AT THE SIGN OF THE LYRE. "At the Sign of the Lyre,"Good Folk, we present youWith the pick of our quire,And we hope to content you! Here be Ballad and Song,The fruits of our leisure,Some short and some long—May they all give you pleasure! But if, when you read,They should fail to restore you,Farewell, and God-speed—The world is before you! THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S. A PROPER NEW BALLAD OF THE COUNTRY AND THE TOWN. "Phyllida... more...

ON SOME BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,—and yet be no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of yesterday. Friends they may become to-morrow, the day after,—perhaps "hunc in annum et plures" But for the time being they have... more...

EARLY YEARS—FIRST PLAYS. Like his contemporary Smollett, Henry Fielding came of an ancient family, and might, in his Horatian moods, have traced his origin to Inachus. The lineage of the house of Denbigh, as given in Burke, fully justifies the splendid but sufficiently quoted eulogy of Gibbon. From that first Jeffrey of Hapsburgh, who came to England, temp. Henry III., and assumed the name of Fieldeng, or Filding, "from his father's... more...