iged to leave FIBBINS, and
thereafter received a solid half-year's instruction in the Chambers of
a learned Counsel who was not a briefless impostor.

I heard afterwards that he had added the story to his fund of legal
dining-out anecdotes, and had considerably amplified it. It came out
in a shape which made FIBBINS a hero, myself an imbecile of a rather
malicious kind, PROSER helplessly cowering under FIBBINS's wealth of
arguments, and the other two Judges reduced to admiring silence. I
take this opportunity of stating that if anybody "cowered" in Court on
that memorable occasion, it was certainly not poor old PROSER.

* * * * *

THE "DISAPPOINTMENT OF DECEMBER."

["It is too early yet (says the _Telegraph_) to announce the
title of the latest of the Laureate's plays, but this much may
be said, that it is written partly in blank verse and partly
in prose, that it is what is known in theatrical circles as
a 'a costume play,' and that the scene is laid in England. It
may, however, interest sensitive dramatists to know that Lord
TENNYSON is liberal enough to place the stage detail wholly in
the competent hands of Mr. DALY. He does not wince if a line
is cut here and there, or protest if a scene or a speech has
to be supplied."]

[Illustration: A cut here and there will be necessary.]

Behold, I know not anything,--
Except that if I write two Acts in verse,
And two in prose, I might do worse
Than having a Four Act song to sing.

I leave the dress we know to-day;
On English ground my scene I set,
And wonder if I touch as yet,
What we have termed a "_Costume Play!_"

If I have over-writ, and laid,
It may be here, it may be there,
The fat too thickly on,--with care
To cut it down be not afraid.

But oh, if here and there I seem
To have half-said what I should say,
Give me the start--I'll fire away,
And keep up the poetic steam--

Ay! keep it up in lines that run
As glibly from the Laureate's pen,
That I shall by my fellow men
Be greeted with "That's TENNYSON!"

In short, it will not be easy, from such scanty information as the
Noble Rhymester has as yet given to the public, to say precisely what
sort of a play this promised comedy, "half in prose, half in blank
verse," will prove itself to be; but it is to be hoped with _The
Promise of May_ still fresh in the memory of many a