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　　TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERY-DAY BOOK"

　　(1825)

　　I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone!

　　In whose capacious all-embracing leaves

　　The very marrow of tradition's shown;

　　And all that history—much that fiction—weaves.

　　By every sort of taste your work is graced.

　　Vast stores of modern anecdote we find,

　　With good old story quaintly interlaced—

　　The theme as various as the reader's mind.

　　Rome's life-fraught legends you so truly paint—

　　Yet kindly,—that the half-turn'd Catholic

　　Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint,

　　And cannot curse the candid heretic.

　　Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page;

　　Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased behold,

　　And, proudly conscious of a purer age,

　　Forgive some fopperies in the times of old.

　　Verse-honouring Phoebus, Father of bright Days,

　　Must needs bestow on you both good and many,

　　Who, building trophies of his Children's praise,

　　Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any.

　　Dan Phoebus loves your book—trust me, friend Hone—

　　The title only errs, he bids me say:

　　For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown,

　　He swears,'tis not a work of every day.

　　ACROSTICS

　　TO CAROLINE MARIA APPLEBEE

　　An Acrostic

　　Caroline glides smooth in verse,

　　And is easy to rehearse;

　　Runs just like some crystal river

　　O'er its pebbly bed for ever.

　　Lines as harsh and quaint as mine

　　In their close at least will shine,

　　Nor from sweetness can decline,

　　Ending but with Caroline.

　　Maria asks a statelier pace—

　　"Ave Maria, full of grace!"

　　Romish rites before me rise,

　　Image-worship, sacrifice,

　　And well-meant but mistaken pieties.

　　Apple with Bee doth rougher run.

　　Paradise was lost by one;

　　Peace of mind would we regain,

　　Let us, like the other, strain

　　Every harmless faculty,

　　Bee-like at work in our degree,

　　Ever some sweet task designing,

　　Extracting still, and still refining. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4