Curll's "Key to the Dunciad," quoted with evident relish by Pope in the Variorum notes, recorded on the authority of contemporary scandal that the "two babes of love" were the offspring of a poet and a bookseller.

Oh, Paddy Malone, through the bush he did roam What a Babe in the Wood was poor Paddy Malone.

The babe is a summer-child, and so "The sunny nature, the voice of song, The helpful hands, true heart and strong "With Nature's self should be in tune, Sweet child, I name thee Jenny June.

Now listen: I'm prepared to lay odds that The Babe is not an opium fiend at all, and has never been near this den.

Your own lovely babe you so fondly adored, Death's torn from the heart of her mother, So full was your soul of a mother's deep love, You would gladly have died to restore her.

Before the babe was a fortnight old, Tom announced that he was to accompany his master to New Orleans, whither he had been summoned by business.

I have done so much that, if I wed not her, My marriage makes me an adulterer: In which black sheets I wallow all my life, My babes being bastards, and a whore my wife.

Babe was a splendid young animal, handsome and round and rosy, her body crowded into a bright-blue braided, fur-trimmed coat, her face crowded into a tight, much-ornamented veil, her head with heavy chestnut hair, crowded into a cherry-colored, velvet turban round which seemed to be wrapped the tail of some large wild beast.

The pretty song, "Balow, my babe," was probably "Ann Bothwell's Lament," beginning "Balow, my boy." Page 354.

This babe of Mrs. Dyer's is no bad emblem of Richard Baxter's own credulity.

And then he expresses his own thought on this subject in a single line: "A babe in glory, is a babe forever.

He had put in a long hard day in the tunnel, and Babe was a husky youngster for four-and-a-half.

"No, I can't conceive a sillier paradox than 'A babe in the house is a well-spring of joy.'