346 CANADIAN NOMS-DE-PLUME IDENTIFIED. 



week have been a litei'ate person, and so branded by Act of Parlia- 

 ment. I might then, indeed, have served my friends, who now say I 

 am a burden to them, with writs of ca-re and fiery faces, like Mr. 

 Underhill ; or perhaps I migh t have been an attorney and then my 

 clients would give me instructions, and pay besides ; and no one 

 could say my education would not be finished some time or other, 

 unless, indeed, it is possible that my aforesaid instructions might 

 happen to be never dun ! which is, it must be acknowledged, very 

 unlikely." In the same Canadian Magazine are some poetic pieces 

 from the hand of Cinna, humorous and serious, which I shall 

 presently notice. He explains in the following mannei-, in one of his 

 papers, how he first came to send the editor a communication in 

 prose : — " I was sitting," he says, "one evening with my friend 'Sa^ 

 Bald' (so the editor Sibbald resolved his name on the covers of the 

 Magazine), who everybody knows to be the proprietor of the Maga- 

 zine, and I was reciting to him, as I thought most beautifully, some 

 cantos of my great epic poem, in which I fiatter myself I have 

 excelled most poets in making the sound agree with the sense. The 

 canto contained a sublime and musical description of the baying of a 

 kennel full of hounds by moonlight ; and of course the verse seemed 

 to echo the voices of the interesting animals who thus sang in concert 

 with the music of the spheres. The passage I was reading, notwith- 

 standing the splendour of the lunar orb, was a dark one ; and I was 

 indulging myself in the hope that T had excelled even my companion 

 ' Sae Bald ' in the obscurity of his style, when I was awakened from 

 my pleasing dream by his suddenly interrupting me. Laying down 

 his glass, ' Cinna, mpn,' says he, ' will ye just hand me the nutmeg T 

 This spicy gale quite shipwrecked the bark of my dogs, and oh ! how 

 that cinnamon and nutmeg grated on my feelings ? But think not, 

 reader, that my friend does not understand and feel poetry, particu- 

 larly such as mine. The truth was, I had chosen my time badly. 

 The printer's imp stood behind his chair. ' Cinna,' said Sae Bald, 

 ■^ what for do ye no gie us some prose for the Mogazeen % Yon deevil 

 of a printer is in an unco hurry for matter, an' he says, nae matter 

 how I get it, it maun be furnishet directly.' 'And I suppose,' said 

 I, snappishly, ' yoii cannot furnish it directly if your materials are 

 inverse.' " I close Cinna's prose with two anecdotes which he contrives 

 to bring in. (The "Bed Lion" is still in being in Yorkville; it 

 used to be known, from the name of the well-known proprietor and 

 manager, as Tiers' Tavern, It should have been mentioned above 



