and poured scorn upon any

"Fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot."

Beholding some "names of little note" in the _Biographia Britannica_, he
proceeded to satirise the publication, to laugh at the imaginary
procession of worthies--the squire, his lady, the vicar, and other local
celebrities, and chants in his anger:

"There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark!
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk."

The poet Gay is not unmindful of the

"Parish clerk who calls the hymns so clear";

and Tennyson, in his sonnet to J.M.K., wrote:

"Our dusty velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with fiercest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good Sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below."

In the gallery of Dickens's characters stands out the immortal Solomon