fitting attributes of a "John Jones," would have kept the victim of such
an appellation quite clear of poetry. It is next to impossible that a
John Jones should be a poet;--and some kind friend should have broken
the truth to the butler, before he endeavoured to share unpolished glory
with uneducated bards.

An inspired serving-man, in a livery of industry, turned up with
morality, is a species of bard which we never expected to find in the
service of the Muses, or bringing a written character from his last
place, and vaunting of his readiness and ability to write epics and
wait at table. The work we should have looked to meet with, emanating
from the butler's pantry, was a miscellaneous volume full of religious
scraps, essays on dress, receipts for boot-tops, wise cooking
cogitations, remedies for bugs, cures for ropy beer, hints for blacking,
ingredients for punch, thoughts on tapping ale, early rising and killing
fleas. The mischief of the wide dissemination of education is now
becoming apparent, for, poor as authors confessedly are, they have
generally been gentlemen, even in rags--learned men of some degree,
though with exposed elbows--folk only a little lower than the angels!
But never until the schoolmaster was so abundantly abroad, distributing
his spelling-soup to the poor, did we ever hear of a butler writing
poetry, and committing it to the press. The order of things is becoming
reversed. The garret is beginning to lose its literary celebrity, and
the kitchen is taking the matter up. A floor near the sky in Grub-street
is no pen-spot now; but down fifty fathoms deep in Portland Place, or
Portman Square, or some far-retired old country house, you shall find
the author: his red cuffs turned up over his light blue jacket sleeves,
the pen in his hand, and his inspired eye looking out upon the area.
There doth he correct the brain-work which is to carry his name up above
the earth, and keep it there, bright as cleaned plate. In the