LONGS AND SHORTS.
fee on Emma 07 in ”Srsoraros.-] STR,—In such times, articles like that on "Longs and Shorts" are a real refreshment to the mind_ May I remind your readers of a passage in Boswell's Johnson which may be con- sidered a locus classicus in this connexion? "Talking of the comedy of the Rehearsal, he said, 'It has not wit enough to keep it sweet.' This was easy;—be therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more rotund sentence It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction.' " It would be easy to multiply examples from the same source. When ready to start for the theatre in coloured " deaths " he learnt that, owing to Court mourning, every one would wear black, where- upon he hastened to change his attire, remarking : "I would not for ten pounds have seemed so retrograde to any general observance." Even more delightful is the retort of Huggins (quoted by Boswell) in a dispute as to Arioeto, when he
dismissed an ill-instructed opponent by answering with violence : "1 will no longer militate against his nescience."
A man of business lately suggested to me that certain matters should be left to be regulated "as eventualities might emerge." In a report of a football match the fact that the first half was opened with a huge kick was thus chronicled "Smith inaugurated the initial moiety with a mammoth kick." In the parish churches of Scotland there is a distinctive type of flamboyant oratory. A member who has died during the week is said to have passed through "the dread portals of mortality." A minister in an out-of-the-way parish startled at least one of his hearers not long ago by opening a prayer thus: "Oh Thou that panted the peetals of the polyanthus parrple!"
Is it too late to add one to your store of mixed metaphors? Some thirty years ago I came across a mission report which invited its readers to come and "blow the Gospel trumpet, which Paul planted and Apollos watered "!—I am, Sir, Jos., J. W.
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