Hong Kong.
_Muscipula_ (Vol. viii., p. 229.--_The Name Lloyd._--Besides the
translation of this poem by Dr. Hoadly, of which a note in Dodsley informs
us that the author, Holdsworth, said it was "exceedingly well done," I have
before me another, printed in London for R. Gosling, 1715, with an engraved
frontispiece, illustrative of the triumphant reception of Taffy's
invention. The depredations of the mouse are illustrated in the various
figures around, as cheeses burrowed through, even the invasion of a
sleeping Welshman's very [Greek: erkos odonton], &c. The title is, _The
Mouse-Trap, a Poem done from the original Latin in Milton's Stile_:
"Ludus animo debet aliquando dari,
Ad cogitandum melior ut redeat tibi"--_Phaed._
Both translations are in blank verse, but that of the latter is very
_blank_ indeed, and possesses little in common with Milton's _style_,
except the absence of rhyme. It thus begins:
"The British mountaineer, who first uprear'd
A mouse-trap, and engoal'd the little thief,
The deadly wiles and fate inextricable,
Rehearse, my Muse, and, oh! thy presence deign,
Auxiliar Phoebus, mortal foe to mice:
Whence bards in ancient times thee Smintheus term'd," &c.
Muscipula must have made some sensation to have been translated by two
different persons. _Welsh rabbits_, and their supposed general fondness for
_cheese_, have furnished many a joke at the expense of the inhabitants of
the principality. Among others the following quiz may not be out of place
on the famous Cambro-Britannic name of Lloyd:
"Two gibbets dejected, LL
A cheese in full view, O
A toaster erected Y
And a cheese cut in two, D."
Ballard MSS. in the Bodleian, vol. xxix. p. 80.