[The authorship of this little poem has at times excited a good deal of
attention. It has been attributed, on no very sufficient grounds, to
Dr. Joshua Webster, M.D.; but from the _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol.
lxx., p. 41., it appears that it is the entire production of the {210}
Rev. Thomas Moss, minister of Brierly Hill and Trentham, in
Staffordshire, who wrote it at about the age of twenty-three. He sold
the manuscript of that, and of several others, to Mr. Smart, printer,
in Wolverhampton, who, from the dread which Mr. Moss had of criticism,
was to publish them on this condition, that only twenty copies should
have his name annexed to them, for the purpose of being presented to
his relations and friends.]
"_Tiring-irons never to be untied._"--To what does Lightfoot (vol. vii. p.
214.) refer when, in speaking of the Scriptures, he says--
"They are not unriddleable riddles, and tiring-irons never to be
untied"?