ered poem
(for any modern improvements would not be honest) in the shape of a
translated Greek epigram from the Anthologia:--

"Not Juno's eye of fire divine
Can vie my Melite, with thine
So heavenly pure and bright;
Nor can Minerva's hand excel
That pretty hand I know so well,
So small and lily-white.

"Not Venus can such charms disclose
As those sweet lips of blushing rose
And ivory bosom show;
Not Thetis' nimble foot can tread
More lightly o'er her coral bed
Than thy soft foot of snow.

"What happiness thy face bestows
When smiling on a lover's woes!
Thrice happy then is he
Who hears thy soul-subduing song,--
O more than blest, to whom belong
The charms of Melite!"

I was head of the lower school then, and I remember the father of Bernal
Osborne patting my curly locks and scolding his whiskered son for
letting a small boy be above him.

Much about this time, and until I left Charterhouse at sixteen, there
proceeded from my pen numerous other mild rhymed pieces and sundry
unsuccessful prize poems; _e.g._, three on Carthage, the second Temple
of Jerusalem, and the Tower of London, whereof I have schoolboy copies
not worth notice; besides divers metrical translations of Horace,
AEschylus, Virgil; and a few songs and album verses for young lady
friends, one being set by a Mr. Sala (perhaps G.A.S. had a musical
relative) with an impromptu or two, whereof the following "On a shell
sounding like the sea" is a fair specimen for a boy:--

"I remember the voice of the flood
Hoarse breaking upon the rough shore,
As a linnet remembers the wood
And his warblings so joyous before."

Of course, this class of my juvenile lyrics was holiday work, and barely
worth a record, except to save a fly in amber, like this.

* * * * *

Whilst I was at Charterhouse, occurred my first Continental journey,
when my excellent father took his small party all through France in his
private travelling carriage, bought at Calais for the trip (it was long
before railways were invented), and I jotted down in verse our daily
adventures in the rumble. The whole journal, entitled "Rough Rhymes," in
divers metres, grave and gay, was published by the "Literary Chronicle"
in 1826, and the editor thereof, Mr. Jerdan, says, after some
compliments, "the author is in his sixteenth year,"--which fixes the
date. Po