* * * * *
_Mock-heroics._--Cowper, in one of his letters to Joseph Hill,
reminds his friend of the following mock-heroic line, written at one of
their convivial meetings, called the Nonsense Club--
"To whom replied the Devil, _yard-long-tail'd_;"
And adds, "there never was anything more truly Grecian than that triple
epithet; and were it possible to introduce it either into the _Iliad_ or
_Odyssey,_ I should certainly steal it." This of course was written in
jest; and had the translator been disposed to exemplify his own pleasantry,
he might have found an opportunity in the well-known line of the sixth book
of the _Iliad_--
[Greek: Aideomas Trôas ai Trôadas elkesipeplous.]