A FAMOUS CHARGE. 



187 



" Epigrams, epigrams, 

 Pour'd in, and numbered 

 Good, bad, indifferent 

 More than Six Hundred. 

 " Epigrams potters want," 

 Quoth The Tobacco Plant : 

 Write ! you for fame who pant ; 

 Write ! we'll three prizes grant." 

 Wrote for Tobacco-Jars, 

 Over Six Hundred. 



Postmen, ere morning's light ; 

 Postmen, whilst day was bright ; 

 Postmen, as closed in night, 

 Ran tan'd and thunder'd 

 Loud at our office door ; ' 

 Brought letters, many score 

 Contents of bags to pour 

 Table and desk all o'er : 

 Handfuls and armfuls bore, 

 Casting them on the floor. 

 Then through the town they tore, 

 Hastening back for more 

 More than Six Hundred. 



Letters to right of us, 

 Letters to left of us, 

 Letters in front of us, 

 Seeming unnumbered ! 

 Envelopes every size 

 Met our astonish'd eyes. 

 Writer with writer vies ! 

 Which wins the chiefs st prize 

 Out of Six Hundred. 



How did each writer strain 

 After a happy vein ! 

 Pegasus, spurning rein, 

 Shied, jibb'd, and blunder'd. 

 Reverend writers, then - 

 Took up the winged pen ; 

 Stiff 'rers on beds of pain 

 Sought the bright muse again ; 



Lawyer and barrister 

 Courted and harassed her; 

 M. D.s and editors; 

 Debtors and creditors ; 

 Artists and artisans, 

 Nicotine's partisans ; 

 Nurses and gentle dames 

 Call'd it endearing names ; 

 Poets, ship-masters, too; 

 Ay ! poetasters, too ; 

 Wooing fair Nicotine, 

 Six hundred scribes were seen. 

 Anti-Tobacco cant, 

 Bigoted, bilious rant, 

 Bursting to vent their spleen, 

 Joined the Six Hundred. 



Flash'd many fancies rare ; 

 Flash'd like Aurora's glare ; 

 Quick jotted down with care ; 

 Some the reverse of fair ; 

 Some that we well could spare ; 

 Some that were made to bear 

 Blunders unnumbered. 

 Plunging in metaphor, 

 Not a bit better for 

 Pardon the Cockney rhyme ! 

 Similies plunder'd. 

 Praising Tobacco smoke, 

 Heeding not grammar's yoke, 

 Prosody's rules they broke. 

 Many a rhyming moke, 

 Sense from rhyme sundered : 

 Many wrote well, but not 

 Not the Six Hundred. 

 Honour Tobacco ! roll'd, 

 Cut, press'd, however sold. 

 Alpha and Beta, bold, 

 Ye shall be tipp'd with gold. 

 Omega shall be sold, 

 Others in type behold 

 Nearly Six Hundred." 



The following poem entitled " Weedless," after Byron's 

 "Darkness," gives a vivid description of the world without 

 tobacco. 



