach
Of this his smiling spouse, as blithe he pours
At her fair feet brown rustling filberts ripe,
Medlars, and hazel-nuts, and all his share,
To swell her marriage portion. Thus they crown
With mutual gifts the bride-feast of the year!

POPULAR AND UNPOPULAR
POETS.

IT is a great thing to be a popular poet.
Your name is in the mouths of young
ladies (if there be any good to you in that),
and your words are sometimes quoted with
approval by statesmen and philosophers,
and may help to mould the public opinion
of your time—an advantage which is
pleasant, if it be not always profitable.
But will your popularity last beyond your
lifetime? Will it last even until you die?
There's the rub; a rub, which if unaccompanied
by substantial reward, is apt to
infuse a little, just a little drop of gall and
bitterness into the cup of your apparent
good fortune. In the reign of Charles the
Second there flourished four poets. Three
of them were popular, and one was not.
Let me say a few words about each of them,
and see what the popularity of the three
was worth, and what came of it.

The first was one Thomas, better known
as "Tom" D'Urfey, just as people now talk
affectionately, though possibly somewhat
irreverently, of "Tom" Moore, "Tom"
Campbell, and "Tom" Hood. He was the
pet and idol of his age, and Charles the
Second was more than once seen walking
in the Mall in St. James's Park in familiar
talk with him, his dogs and his courtiers
following behind. Nay, the merry monarch
carried his complaisance still further, and
condescended to sing duets with him,
Tom and he holding the music sheet
between them—a fact which the poet has
recorded in his memoirs with great gusto
and satisfaction. D'Urfey was principally
known for his songs, which he wrote to
old and popular tunes—sometimes, if not
invariably, adapting as much as was
quotable of the old words and choruses to
new themes, and otherwise altering and
amending, as Robert Burns did with the
popular songs of Scotland more than a
century later. The king was partial to the
fiddle, as the violin was then called both by
the fashionable and the unfashionable, and
to those lively airs and jig tunes of which
the fiddle was the best exponent. When
in exile, with but slight chance of ever
sitting on the throne of his ancestors, and
when he could but ill afford luxuries of any
kind, he lavished such money as he could
command upon fiddles and fiddlers. When,
after the death of the Great Protector, the
Commonwealth of England found itself
without a strong hand to rule it, and "the
king enjoyed his own again," one of the first
things he did was to engage a corps of four-
and-twenty fiddlers to play for him during
dinner and at his pleasant little private
parties and conversations in the evening.
It was on these occasions that D'Urfey's
services were called into requisition to sing
his own songs, not for reward and emolument,
but wholly for the honour and glory
of amusing the king and basking in the
pleasant sunshine of his countenance, and
that of the fair and frail ladies in whose
society he took most pleasure.  At the
time of the Restoration, Tom was a gay
young fellow of twenty-three, who had
abandoned the study of the law for the
pursuits of literature and conviviality.
During the whole reign of Charles he
lived like a prosperous gentleman, making
small means go a long way in keeping up
appearances; and being always a welcome
guest not only at the palace, but at the
houses of the nobility and rural gentry,
where, after dinner, he would sing his own
songs without much, if any, pressing, and
where the host and the other guests would
join lustily in the chorus. A collection of
his songs, under the somewhat coarse title—
though it was not considered coarse in that
age—of Pills to Purge Melancholy, was
published by Tom, and had a highly