Do you not imagine you see the pursy Prince, purring and blowing and
sweating with the exertion he had made, and 'larding the lean earth,'
like another Falstaff almost? Nay, the very words, 'Come let me wipe thy
face,' are addressed by Doll Tearsheet to Falstaff, when he was heated by
his pursuit of Pistol:--'Alas, poor ape, how thou sweatest! Come, let me
wipe thy face.' Hem!" (quoth Mr. Henry Augustus Constantine Stubbs) "I
have done--and pause for a reply."

"You'll be horribly laughed at," said McCrab, "if you do make Hamlet a
fat little fellow."

"Shall I?" exclaimed Stubbs, with a contented chuckle, and rubbing his
hands "shall I be horribly laughed at?"

"Ay," replied McCrab, "and gloriously gibbetted the next day, in all the
papers, for your Sancho Panza exhibition."

"Pooh!" ejaculated Stubbs, "pooh! pooh! what care I for the rascally
papers? Don't I know what sort of critics they are who guide the public
taste, and fulminate their mighty WE in the columns of a newspaper."

(_To be concluded in our next._)

* * * * *



LONDON LYRICS.

THE AUCTIONEER'S ODE TO MERCURY.