THE COMET.
AN ASTRONOMICAL ANECDOTE.
“I cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this self-same Starling.”—STERNE’S SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.
AMONGST professors of astronomy,
Adepts in the celestial economy,
The name of H*******l’s very often cited,
And justly so, for he is hand and glove
With ev’ry bright intelligence above;
Indeed, it was his custom so to stop,
Watching the stars upon the house’s top,
That once upon a time he got be-knighted.
In his observatory thus coquetting
With Venus—or with Juno gone astray,
All sublunary matters quite forgetting
In his flirtations with the winking stars,
Acting the spy—it might be upon Mars—
A new André;
Or, like a Tom of Coventry, sly peeping,
At Dian sleeping;
Or ogling thro’ his glass
Some heavenly lass
Tripping with pails along the Milky Way;
Or looking at that Wain of Charles the Martyrs:—
Thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky,
When lo! a something with a tail of flame
Made him exclaim,
“My stars!”—he always put that stress on my—
“My stars and garters!”
[Pg 268]
“A comet, sure as I’m alive!
A noble one as I should wish to view;
It can’t be Halley’s though, that is not due
Till eighteen thirty-five.
Magnificent!—how fine his fiery trail!
Zounds! ’tis a pity, though he comes unsought—
Unask’d—unreckon’d,—in no human thought—
He ought—he ought—he ought
To have been caught
With scientific salt upon his tail!”
 
“POSSE COMETATIS.”
“I look’d no more for it, I do declare,
Than the Great Bear!
As sure as Tycho Brahe is dead,
It really enter’d in my head
No more than Berenice’s Hair!”
[Pg 269]
Thus musing, Heaven’s Grand Inquisitor
Sat gazing on the uninvited visitor
Till John, the serving-man, came to the upper
Regions, with &............