le bonheur est suspendu!

Par un discours sans suite et tendre,
Egarez un coeur eperdu;
Souvent par un mal-entendu
L'amant adroit se fait entendre.

IMITATED.

How happy to defend our heart,
When Love has never thrown a dart!
But ah! unhappy when it bends,
If pleasure her soft bliss suspends!
Sweet in a wild disordered strain,
A lost and wandering heart to gain!
Oft in mistaken language wooed,
The skilful lover's understood.

These verses have such a resemblance to meaning, that Fontenelle, having
listened to the song, imagined that he had a glimpse of sense, and
requested to have it repeated. "Don't you perceive," said Madame Tencin,
"that they are _nonsense verses_?" The malicious wit retorted, "They are
so much like the fine verses I have heard here, that it is not
surprising I should be for once mistaken."

In the "Scribleriad" we find a good account of _the Cento_. A Cento
primarily signifies a cloak made of patches. In poetry it denotes a work
wholly composed of verses, or passages promiscuously taken from other
authors, only disposed in a new form or order, so as to compose a new
work and a new meaning. Ausonius has laid down the rules to be observed
in composing _Cento's_. The pieces may be taken either from the same
poet, or from several; and the verses may be either taken entire, or
divided into two; one half to be connected with another half taken
elsewhere; but two verses are never to be taken together. Agreeable to
these rules, he has made a pleasant nuptial _Cento_ from Virgil.[84]

The Empress Eudoxia wrote the life of Jesus Christ, in centos taken from
Homer; Proba Falconia from Virgil. Among these grave triflers may be
mentioned Alexander Ross, who published "Virgilius Evangelizans, sive
Historia Domini et Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi Virgilianis verbis et
versibus descripta." It was republished in 1769.

A more difficult whim is that of "_Reciprocal Verses_," which give the
same words whether read backwards or forwards. The following lines by
Sidonius Apollinaris were once infinitely admired:--

_Signa te signa temere me tangis et angis.
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor._

The reader has only to take the pains of reading the lines backwards,
and he will find himself just where he was after all his fatigue.[85]

Capitaine Lasphrise, a French self-taught poet, boasts of his