did all beauty and bloom;
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair,
And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair.

This, in the volume which I have now before me, is followed by a picture
of Fanny in the chair, to which I cannot but take exception. I am quite
sure that when Fanny graced the room and seated herself in the chair of
her old bachelor friend, she had not on a low dress and loosely-flowing
drawing-room shawl, nor was there a footstool ready for her feet. I
doubt also the headgear. Fanny on that occasion was dressed in her
morning apparel, and had walked through the streets, carried no fan,
and wore no brooch but one that might be necessary for pinning her
shawl.

_The Great Cossack Epic_ is the longest of the ballads. It is a legend
of St. Sophia of Kioff, telling how Father Hyacinth, by the aid of St.
Sophia, whose wooden statue he carried with him, escaped across the
Borysthenes with all the Cossacks at his tail. It is very good fun; but
not equal to many of the others. Nor is the _Carmen Lilliense_ quite to
my taste. I should not have declared at once that it had come from
Thackeray's hand, had I not known it.

But who could doubt the _Bouillabaisse_? Who else could have written
that? Who at the same moment could have been so merry and so
melancholy,--could have gone so deep into the regrets of life, with
words so appropriate to its jollities? I do not know how far my readers
will agree with me that to read it always must be a fresh pleasure; but
in order that they may agree with me, if they can, I will give it to
them entire. If there be one whom it does not please, he will like
nothing that Thackeray ever wrote in verse.

THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE.

A street there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is--
The New Street of the Little Fields;
And here's an inn, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable case;
The which in youth I oft attended,
To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is,--
A sort of soup, or broth, or brew
Or hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo;
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace:
All these you eat at Terre's tavern,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

Indeed, a rich and savoury stew '