_A Discovery._--I am seated next to Old RUDDOCK of Ruddock, at dinner. PENDELL introduces us. A hale, hearty, elderly gentleman, with, if any expression at all, rather a sleepy one, as if a very little over-feeding would send him into a doze.
_Mr. Tittups (suggesting impossible Bank to full-sized Nimrod)._ "DON'T YOU THINK WE COULD HAVE IT HERE, SIR?"]
AT the festive season of the year particularly, people commonly complain that the newspapers are dull. Unless in exceptional years, nothing happens of which the narration is in anywise interesting, and the dearth of news is generally so extreme that journalists are actually driven to fill their columns with theological controversies.
The dryness of grammatical details has been surmounted by the device of putting them into metre, as in the _As in Præsenti_ and the _Propria quæ Maribus_ of the Eton Latin Grammar. Might not the contents of the Journals, in like sort, be rendered somewhat less prosy than they sometimes are by being versified? The telegrams would, perhaps, be peculiarly susceptible of this treatment, whereunto they seem to lend themselves in virtue of their characteristic conciseness, which it would enhance. The electric wire on New Year's Day transmitted a certain message from Rome. Here it is in the form of blank verse:--
The King to-day received the Ministers. The Deputations Parliamentary, The State's great Officers, the military And the municipal authorities, And other delegates. His MAJESTY Thanks for congratulations did return To those who tendered them, occasionally, Upon the New Year's Day; and he expressed His hope that, 'twixt the representative Great bodies of the People and the State, The concord, which the national unity Doth to complete essentially conduce, Would ever be maintained.
The Court Circular could be rendered in heroic rhymes. As thus:--
The QUEEN walked in the Castle Grounds this morn; The DUKE OF EDINBURGH, LOUISE, of Lorne The Princess, and the Marquis with his bride, For Town left Windsor after this noon-tide. PRINCE ARTHUR, by SIR HOWARD ELPHINSTONE Attended, went to Dover, too, anon. Right Honourable GLADSTONE here has been To-day, and had an audience of the QUEEN, The Premier, after that, remained to lunch, The dinner-party included _Mr. Punch_.