any means; on the contrary, he loves a bit of racy diction, and has no objection to a sally of slang. Thus, in a lecture on the toilet, he is strict about the article of gloves:
Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids,
But be a parent,—don't neglect your kids.[1]
A superlative Mr. Jolly Green is shown up,
Whom schoolboys question if his walk transcends
The last advices of maternal friends[2]—
which polite periphrasis is discarded where Achilles' death is mourned,
Accursed heel that killed a hero stout!
O, had your mother known that you were out,
Death had not entered at the trifling part
That still defies the small chirurgeon's art
With corns and bunions.[3]
The last passage is from a protracted play upon words, in which poor Hood is emulated—though the author owns that
Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun,
A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one"—
in unskilful hands turned back on one's self "by the current of some stronger wit," so that,
Like the strange missile which the Australian throws,
Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose.
A punster, however, Dr. Holmes will be—and already we have had a taste of his quality in the kid-glove case; so again, the "bunions" annexed to the Achilles catastrophe reminds him to explain, that he refers not to
The glorious John
Who wrote the book we all have pondered on,—
But other bunions, bound in fleecy hose,
To "Pilgrim's Progress" unrelenting foes![4]
A gourmand, sublimely contemptuous of feasts of reason, argues that
Milton to Stilton must give in, and Solomon to Salmon,
And Roger Bacon be a bore, and Francis Bacon gammon.[5]
And the irresistible influence of collegiate convivial associations is thus illustrated:
We're all alike;—Vesuvius flings the scoriæ from his fountain,
But down they come in volleying rain back to the burning mountain;
We leave, like those volcanic stones, our precious Alma Mater,
But will keep dropping in again to see the dear old crater.[6]
As a satirist, to shoot Folly as it flies, Dr. Holmes bends a bow of strength. His arrows are polished, neatly pointed, gaily feathered, and whirr through the air with cutting emphasis. And he hath his quiver full of them. But, to his honour be it recorded, he knows how and when to stay his hand, and checks himself if about to use a shaft of undue size and weight, or dipped in gall of bitterness. Then he pauses, and says:
Come, let us breathe; a something not divine
Has mingled, bitter, with the flowing line—
