which tended doubtless, in some sort, to embitter his latter days. Disraeli, in his Coningsby, under the transparent fiction of "Rigby," has held up Croker and his pretensions to the ridicule and contempt of his contemporaries, with a success but very imperfectly impaired by the retaliative review in the Quarterly; Macaulay, an old opponent, who had long waited his opportunity, did his best by ever)' artifice that could be employed by an unprincipled and disingenuous political enemy, to destroy by his article in the Edinburgh on Croker's admirable edition of Boswell's Johnson, any reputation for industry, sagacity and learning which the editor had enjoyed; and finally, he must have keenly felt the injury which his social footing had received by the revelations on the trial of Lord Hertford's valet,—though here there was to console him, his lordship's bequest of £21,000, and his cellar of wine!
The earlier works of Croker are now but little known, but many are worth the trouble of hunting up. In An Intercepted Letter from Canton (1805, 8vo), will be found a curious satirical account of Dublin at that date; his Battle of Talavera (1809, 8vo), and his Songs of Trafalgar, afford evidence, together with his fine verses on the death of his friend, George Canning, of no mean poetical abilities; his Stories from the History of England for Children served as model, as Sir Walter Scott states in his preface, for that great novelist's Tales of a Grandfather; his annotated edition of Boswell's Johnson is, in the best sense, a "book which no gentleman's library can be without"; the notes and literary illustrations collected by him, and incorporated in the edition of Pope now publishing under the editorial care of the Rev. Whitwell Elvin (Murray, 1871, etc.), conduce to render this the most valuable extant; and the little volume, in appropriate sanguine cover, The History of the Guillotine, is full of curious information, and worth far more than the shilling it costs.
Croker died at his seat at West Moulsey,—where, about his hospitable "round table," the men of his time most distinguished for wit and learning had been wont to assemble,—August 10, 1857, in the seventy-seventh year of his age.
XVII.—Tydus-Pooh-Pooh.
"Between my knees my forehead was,—
My lips, drawn in, said not, Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass."!!!
As I occasionally quote from the older poets, I rejoice that, looking at this queer drawing, a quatrain comes into my head from the pen of a modern poet, Mr. W. M. Rossetti; and which the admirers of the new "school" no doubt consider rhythmical, polished, and pregnant with intelligent meaning. Let it serve as a specimen.
"To a grateful and discerning public, who can appreciate talent and do justice to worth, we gladly submit the effigy of our Man of Genius. Yes; this is Tydus-Pooh-Pooh, the translator of the poetry of the
