"Don't you wish you may get it?" said the other sympathetically.

"Does your mother," said a third, with a look of sympathy--"your
venerable mother, know that you are abroad at the Fair?"

"Perfectly well," answered Scapegrace; "it was mainly in consequence of
her pecuniary distress that I came hither."

"Distress, indeed!" answered the other; "thou wouldst not have us
believe that she has sold her mangle yet?"

"I said not that she had," replied Scapegrace; "but she would gladly
have parted with it if she could."

"How are you off for soap?" said another in a compassionate tone.

"Very indifferently, friend," answered Scapegrace; "for my lodging has
been but poorly supplied of late, and I think of changing it."

"Lodging, quotha! You shan't lodge here, Mr Ferguson, I promise you."

"My name is not Ferguson," said Scapegrace meekly; "neither have I the
least intention of lodging here."

"What a shocking bad hat!" cried a voice from behind, and in a trice was
Scapegrace's hat knocked over his eyes, and his pockets turned inside
out; but finding nothing therein but scrip, they were enraged, and
falling upon Scapegrace, they kicked, and cuffed, and hustled him up one
row and down another, through this alley and across that court, till at
last, being tired of mocking him, they cast him out of the Fair
altogether, and shut the gate against him.

THE ILIAD OF HOMER--BOOK THE FIRST.

IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.

[The author of the version of the Last Book of the _Iliad_, in the
Number for March, has been requested by the editor of this Magazine to
give another specimen; and, as he happens to have the First Book
completed, he is happy to comply.

In case any one unacquainted with the original, and familiar with Homer
only through the brilliant _rifacimento_ of Pope, should complain of the
redundancies and repetitions which he meets here, let the writer remind
him that the attempt is to render the ancient poet, not only in a
measure framed on the basis of his own, but as nearly as possible with a
literal fidelity. Moreover, be it remembered, that the poem was not
composed for readers, but to be sung with the accompaniment of the harp
in festive assemblies of wholly illiterate soldiers; and that, in all
probability, the various speeches introduced were not all chanted by the
main voice; but that brother minstrels from time to time relieved the
master, as he himself describes the Muses at the Olympian banquet, "w