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JOHN WILSON; Aº
“CHRISTOPHER NORTH,” OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, PROFESSOR OF MORAL
PHILOSOPHY IN UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, ITO. -
* * * * * *
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‘WM. MAGINN, LL.D., J. G. LOCKHART, JAMES HOGG, AND OTHERS.
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WITII
MEMOIRS AND NOTES,
BY R. SHELTON MACKENZIE, D. C. I.
V o L. I.
AUGUST, 1819–AUG., 1824.
NEW YORK:
W. J. WIDDLETON, PUBLISHER.
1867.





PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION OF 1863.
: THE continued demand for the “Noctes Ambrosianae,” shows that the public
interest in that work is unabated. Ere finally dismissing this revised edition
from my hands, I desire to state how I undertook the work, nine years ago.
One of the miscellaneous publications which I early delighted to read was
Blackwood's Magazine. The first number that ever fell into my hands when I was
a boy contained the commencement of the “Noctes,” in which Christopher
North and Morgan O'Doherty were the interlocutors, and I firmly believed, for
a time, that these personages, who talked so naturally yet so brilliantly of men
and manners, books and politics, were as real individuals as any living authors
of the day. In time, of course, I came to know better; but I never lost my
liking for the “Noctes”—more especially after I became acquainted with Wil-
son, Maginn, Lockhart, and Hogg.
Circumstances combined made me a newspaper editor and magazine writer
before I was well out of my teens. And though from that time I was anxious to
see the “Noctes” in a collective form, I did not anticipate that this was ever to
be executed by myself. However, a very extensive course of reading, a large ac-
quaintance with authors; artists, and public men, and an excellent memory, un-
consciously prepared me for what, indeed, became “a labor of love” in later years.
It gratified me to learn that Mr. Blackwood had a complete edition in view, as early
as the begini,ing of 1832. This was prevented by his death in September, 1834.
In 1843, leading publishers in Philadelphia, reprinted the “Noctes” in
four volumes. Without any prefatory history of the series, without any notice
of the authors, without the slightest key to the subjects and persons discussed
and introduced, almost without even the dates of the respective numbers, and
without an index, this edition was as indifferent as neglect, carelessness, and want
of taste could make it. It is not surprising that the sale was limited.
In 1852 I became a resident in the United States, where the first work I edited
was “Sheil's Sketches of the Irish Bar,” the success of which gave its publisher
such confidence in my pen that he desired to employ it again. I proposed to
edit the “Noctes Ambrosianae,” with as full annotations as would make the
work thoroughly intelligible to general readers. At the end of April, 1854, news
of Professor Wilson's death reached New York, and my publisher resolved to
bring out the “Noctes,” provided it could be done by the middle of the ensuing
August, so as to come into the fall book-market. Rather rashly, as I now think,
I undertook the work, without an adequate idea of the vast labor which it in-
Wolved. -
The first thing was to take the original “Noctes” from the Magazine. Next,
to go through about sixty volumes of the Magazine, to search for references to
the text. Lastly, there was the difficulty of distributing the “copy,” so as to
make five volumes of equal size. •
º,
IV I’RETACE.
In the search through Blackwood, I discovered in the numbers for August and
September, 1819, the articles which I have called “Christopher in the Tent,” the
precursors of the “Noctes,” which occupy the ſirst 128 pages of my first volume.
These, to use one of Coleridge's expressions, were “as good as manuscript,” for
they were unknown, even to myself, until I found them in my search. -
May, 1854, had fairly set in ere I could commence writing the notes, and the five
volumes being distributed among as many printers, as the pressure for time was
unusually great, I had to supply fresh copy daily to each, and to correct five
separate sets of proofs and revises, and to annotate every passage where it
seemed necessary. At the same time, I was also literary editor and political
writer on a daily, and dramatic and musical critic on a weekly paper in New York.
Nor was my labor limited to mere annotations—for I had to preface the volumes
with an elaborate history of “Blackwood's Magazine,” and biographies of Wil-
son, Lockhart, Hogg, and Maginn. Lastly (and this alone took a ſortnight), I
had to make a double index, containing over three thousand references. The
time occupied on the work was three months, during which I averaged fourteen
hours work per day—taking a recess only on each Sunday. .
The publication of the five volumes took place on the appointed 15th of August,
1854. The sale of the Philadelphia edition had been about 900 copies in eleven
years; of mine, about 3,000 went off in one year. -
Two years after its publication, Professor Ferrier, son-in-law of John Wilson,
3dited the “Noctes” in four volumes. Avowedly omitting all that he believed
Wilson had not written (which included much of what he had), he printed only
thirty-nine out of the whole seventy “Noctes.” In his preface he very handsomely
complimented the American edition as creditable to my “industry and good
sense,” and, moreover, made liberal use of my notes.
By the critics of this country my edition of “The Noctes” was treated with
favor, which I value the more because, at the time, I was personally acquainted
with few of them. Without appearing invidious, let me particularly mention a
long and appreciative review in the New York Tribune, from the accomplished pen
of Mr. George Ripley, and, in The Citizen (New York), a paper entitled “A
Night with the “Noctes,’” written by Mr. John Savage, in which sound criti-
cism was blended with genial wit, in a conversational manner, much aſter Wil-
son's own fashion. Speaking of my Index, which I value because of the trouble
it gave me, it said: “It is a complete guide to almost every sentence of pith,
poetry, or passion in the five volumes. It is an almost perfect concordance of the
wit, criticism, personality, punch, porter, oysters, wild-fowl, devilled kidneys, de-
canters, spoons, and everything else indulged in by the school of wits who supped
and revelled, or are supposed to have done so, at Master Ambrose’s.” Nor can
my amour propre refrain from mentioning that Dr. S. A. Allibone has done me
the honor of frequently quoting my notes in his surpassing “Critical Dictionary
of English Literature and British and American Authors.”
* R. SHELTON MACKENZIE.
PHILADELPHIA, March, 1863.
ED IT OR'S PREF A C E.
ADDITIONAL interest is given, by the recent death of Professor Wilson,
to the present work. A complete edition of the NoctEs AMBROSIANA (with
..jtes and illustrations, necessary to a true understanding of the allusions with
which the work is crowded, and the personal satire it contains) cannot bo
published in England for many years. In the lapse of time since the original
appearance of “THE NoctEs” in BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE, persons, localities,
and circumstances therein mentioned or glanced at, have been so forgotten,
altered, or obscured, as to require brief but sufficient explanations. A literary
life, the greater part of which was passed in England and Scotland, has given
me familiar acquaintance with most of the individuals and events treated of in
this work, and has qualified me, I think, for the editorship which I have as-
sumed. š,
Besides a History of BLACKwood's MAGAZINE, I have written memoirs of
Wilson, Lockhart, Hogg and Maginn, the accredited authors of THE NoCTEs.
The engravings consist of a fine portrait of Wilson, (after Sir J. Watson
Gordon, President of the Royal Scottish Academy,) with characteristic full
length sketches, by Maclise and Skillin, of the other writers. There is also the
facsimile of a page of THE Noctes in Professor Wilson's own writing.
I have endeavored to render this edition complete, by introducing the cele-
brated Chaldee Manuscript, full of satire and libel, which first brought BLACK-
wooD's MAGAZINE into notoriety—was suppressed as Soon as published—was
afterwards boasted of as a brilliant jeu d'esprit-and has been so scarce that
the only copy I have ever seen, and I have long sought for it, was that from
which I make the present reprint. - •.
In August and September, 1819, nearly two years antecedent to the first
of THE NoctEs, (which commenced in March, 1822, and closed in February,
1835) there appeared a series of articles entitled “CHRISTOPIIER IN THE TENT,”
never before presented in this country, in any shape, which I have here intro-
duced as properly prefatory, because the interlocutors in THE TENT include
the greater number of those who afterwards appeared in THE NoctEs. I have
also inserted a satirical poem entitled “Metricum Symposium Ambrosianum,”
(originally intended as an addendum to No. III. of THE NoCTEs) in which
there is a notice of every living British author of note, in the year 1822. This
has never been reprinted in America, and I have copiously annotated it. The
vi EDITOR’s PREFACE.
whole work has been very carefully revised from the original issue in the Maga,
zine, whereby Wilson's peculiarities of composition and punctuation are fully
preserved. . -
It only remains for me to tender my grateful acknowledgments, for access to
a d loan of books of reference, to Messrs. Harpers, Appletons, and Evans &
Dickerson, publishers in New-York;-to Messrs. Evert A. and George L.
Duyckinck, for having kindly placed their valuable private library at my ser-
vice;—to Mr. Philip J. Forbes, of the Society Library, for access to books,
and for information;–to my good friends Messrs. Deans & Howard, (of the
New-York Sunday Times,) for the use of a variety of publications, in their pos-
session, which I had occasion to consult ;-to Dr. Robert Tomes, of New-
York, to Dr. Henry Abbott, (of the Collection of Egyptian Antiquities) to
Dr. John W. Francis, of New-York, and to Mr. William Wilson, of Pough-
keepsie, for facts, anecdotes, and references.
Let me conclude with a story and a moral:—In Ireland, during one of the
agrarian insurrections of the last century, a banker in Galway, named French,
was particularly disliked by the laboring classes. The Peep-o'-Day Boys, as
“these sons of night” called themselves, resolved to ruin “that double-distilled
villain, ould French.” To do this effectually, whenever they visited the houses
of the farmers and gentry, besides demanding arms and ammunition, they insisted
on the Surrender of such of French's bank-notes as were on halid. To show
that it was not from a mere predatory motive, they used solemnly to burn the
notes before the late possessors, exclaiming, as they were converted into ashes,
“There—there's more ruin for Ould French; we'll burn every note of his that's
above ground, and not leave the villain a brass farthing.” They pursued this
vindictive game so successfully that, in the course of a year or two, Mr. French
was some £4,000 richer--by the destruction of notes which he otherwise must
have taken up and paid.
M O R. A. L.
Most gentle public, have no hesitation in following this Peep-o'-Day example.
Buy up all copies of THE NoCTEs which may get into the market. Loan them
not, so that others will be compelled to purchase also. If you clear away the
whole of our large impression, believe that publisher and editor will submit to
swch “ruin,” with the exemplary patience of martyrs.
- - R. S. M
112 NAssau STREET, NEw-York, July 25, 1854.
H Is To RY
B L A C K W OOD'S MAG A Z IN E.
BY DR. SHELTON MACKENZIE.
WILLIAM BLACKwood, founder and proprietor of the Magazine which has
borne his name “to the uttermost parts of the earth,” died at his house in Edin-
burgh, on the 16th September, 1834, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. His
parents, who were in an humble station of life, placed him as apprentice with
Bell & Bradfute, well known booksellers and publishers, in Edinburgh, in the
latter part of the eighteenth and the earlier years of the nineteenth century. In
their employment he read a great variety of books, but Scottish History and
Antiquities more particularly engaged his attention. He was known to have
closely studied and largely mastered these subjects, and, when he established
himself in business, his accomplishments soon attracted the notice of persons
whose good opinion was distinction. For many years he was content with
being extensively engaged in the sale of classical and antiquarian works, and was
considered one of the best informed booksellers of that class in Great Britain.
Even as late as forty years ago, what is called the New Town of Edinburgh
was régarded with dislike and distrust by the Old. In the latter place, the
Castle, the University, the Courts of Law, the Advocates' Library, the Signet
Library, the Royal Exchange, the College of Surgeons, Heriot's and Watson's
Hospitals, the principal churches, the Assembly Hall, and even the Palace of
Holyrood, were distinguishing features. There, too, were the book-shops, the
printing-offices, and the publishers' places of business. In the New Town, there
were few shops. The gentry, it is true, had domiciles there. But the idea of
any publisher moving thither would have been looked upon as the height of
folly, half a century since. -
Mr. Blackwood was a man of much sagacity. He saw that the rich, who
are naturally purchasers of books, lived in the New Town. He sold off his
largestock, chiefly consisting of old books,—moved to a large and airy suite of
rooms in Prince's street, which had formerly been occupied by a notable confec.
.*
viii HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD's MAGAZINE,
tioner, and was therefore well known to the public, and prepared to be to Edin-
burgh what John Murray, of Albemarle street, was among the publishers of
London. The “trade” in the Old Town ominously shook their heads, and Saga-
ciously predicted ruin. Blackwood did not mind them very much, but moved
to the immortal No. 17 Prince's street, in the year 1816, and applied himself to
the disposal of general literature and the business of a popular publisher. ln
April, 1817, he brought out No. 1 of BUACKwooD's EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
It is necessary now to go back a little. The first Number of the Edinburgh
Review had appeared on the 25th October, 1802; precisely at the period when
Pitt, yielding to the general desire for peace, had retired from office, in order
that Addington (afterwards Lord Sidmouth) might make a treaty with France
for that purpose. Then followed Pitt's return to office in 1804; the prosecu-
tion of the war with France with redoubled energy; the splendid victories on
land, with which Napoleon dazzled the world; the battle of Trafalgar, where
triumph was dearly purchased by the death of Nelson; the death of Pitt, in
January, 1806; the succession of Fox to office, with his tenure of it lament-
ably abridged by death; the continued successes of Napoleon; the annexation
of Spain and Portugal to the French empire; and the determination of Eng-
land, carried into effect by Wellington, to rescue the Peninsula from the usur-
pation of France. All these occurrences intervened in the seven years between
1802 and 1809, and afforded a vast supply of materials for discussion in the
Iºdinburgh Review. Meanwhile, that periodical was successful beyond all
hope and precedent, but it inculcated the idea—which was really entertained
by Jeffrey—that resistance to the far-spreading power of Napoleon was and
would be useless, and that peace with Franco, on any terms, was the only means
by which the political existence of England could possibly be preserved.
The English and Scottish Tories and Anti-Gallicans held different and (as the
eyent has proved) wiser opinions. They determined to oppose the Edinburgh
Review—whose circulation was 9,000 a number at this time, with the influ-
cnce which such extensive publicity gave it. The literary criticism, which
was very good, carried it into quarters where the political articles, of them-
selves, might have tabooed it. In February, 1809, with John Murray as its
publisher, and William Gifford as its editor, the first number of the Quarterly
Review came before the world. With such contributors as Scott, George.
Ellis, Canning, Frere, Croker, Southey, and other men of repute and intellect,
the Quarterly immediately took the high stand which it has since maintained.
John Ballantyne, the nominal head of Scott's publishing house, was Murray's
Edinburgh agent. After some time, Blackwood was placed in that lucrative
position. When Scott quarrelled with Constable, the Edinburgh publisher, in
1816, Murray and Blackwood gladly became publishers of the next of the
Waverley Novels, which happened to be the first series of “Tales of My Land-
lord.” This was immediately before Blackwood had gone to the New Town,
tº
HISTORY OF BLACKWooD's MAGAZINE. 1X
and when he was known only as an intelligent antiquarian bookseller, and
agent to Murray, * -
Removed to the New Town, in 1816, Blackwood appears to have con-
templated the idea of exalting the character of magazine literature, then fallen
very low indeed. At this time he was forty years old. In Peter's Letters, (by
Lockhart,) he was described as “a nimble active-looking man of middle age,
and moves about from one corner to another, with great alacrity, and appa-
rently under the influence of high animal spirits. His complexion is very San-
guineous, but nothing can be more intelligent, keen, and sagacious, than the
expression of the whole physiognomy; above all, the gray eyes and eyebrows,
as full of locomotion as those of Catalani. The remarks he makes are, in gen-
eral, extremely acute—much more so, indeed, than those of any member of the
trade I ever heard speak upon such topics.” - m
Some time before this, James Hogg had conducted a weekly literary journal
in Edinburgh called “The Spy.” It failed, but Hogg, who was full of pro-
jects, got the idea that a monthly periodical would succeed. There was none
in Edinburgh, at that time, except a miserable periodical entitled “The Scots'
Magazine.” ‘’Hogg spoke on the subject to the late Thomas Pringle, who, it
appeared, had simultaneously entertained a similar idea. Then Blackwood
was spoken to, and he, also, had not ouly thought of, but was actually prepar-
ing for such publication. It is evident, then, that Blackwood had not derived
the idea from Hogg, as it had previously been a creation of his own mind.
Blackwood,' sagacious even beyond the sagacity of “canny Scotchmen,”
had noted two points, that the Edinburgh Review, with its light flying artil-
lery of wit, personality, and sarcasm, was a more important assailant than the
Quarterly, with its heavy ordnance; and that the Quarterly had a limited
circulation in Scotland, wherein lay the greatest sale of the Edinburgh Review.
Blackwood was a decided party-man. He belonged to the Tory side, and
hated all that was Whig. From the first, he determined to make his Maga-
zine the assailant of the Edinburgh Review and its party.
On the first of April, 1817, the first number of “BLACKwooD's EDINBURGH
MAGAZINE” was published. It was edited by Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn,
—both of whom, curiously enough, were much doformed in person, Truth to
say, the words “dull and decent” would truly characterize this opening num-
ber. There were “Notices concerning the Scottish Gipsies,” written by Scott,
(who occasionally wrote for it until illness wholly prostrated him)—there was
a story of Pastoral Life, by Hogg—there were some antiquarian articles, prob-
ably selected by Blackwood—there was some poetry—there were a few re-
views—there was a monthly chronicle of events, reports on agriculture and
commerce, and lists of births, deaths, and marriages. -
Such a publication, though Hénry Mackenzie and others speedily came into
it, as contributors, was not what the times required—nor Mr. Blackwood. Iſe
X HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE,
speedily felt, and lamented, its want of a distinctive character. By the time
the fourth number was published, he and his editors had quarrelled: the won-
der is how they ever agreed, they being bitter Whigs, while he was a decided
Tory. Pringle and Cleghorn went over to Constable, the publisher, conveying
with them the list of subscribers to the Magazine, which, they said, belonged to
them. Constable, wroth with Blackwood for having obtained, out of his
hands, the publication of the Waverley Novels, received the deserters with
open arms, installing them in the Editorship of the “Scot's,” henceforth, for the
brief time of its future existence, to be known as “Constable's Edinburgh
Magazine.”
Blackwood was thrown on his own resources, which did not fail him. He
undertook to be his own Editor, and so he continued, for the remaining seven-
teen years of his life. He looked about for assistants, and found them. There
was James Hogg, whose Queen's Wake had placed him, not long before, in a
station, among Scottish poets, inferior only to Robert Burns and Walter
Scott. There was John Wilson, then in the spring of intellect and flush of
young manhood. There was John Gibson Lockhart, eminently gifted by mature
and largely improved by education. There was Robert Pierce Gillies, (after.
wards the Kempferbausen of “The Noctes,”) whose admirable notices of the
dramatic literature of Germany and Scandinavia speedily gave the Magazine a
peculiar and inimitable character. There were others, of less note-but these
were enough at the time. 4.
In Blackwood for October, 1817, appeared an article occupying nearly eight
pages, and entitled “Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript,” which
took the shape of a book of Holy Writ, being couched in biblical language,
and divided into chapter and verse. In reality, this was a sharp and pregnant
satire upon Constable, Jeffrey, Pringle, Cleghorn, and the most noted members
of the Whig party in Edinburgh. There is no room to doubt that the main
authorship of this literary Congreve rocket (for so it was) must be credited to
James Hogg, though the wits of Maga used to Smeer at the idea. His own ac-
count, published in each of his five autobiographies, (all of which appeared in
William Blackwood's lifetime,) was simply this, that he wrote the “Chaldee
Manuscript,” and sent to Mr. Blackwood, from Yarrow; that, on first reading
it, Blackwood did not think of publishing it; that “some of the rascals to
whom he showed it, after laughing at it, by their own accounts, till they were
sick, persuaded him, may almost forced him to insert it; for some of them went
so far as to tell him, that if he did not admit that inimitable article they would
never speak to him as long as they lived,”—and that they interlarded it “with
a good deal of deevilry of their own,” which Hogg had never thought of Hogg
saw nothing objectionable in the article, and would not have scrupled to have
shown it to Constable, (therein described as “the Crafty,”) nor to Pringle—who,
with Cleghorn, figured in it, as one of “the Beasts.” All that Hogg meant
HISTORY OF BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE. xi
was to give a “sly history of the transaction, [Pringle's quarrel with Black
wood, and the great literary battle that was to be fought.” Hogg's own por.
tion of the “ Chaldee Manuscript” consisted of the first two chapters, part of
the third, and part of the last, He suspected Lockhart, who was eminently
sarcastic and personal, of having thrown in the pepper,
Words cannot adequately describe the dismay, astonishment, wrath and
hatred which greeted the seventh number of Blackwood, containing the
Chaldee Manuscript. There was a wild outcry, all through Edinburgh, before
the Magazine had been one hour published. Not alóne was the accusation of
personality made, but it was declared that the interests of religion and society
demanded the prosecution, with a view to the heavy punishment, of Mr. Black-
wood, for having published “a ribald and profane parody upon the Bible.”
Greatly alarmed, Blackwood determined to withdraw the offensive article. He
had actually issued only two hundred numbers of the Magazine. Every other
copy that went out, was minus the “Chaldee,” and, in the next number, which
was published in November, 1817, there appeared the following very humble
apology — -
“The Editor has learned with regret, that an article in the first edition of
last number, which was intended merely as a jeu d'esprit, has been construed so
as to give offence to individuals justly entitled to respect and regard; he has
on that account withdrawn it in the second edition, and can only add, that if
what has happened could have been anticipated, the article in question cer-
tainly never would have appeared.” -
Some prosecutions were commenced, and Blackwood had to pay £1000, in
costs and damages, in two years. More were threatened. The result was that,
henceforth, Blackwood's Magazine became looked for, month after month, in
the expectation of Some other group of personalitics. In due season, it must
be confessed, this expectation duly obtained remarkable fruitage. ... •
At this distance of time, when thirty-seven years have elapsed between the ori g-
inal publication of the Chaldee Manuscript and this notice of it, difficult would
it be to point out a tithe of the personalities with which it literally abounded.
To obtain even a sight of the article has been difficult. I searched all the na-
tional and public libraries in England and Scotland, where sets of Blackwood
are kept, and never succeeded in meeting one containing the first (and sup.
pressed) edition of No. VII, containing The Chaldee. A short time since, in
New-York, I discovered a set of Blackwood containing the desiderated article,”
and, as it is in itself, not only a literary curiosity, but is repeatedly referred to
* It was Mr Evans, (of the firm of Evans & Dickerson, New-York,) who informed me that he
possessed a complete set of Blackwood, with this suppressed article. On examination, I
found that it was even as he said. Eventually, I purchased this set, but am not the less
obliged to the polite courtesy of the vendors, which permitted me to make a copy of the article,
Some weeks before I had determined to obtain ownership of the valuable series.—AL.
xii IIISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
in The Noctes, I shall reprint it, at the end of this narrative, with notes suffi.
cient to indicate the principal persons therein referred to. w -
Soon after the publication of the Chaldee Manuscript, Wilson, Lockhart,
Gillies and Hogg entered into very intimate relations with Blackwood. This
list was speedily augmented. In 1818, the late Major Thomas Hamilton (Sub-
sequently known as author of “The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton,”
and “Men and Manners in America”) entered the corps as a volunteer. The
following year witnessed the adhesion of Dr. Maginn, afterwards known, in
Blackwood, as Morgan Odoherty. John Galt, the novelist, soon joined the band,
and a very young versemaker (the late David Macbeth Moir) wrote a great
deal for it under the Greek signature of A. But the actual conduct of the Maga-
zine, which included correspondence with contributors, was wholly in Black-
wood's hands. He was an excellent man of business, and the Magazine owed
much of its success to him. -
As early as February, 1818, probably induced by the bold personalities of
the Chaldee Manuscript, the Magazine obtained an able, constant, and power-
ful contributor in the person of Timothy Tickler,-who figures, very extensively,
as one of the dramatis persona of the Noctes. The real name of this writer
was Robert Syme. John Wilson's mother was his sister. He was a Writer of
the Signet, in extensive practice at Edinburgh, had considerable property, lived
in a grand house in George's Square, and was, if all accounts be true, one of
the greatest Tories in all broad Scotland. Hogg describes him as “an uncom-
monly fine-looking elderly gentleman, about seven feet high, and as straight as
an arrow.” He was a good violinist, also, which strongly recommended him
to Hogg. He wrote on a variety of topics in the Magazine, and always with
marked ability.
At one time, it was a habit to review, in Blackwood, books which never had
been published. In February, 1819, a notable instance of this occurred.
There was a review, critical enough and rich in extracts, of a book professing
to have been printed in Aberystwith, (a small watering-place in Wales) and
entitled “Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, being the Substance of some
familiar Communications concerning the present State of Scotland, written
during a late Visit to that Country.” A certain Dr. Peter Morris, of Pen-
sharpe Hall, Aberystwith, was invented as the letter-writer. The extracts
were piquant enough, and the allusions to persons and things said to be noticed
in the book, were abundantly provoking. In the next Blackwood there was a
further and fuller review. The result was that Lockhart was induced to com-
plete “Peter's Letters,” which Blackwood published, (as a second edition ) and
it soon reached a third. Caustic, witty, earnest, personal, and fearless,
“Peter's Letters” attracted great attention, and no slight animadversion. The
author's name got known, and the Magazine gained much credit for having
introduced Dr. Morris to the world.
A along the early contributors, in prose or verse, were Sir Thomas Dick
HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. xiii
Lauder, who afterwards wrote a graphic account of the Great Morayshire
Floods in 1829; Dr. McCrie, the biographer of John Knox and Andrew Melvil;
Sir David Brewster; Wordsworth, the poet; Dr. Anster, of Dublin, whose.
translation of “Faust” is probably the best yet published; Coleridge; Galt,
the Scottish novelist; the late William Gosnell, of Cork, author of “I)ariel
O'Rourke;" J. J. Callanan, and J. D. Murphy, also ſatives of Cork, the first
of whom will be remembered by his ballad of “Gougane Barra;” Bowles, the
poet; Crofton Croker, author of “Irish Fairy Legends;” John Hughes,
(“Mr. Buller,”) whose “Magic Lay of the One Horse Chay” first appeared in
Maga; Barry Cornwall; Gleig, author of “The Subaltern;” Professor
George Dunbar, of Edinburgh University; Tennant, the Oriental scholar,
author of “Anster Fair;” and Mr. Townshend, of Cork, who was garrulous
and anecdotal under the signature of “Senex.” I knew him in my youth, and
regret that he did not publish his Recollections in extenso.
The first actual and out-of-the-ordinary article which showed that a new
power had begun to breathe itself into the Magazine, appeared in the number
for August, 1819, and was the commencement of the Ante-Noctes series
called “Christopher in the Tent.” It affected to describe the sayings and
doings of the Editor and his contributors, while encamped, on the commence-
ment of the shooting season, at the head of the river Dee, among the moun-
tains of Aberdeenshire. A variety of fictitious, with a few actual personages,
were introduced. There were Dr. Morris, Mr. Wastle, Odoherty, the Ettrick
Shepherd, Tickler, Kempferhausen, and others, including Buller and Seward,
(representatives of the two English Universities) with Price and Tims, a
couple of Cockney tourists. Nearly all these were creations of and in the
Magazine. Not so, Dr. Scott, the Odontist of Glasgow, who is entitled to a
distinct paragraph, as one of the Curiositics of Literature.
James Scott was a reality, described by Hogg as “a strange-looking, bald-
headed, bluff little man, practising as a dentist in Edinburgh and Glasgow ;
keeping a good house and hospitable table in both, and considered skilful.”
Of literature he was wholly ignorant, but Lockhart and others perpetually
mystified him, publishing ballads and songs in his name, which, at last, he used
to sing as his own, whenever he could get auditors Pet phrases, allusions to
particular incidents and persons, were so adroitly introduced into these pieces,
that—while his friends marvelled how he had contrived to appear a dull man
for the preceding fifty years of his life—nobody discredited his claims to
authorship. “The Lament for Captain Paton,” one of Lockhart's best bal-
lads, was put into Dr. Scott's mouth, in The Tent, and gained him so much
reputation, that, on a visit to Liverpool, Soon after, the Odontist actually was .
entertained at a public dinner, on the strength of his reputed connection with
Blackwood & The wits of the Magazine even went to the length of announc-
ing, among forthcoming works, “Lyrical Ballads, with a Dissertation on some
*
xiv HISTORY OF BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE.
popular corruptions of Poetry; by James Scott, Esq. Two small volumes
12mo,” He was anxious for the publication, and had even Sat for his por-
trait, as a frontispiece, - * ,
The first section of “The Tent” was so popular, that the whole of the suc-
ceeding number (for September, 1819) was devoted to the continuation and
conclusion, in two parts. Among the characters, real and imaginary, now
brought forward, in addition to those already named, were Blackwood, John
Ballantyne, (hit off to the life.) Francis Jeffrey, Professor McCulloch, Pringle
and Cleghorn, (ex-editors of Blackwood,) Mrs. McWhirter and her husband,
the erudite Dr. Parr, the Earl of Fife, the Duke and Duchess of Gordon, and
Prince Leopold, now King of the Belgians! In fact, nearly three years before
the actual commencement of the Noctes Ambrosianae, here was the overture
to that renowned series where wit and wisdom found a voice. As such, I
have included it in this collection, of which it properly is at once an initiatory
and integral portion. No part of Christopher in the Tent has ever before
been published in America: as Coleridge would (and did) say, “It is as good
as manuscript.” -
In October, 1830, in an article called “The Moors,” there are some reminis-
cences of the imaginary proceedings in The Teut, in August and September,
1819. Wilson here lamented the death of the Odontist—paid a tribute to the
evanished glory of Dr. Parr's wig–declared that Odoherty had been gathered
to his fathers, and that his widow (Mrs. McWhirter) had applied for a pension,
which the Wellington Ministry were likely to refuse, but which their succes-
sors would certainly grant, and that Tims, though puny, was far from unwell,
“ and still engaged in polishing tea-spoons, and other plated articles, at a rate
cheaper than travelling gipsies do horn.” Wilson repeatedly writes from
“The Tent,” as witness his earliest and his latest articles in Maga.
There is something characteristic of his love of external nature, a passion
which filled his mind while yet a boy, in the pertinacity with which, in his
writings, he delights to traverse mountain and valley, to breast the deep waters
of the dark and lonely tarn, to speed across the heathery moors, to follow the
rapid river to its small source among the hills, to claim and make acquaint-
ance with the free denizens of earth and air, to hold companionship with the
humble shepherd in his turf-built shieling, far up among the clouds and Sun-
shine, in the extensive tracks where thousands of sheep found food, and, at all
times and seasons, to
“Look through Nature up to Nature's God.”
If it be noticed that Christopher North—clarum et venerabile nomen!—is
not actually designated as such, under “The Tent,” my reply is the very suffi-
cient one that up to this time, the name had not been invented. The conductor
of Blackwood had hitherto been represented as a sort of “stat nominis
!
HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD's MAGAZINE. XV
umbra,” and was spoken of as “the veiled Editor.” No doubt, the inconve
nience of this want of individuality was felt. Therefore, on the back of the
contents-page of Blackwood for September, 1819, appeared the following an:
nouncement among a variety of other (imaginary) “Books preparing for Pub-
lication,” by Blackwood, of Edinburgh, and Cadell & Davies, of London:
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY of CHRISTOPHER North, Esq., Editor of Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine, in 3 vols 8vo, with numerous engravings of men and
things, - -
“Had any man the courage to write a full, candid, and unaffected account of what he
himself has seen and thought—he could not fail to make the most interesting and instructive
book in the world.” KANT.
In the first volume of this work will be found a copious account of all the
extraordinary scenes which occurred in Paris at the commencement of the
Revolution, and of the wonderful escape of the Author shortly after the mar-
tyrdom of King Louis. The second is chiefly occupied with the political state
of Scotland in the years immediately succeeding—and sketches of the many
singular characters first about that time developed in this part of the island.
The Author's travels into various countries of Europe, particularly Spain, Sicily,
Germany, and Ireland—his return to Britain—and final establishment in the
metropolis of Scotland—together with free and plain strictures on some recent
transactions of a very uncommon nature, will bring the third volume to a
conclusion.
The Author is not insensible to the very great boldness of the Work which
he has thus undertaken to prepare for the public eye. The nature of those
clamours which cannot fail to precede, attend, and follow, the publication of
his Memoirs has been abundantly contemplated by him, and he has fairly made
up his mind to endure them all. The age at which he has arrived is such as
to convince him of the folly of either fearing or hoping much for himself. His
only object and ambition is to produce an impartial narrative—and if he does
so, he sees no reason to doubt that that narrative will be a KTHMA EX AEI.
From this period, the eidolon called CHRISTOPHER NORTH, was the recog-
nised editor of Blackwood. Here he alluded to his age as being far ad-
vanced. Judging from a subsequent statement in the Noctes, immortal Nºrth
was born in December, 1751, which would make him 68, in The Tent; 71,
when the Noctes commenced; and 84, when they were concluded. Of course,
then, in June, 1849, when the Dies Boreales were commenced, North must
have been 98, and must have reached the ripe age of 101, when the last was
penned, in September, 1852.*
The first of the Noctes Ambrosiante was published in March, 1822. The
interlocutors were North and Odoherty. In the preceding June, Dr. Maginn,
who had become one of the most prolific, as he certainly was the most learned.
* Wide the article in Blackwood, for May, 1854, which gives this as the date of Wilson's last
contribution.—M. -
xvi HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
of all the contributors, had visited Blackwood, at Edinburgh, and made inti,
mate acquaintance with Wilson, Lockhart, Hogg, Hamilton, Gillies, and the
rest of his collaborateurs. I am much disposed to attribute the first of the
Noctes wholly to his pen, and I am confident that No. IV, (July, 1822) in
which Byron and Odoherty are the only speakers, could have been written
by none other than “The Doctor.” + +
The famous Greek motto, with the (very) free translation, which used to
head each of the Noctes, was not introduced until No. VI. It was written by
Maginn, and runs as follows:
XPH A'EN XYMTIOXIQ KYAIKQN TIEPINIXXOMENAQN
HAEA KQTIAAONTA KA6HMENON OINOTIOTAZEIN.
PHOC, ap. Ath.
[This is a distich by wise old Phocylides,
An ancient who wrote crabbed Greek in no silly days;
Meaning, “’TIs RIGHT For good wiNEBIBBING PEOPLE,
Not To LET THE JUG PACE Round THE BOARD LIKE A CRIPPLE:
BUT GAILY To cil AT win LE DISCUSSING THEIR TIPPLE.”
An eacellent rule of the hearty old cock 'tis— -
And a very fit motto to put to our Noctes.] - -
- - C. N. ap. Ambr.
Whoever began the Noctes, or whatever pens were first employed upon them,
there can be no doubt that, very speedily, Wilson's was the master-mind which
pressed the individuality of genius into them. Was it wonderful, then, if
they bore the marks of his authorship? Peculiar turns of expression, and par-
ticular trains of thought, such as only he indulged in, enabled his friends to
trace his pen through the series, month after month, year after year. From
March, 1822, until February, 1835, when the series closed, having extended to
Seventy-One Numbers, no Magazine articles won more attention or favor.
Great as was their popularity in England, it was peculiarly in America
that their high merit and undoubted originality received the heartiest recog-
mition and appreciation. Nor is this wonderful, when it is considered that for
one reader of Blackwood's Magazine in the old country, there cannot be less
than fifty in the new. There was a strong desire among the more cultivated
minds of Great Britain, to have the series collected, and I have understood
that the subject was seriously discussed, by Wilson and the Messrs. Black.
wood; but it was considered that, abounding in literary and political personal.
ities, as each of the Noctes did, it would be wholly impossible to make a
collective republication without such omissions as would virtually destroy the
original character of the articles. It was considered that a period of five-and-
twenty or thirty years must pass, before the Noctes, unmutilated, and made
clear by biographical, literary, political, and general notes, could be presented,
as a whole, to the British public. -
On this side of the water, no such reasons for delay existed, and the repub-
HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINA. xvii
lication of The Noctes Ambrosianae took place in 1843. They formed four
closely-printed volumes, and I shall only say of them, that they were distin
guished by two faults, one of onission, the other of commission. In the first
place, no date having been given in any instance, the reader was left wholly in
the dark as to the time of each dialogue; in the second, the whole of Wilson's
peculiar mode of personifying things (which he largely did, by the abundant
use of capital letters in nouns) was altered, and wherever a word commenced
with a capital—thus giving it a sort of brevet title on the page—it was reduced
to the [lower-case] ordinary rank-and-file. It is clear that if a writer make
it part of his system to have certain words commence with a particular de-
scription of letter, (as Wilson did and as Carlyle does,) it marks his style, and
should be preserved. A great deficiency in the first American edition of the
Noctes was the want of an Index. It will be perceived that I have remedied,
in the present edition, all that is complained of. The new matter now added
makes the series as complete, so far as the text is in question, as I can make it.
What else I have done, in illustration, may speak for itself.
Meanwhile, though Blackwood never relinquished the actual business con-
duct of the Magazine, Wilson gradually became the virtual editor. As one
of the Professors in Edinburgh University, he had station; and years, as they
glided on, brought soberer thought. In 1826, Lockhart went to London, to
conduct the Quarterly Review, and with him departed much of the personal
and caustic sarcasm of Maga. The more generous impulses of Wilson became
lords of the ascendant. The onslaught upon the Cockney School of Litera-
ture was laid aside, and every man of genius who chose to write for Maga
could .
- “Claim kindred there and have his claim allowed.”
It would be a long task even to enumerate all who, from that time, contrib-
uted to Blackwood. To the last, Hogg and Hamilton, Aird and Sym con-
tinued in that band. There Maginn, for over twenty years, poured out the
treasures of his learning, wit, and fancy. There, some of Lockhart's most
brilliant essays and poems first met the public eye. There, Thomas Double-
day, a poet then, and only a political economist now, delighted to luxuriate.
There, the delicate fancy of Charles Lamb was allowed its full range. There,
Caroline Bowles was ever welcome, whether in her prose “Chapters on
Churchyards,” or in her simple and touching lyrics. There, after many and
notable failures in other departments of letters, Galt discovered that his power
lay in the delineation of familiar Scottish life. There, “Delta” flooded the
land with many thousand lines of unreadable “poetry,” and showed, by his
“Autobiography of Mansie Wauch, tailor at Dalkeith,” that not in sentiment
but in humor was his real strength, in which, had he pleased, he might have
surpassed Galt himself. There, Allan Cunningham gave “prose by a poet,”
in the adventures of Mark Macrobir, the Cameronian. There, De Quincey
V Ö L. 1.-2
xviii IIISTORY OF Bt.ACRwoop'S MAGAZINE.
poured out his subtlety, which, were it less diffuse, would have been more
valuable. There, Coleridge, a greatly superior mind, occasionally laid his
thoughts before the public. And there, a star among them, Mrs. Hemans
occasionally occupied a page or two with Bome noble lyric. Her “Aspiration
and Despondency” was first given to the world in Blackwood. *
Great political changes took place during this time;—the brief premier.
ship of Canhing—the incapacity of Lord Goderich, his successor—the iron
grasp of power by “the Duke’—the election for Clare, which sent O'Connell
to Parliament—the granting of Catholic Emancipation, by a Ministry whose
lives had been spent in registing it—the consequent branding Wellington and
Peel as traitors (to party)—the death of George the Fourth—the outcry for
Parliamentary Reform, under his successor—the contest for “the Bill”—the
downfall of the Tories—the uprise of the Whigs, -all of these were fruitful
topics, and were discussed in the articles in Maga, as well as at the NGctes.
Among the literary papers which now appeared may be noticed the con-
tinuation of scarcely inferior to, Swift's History of John Bull, written by
Professor George Moir, also author of the beautiful series entitled “Shak-
speare in Germany.”
Nor should there be omitted, in this rapid enumeration, the finest flattical
fictions of the age, (“Tom Cringle's Log,” and the “Cruise of the Midge,”)
written by one whose very name—Michael Scott—was ever unknown to Mr.
Blackwood. In September, 1834, “Ebony,” as he loved to be called, (the
Chaldee Manuscript gave him the title) “shuffled off this mortal coil,” igno-
rant of the identity of Michael Scott, who followed him, in the next year.
In Blackwood, after this, appeared Sir Daniel K. Sandford's admirable
papers (adapted from the German of Meissner) on the Youth and Manhood
of Alcibiades. There, too, after six English periodicals had peremptorily
rejected them, were published Samuel Warren's “Passages from the Diary of
a late Physician,” which literally took the world of letters by storm, and were
succeeded by the yet more attractive novel—alas! that it should be a carica-
ture from first to last—of “Ten Thousand a Year.” -
So great was the catholic spirit of Maga now, that the “Men of Character”
of republican Douglas Jerrold appeared under the same cover with a biog-
raphy of Burke, and the historical romance of “Marston,” by Croly, the Tory.
Macnish, the Glasgow doctor, was allowed to make his eccentric but often dull
appearance as “The Modern Pythagorean.” Ingoldsby (our genial friend
Barham) introduced “My Cousin Nicholas” to the world. And, specially
invited by Wilson, the late John Sterling contributed his delightful “Literary
Lore.” There, too, was the late M. J. Chapman, with his translations from
the plays of Æschylus. There was William Hay, not translating, but actually
transfusing the Greek Anthology into English poetry. There, Walter Savage
Iandor spoke out, as familiar with the illustrious of past centuries, in his
HISTORY OF Bt.ACKwooD's MAGAZINE, xix
“Imaginary Conversations.” There; Professor H. H. Wilson, of Oxford, gave
Specimens of the Hindu Drama. There, James Ferrier (now Professor of
Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrew's) produced his eloquent
and thoughtful Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness. And there,
while yet a youth, William E. Aytoun (afterwards Wilson's son-in-law) gave
trochaic versions of Homer, such as have not yet been Surpassed,
After Blackwood's death, the Magazine came more under Wilson's surveil-
lance than it formerly had been. He lost no time in inviting Bulwer to con-
tribute—and to this we owe some spirited translations of Schiller, and the
two prose fictions (“The Caxtons,” and “My Novel”) which are admitted to
be the best productions of the greatest living author of England. Monckton
Milnes (who certainly wants common sense, or he would not have published a
volume of “Poetry for the People,” and charged two dollars for the book!)
was allowed to spread his elegant fancies over occasional pages of Maga. Here
were welcomed the lofty strains of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, the greatest of
living female poets. Here, Charles Mackay, the lyrist of humanity and pro-
gress, earnestly poured out heart-poetry. It was here that the late Bartholo-
mew Simmons, a young Irish poet, who “died too soon,” gave his exquisite
lyrics to the public. And here, also, did Samuel Phillips, now the literary
critic on the “Times” newspaper in London, first make a direct and success.
ful challenge, on the universal mass of readers, in his powerful life-novel called
“Caleb Stukely.” Nor should I here omit to state that some of the most
powerful articles, (chiefly on American politics and literature,) ever dashed off
by John Neal, appeared in Maga. At a later period, here was also published
the earnest poetry of Albert Pike, breathing the true spirit of old mythology,
and the brilliant prose-fictions of Ruxton.
Ten years after Blackwood's death, during which the sceptre had virtually
been in Wilson's hands, “the Professor" (as he was always called) gradually
began to yield the power into other and younger hands. One of his oldest
friends had been old Roger Aytoun, W. S. in Edinburgh.* A son of his,
William Edmonstone Aytoun, had become a dear friend of Wilson's—a yet
deprep of Wilson's daughter, whom he married. The elder Aytoun was a
fierce little Whig ; the younger, a staunch Tory; able, eloquent, witty, and
laborious—which last was proven by his researchful Life of Richard the Lion-
hearted, in Murray's Family Library. He became a liberal contributor, in
ppose and verse, to Blackwood, Station he did not lack, for he was Professor
of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in his Alma Mater, the University of Edin-
burgh. And so, Wilson's son-in-law and intimate friend, he may be said to
have glided into Wilson's plage in the Magazine, Under him, old contributors
became more industrious:--what Blackwood is there now, without an article
* The lawyers, in Edinburgh, between the agtual counsellors, wh9 plgad, and the mere attor.
peys, grº Writers to the Signet, -M,
XX HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD's MAGAZINE.
from Alison, the historian 2 Aytoun's own force has been further developed
in Satiric fiction—who can forget his railway novelettes, “My First Spec
in the Boggleswades,” and “How we got up the Glenmutchkin Railway, and
how we got out of it” —but his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers show his vein
of poetry to be rich and original. His powers of satire are great—though, as
yet, he has used them very rarely. *
So, as I have said, Aytoun gradually glided into the editorship of Maga.
Nor did Wilson at once retire. He commenced, and completed, a series of
critical articles, in his own style, called “Specimens of the British Classics.”
After this, the old man eloquent flashed out in his “Dies Boreales,”—the last
of which was his latest composition. -
Beyond this need the record be carried on ? Wilson self-deposed, sparkling
to the last, and then—a half unconsciousness between him and the grave.
Aytoun, educated, as it were, into the management of Maga. Here join the
Past and the Present.
º
To this, as fitting appendix, I subjoin The Chaldee Manuscript. The notes
which I append, merely indicate the principal persons and things alluded to :
at the lapse of thirty-seven years, it is impossible to do more. No doubt every
sentence had its proper barb, when written:
T R A N S L A TI O N
FROM AN
ANCIENT CHALDEE MANUSCRIPT.
|The present age seems destined to witness the recovery of many admirable
pieces of writing, which had been supposed to be lost for ever. The Eruditi of
Milan are not the only persons who have to boast of being the instruments of
these resuscitations. We have been favored with the following translation of
a Chaldee MS. which is preserved in the great Library of Paris, (Salle 2d, No.
53, B. A. M. M.,) by a gentleman whose attainments in Oriental Learning are
well known to the public. It is said that the celebrated Silvester de Lacy is
at present occupied with a publication of the original. It will be prefaced by
an Inquiry into the Age when it was written, and the name of the writer |
CHAPTER I.
A. I saw in my dream, and behold
one like the Messenger of a King
came toward me from the East, and he
took me up and carried me into the
midst of the great city that looketh Lo-
ward the north and toward the east,”
and ruleth over every people, and kin-
dred, and tongue, that handle the pen
of the writer. *.
2 And he said unto me, Take heed
what thou Seest, for great things shall
come of it; the moving of a straw shall
be as the whirlwind, and the shaking
of a reed as the great tempest.
* The city of Edinburgh.-M.
TEIE GEIALDEE
', ', - -
... 3 And I looked, and behold a man
clothed in plain apparel stood in the
door of his house: , and I saw his name,
and the number of his name; and his
MANUSCRIPT. XXl
to reap the harvest, and gather the
sheaves into the barn; to feed their
flocks, and enrich themselves with the
wool.
10 And the other said, I will teach
the children of thy people to know and
discern betwixt right and wrong, the
good and the evil, and in all things that
relate to learning, and knowledge, and
understanding. -
ll And they proffered unto him a
Book;” and they said unto him, Take
that we may eat and drink, that our
souls may live. . . . .
12 And we will put words into the
Book that shall astonish the children
of thy people: and it shall be a light
unto thy feet, and a lamp unto thy .
path; it shall also bring bread to thy
household, and a portion to thy maid-
€llS. - • *
13 And the man hearkened to their
voice, and he took the Book and gave
them a piece of money, and they went
away rejoicing in heart. And, I heard
a great noise, as if it had been the noise
of many chariots, and of horsemen
passing upon their horses. #
14 But after many days they put no
words into the Book, if and the man was
astonied and waxed wroth, and he said
unto them, What is that you have done
unto me, and how shall I answer those
to whom I am engaged ? And they said,
What is that to us? see thou to that.
‘beasts.”
name was as it had been the color of |
ebony, and his number was the number
of a maiden, when the days of the years
of her virginity have expired &
4 And I turned mine eyes, and be-
hold two beasts; came from the land
of the borders of the South;
when I saw them I wondered with
great admiration. -
5. The one beast was like unto a lambí
and the other like unto a bear, and
they had wings on their heads; their
faces also were like the faces of men,
the joints of their legs like the polished
cedars of Lebanon, and their feet like
the feet of horses, preparing to go forth
to battle; and they arose and they came
onward over the face of the earth, and
ground as they |
they touched not the
went.
6 And they came unto the man who
was clothed in plain apparel, and stood
in the door of his house.
7 And they said unto him, Give us
of thy wealth, that we may eat and live,
and thou shalt enjoy the fruits of our
labors for a time, times, or half a time.
8 And he answered and said unto
them, What will you unto me where-
unto I may employ you ?
9 And the one said, S I will teach the
people of thy land to till and to sow;
* William Blackwood (Ebony), whose then
and |
| thou this, and give us a piece of money,
place of business was at 17 Prince's street.
In 1880 he removed to 45 George street, where Maga continues to be published,—M.
f Pringle and Cleghorn, the original editors of Blackwood's Magazine, were “the two
Both were deformed in person. They had gone over to Constable, the publisher
of the Edinburgh Review, and of the old Scots' Magazine, and the satire of the Chaldee MS.
was elicited by this defection.
In one of Scott's letters, in February, 1818, four months after
the Chaldee appeared, he says: “Blackwood is in rather a bad pickle just now—sent to Co-
ventry by the trade, as the 'booksellers call themselves, and all about the parody of the two
beasts.”—M. .
ºf The address of the lamb (Pringle) was mild and soft; that of the other, the bear (Cleg-
horn), was much the reverse. Both were very lame, and went on crutches.—M. -
§ Cleghorn, the Bear, was a great agriculturist, and editor of the Farmer's Magazine.—M.
! Pringle, the Lamb, was a highly educated graduate of the University of Edinburgh.—M.
* Blackwood's Magazine was “the Book.”—M. - &
# When Blackwood accepted their proposal to edit a magazine, their crutches clattered with
Joy as they retired.—M.
# They belied their promis? and proved incapable.—M.
xxii
HISTORY OF BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE.
Book, for he judged agcording to the
reports of men; nevertheless, the man
was crafty in counsel, and more cun-
ning than his fellows.
22 And he said unto the two beasts,
Come ye and put your trust under the
shadow of my wings, and I will destroy
the man whose name is as chony, and
his Book.
23 And I will tear it in pieces, and
cast it out like dung upon the face of
the earth.
24 And we will tread him down as
the dust of the streets, and trample hinn
under our feet; and we will break him
to pieces, and grind him to powder,
and cast him into the brook Kidron.
25 And I will make of you a great
name; and I will place you next to .
the horn that is in my forehead,” and
it shall be a shelter to you in the day
of great adversity; and it shall defend
you from the horn of the unicorn and
from the might of the Bulls of Ba-
shan. -
26 And you shall be watchers and
guard unto it from the emmet and the
spider, and the toad after his kind;
27 And from the mole that walketh
in darkness, and from the blow-fly after
his kind, and the canker-worm after
his kind, and the maggot after his kind.
28 And by these means you shall
wax very great, for the things that are
low shall be exalted.
29 And the two beasts gave ear
15 And the man wist not what for to
do: and he called together the friends
of his youth, and all those whose heart
was as his heart, and he entreated them,
and they put words into the Book, and
it went forth abroad, and all the world
wondered after the Book,” and after the
two beasts that had put such amazing
words into the Book.
16 Now in those days, there lived
also a man who was crafty+ in counsel,
and cunning in all manner of working :
17 And I beheld the man, and he
was comely and well-favoured, and he
had a notable horn in his forehead
wherewith he ruled the nations.
18 And I saw the horn, t that it had
eyes, and a mouth speaking great
things, and it magnified itself even to
the Prince of the Host, and it cast down
the truth to the ground, and it grew
and prospered. -
19 And when this man saw the Book,
and beheld the things that were in the
Book, he was troubled in spirit, and
much cast down.S
20 And he said unto himself, Why
stand I idle here, and why do I not
bestir myself? Lo I this Book shall be-
come a devouring sword in the hand
of mine adversary, and with it will he
root up or loosen the horn that is in my
forehead, and the hope of my gains shall
perish from the face of the earth.
2] And he hated the Book, and the
two beasts that had put words into the
* Blackwood gets assistance from more competent writers.--M. &
+ Archibald Constable, the celebrated IEdinburglu publisher, had obtained the sobriquet of
“The Crafty,” several years before it was given to him in the Chaldee MS. The title, which
stuck to him, annoyed him very much—the more so, perhaps, as he was fond of conferring
nicknames upon others. Murray, the London publisher, he called The Emperor of the West;
he dubbed himself The Czar of Jſuscovy; facetious John Ballantyne was The Dey of All-
jeers; and Longman & Co., of London, were The Divan, in his nomenclature. One of Long-
tman's firm dined with him at his country-house, and noticed what appeared to be a group of
swans in the pond. “Swans !” cried Constable: “they are only geese, man. There are just
five of them, and their names are Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.” The Londoner
did not relish the jest.—M.
£ By the horn, which ruled the nations, the Edinburgh Review was indicated.—M.
§ Constable's consternation on the appearance of Blackwood's Magazine.—M.
| Constable invites Pringle and Cleghorn to join him and write for the Scots' Magazine, his
property.—M.
* Constable spared no cost to make his Edinburgh Magazino superior to Blackwood's, but did
not succeed.—M.
Exxiii
36 Woe unto all them that take
part with the man who is crafty in
counsel, and with the two beasts l
37 For I will arise and increase my
strength, and come upon thern like the
locust of the desert, to abolish and
overwhelm, and to destroy and to
pass over.f
38 So he called together the wise
men of the city, both from the Old
City, and from the city which is on
this side of the valley, even the New
City, which looketh toward the north;
and the wise men came.S
89 And lo l there stood before him
an aged man, whose hair was as white
as snow, and in whose hand there was
a mirror, wherein passed to and fro
the images of the ancient days.
40 And he said, Behold, I am
stricken in years, mine eyes are dim.
What will ye that I do unto you ?
Seek ye them that are young. .
41 And all the young men that were
there lifted up their voice and said,
We have sat at thy feet all the days
of the years which we have lived upon
the earth; and that which we know is
thine, and our learning is thine; and as
thou sayest, even so will we do.
42 And he said unto them, Do ye
what is meet in this thing, and let not
our friend be discomfited, neither let
the man which is crafty rejoice, nor
the two beasts.
43 And when he had said this, ho
arose and went away; and all the
young men arose up, and humbled
themselves beſore him when he went
away.
44 Then spake the man clothed in
plain apparel to the great magician
who dwelleth in the old fastness, hard
The remainder of the 180 verses of which it
THE CHALDEE MANUSCRIPT.
unto him;* and they came over unto
him, and bowed down before him with
their faces to the earth.
30 || But when the tidings of these |
things came to the man who was
clothed in plain apparel, he was Sore
dismayed and his countenance fell.
31 And it repented him that he had
taken the Book, or sent it forth abroad;
and he said, I have been sore deceived
and betrayed; but I will of myself
yield up the Book, and burn it with
fºre, and give its ashes to the winds of
heaven.
32 But certain that were there pres-
ent said unto him, Why art thou dis-
mayed? and why is thy countenance
fallen 2 Go to now ; gird up thy loins
like a man, and call unto thee thy
friends, and the men of thy house-
hold, and thou shalt behold and see
that they that are for thee are more
and mightier than those that be against.
thee. -
33 And when the man whose name
was as ebony, and whose number was
the number of a maiden, when the
days of the years of her virginity
have expired, heard this saying, he
turned about ;
34 And he took from under his
girdle a gem of curious workmanship
of silver, made by the hand of a cun-
ning artificer, and overlaid within with
pure gold; and he took from thence
something in color like unto the dust
of the earth, or the ashes that remain
of a furnace, and he snuffed it up like
the east wind, and returned the gem
again into its place.*
35 Whereupon he opened his mouth,
and he said unto them, As thou hast
spoken, so shall it be done.
* They desert Blackwood for Constable.—M.
+ This description of a snuff-box is one of the best hits in the Chaldee MS., and was greatly
admired by Scott, as orientalizing a common and familiar object.—M.
: Hogg wrote and sent nearly eighty verses of the Chaldee Manuscript to Mr. Blackwood,
but only the first thirty-seven were published.
consists was added by Wilson and Lockhart.—M.
§ Blackwood rallies his friends.—M.
| The aged man was Henry Mackenzie, and the mirror in his hand alluded to his periodical
“The Mirror,” formerly conducted by him with ability and spirit. He was one of the earliest
contributors to May 1,–M.
xxiv.
HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD's MAGAZINE.
by the river Jordan, which is by the
Border.” And the magician opened
his mouth, and Said, Lo! my heart
wisheth thy good, and let the thing
prosper which is in thy hands to do it.
45 But thou Seest that my hands are
full of working, and my labour is great.
For, lo, I have to feed all the people
of my land, and none knoweth whence
nus food cometh; but each man open-
eth his mouth, and my hand filleth it
with pleasant things.
46 Moreover, thine adversary also is
of my familiars.f
47 The land is before thee; draw
thou up thy hosts for the battle in the
place of Princes, over against thine ad-
versary, which hath his station near
the mount of the Proclamation; $ quit
ye as men, and let favour be shown
unto him which is most valiant.
48 Yet be thou silent; peradventure
will I help thee some little.
49 So he made request also unto a
wise manſ which had come out of
Joppa, where the ships are, one that
had sojourned in far countries, whose
wisdom is great above all the children
of the east, one which teacheth the
Sons of the honourable men, and speak-
eth wonderful things in the schools of
the learned men:
50 One which speaketh of trees and
of beasts,” and of fowl and of creep-
ing things, and of fishes, from the great
Leviathan that is in the deep sea even
unto the small muscle which dwelleth
in the shell of the rock;
51, Moreover, of all manner of pre-
cious stones, and of the ancient moun-
tains, and the moving of the great
waters: *
52 One which had been led before
the Chief Priests, and lauded of them
for Smiting a worshipper of Fire in the
land, which being interpreted, signi-
fieth bread. -
53 And he said, Behold, here is a
round stone, set thou that in a ring,
and put the ring upon thy finger, and
behold, while the ring is upon the
finger, thou shalt have no fear of the
man which is crafty, neither of the
two beasts.
54 Then the man spake to a wise
man which had a light in his handff
and crown of pearls, upon his head,
and he said, Behold, I will brew a
sharp poison for the man which is
crafty, and the two beasts. Wait ye
till I come. So he arose also and went
his way. -
55 Also to a wise young man, which
is learned in the law, §§ even as his father
was learned, and who lifteth up his
voice in the courts of the treasury of
our Lord the King, with his fellow, who
is one of the sons of the Prophets.
56 He spake also to a learned man
who sendeth all the King's messengers
to the four corners of the great city,
each man clothed in Scarlet, and be ar-
* Sir Walter Scott, “the great Magician of the North,” whose residence, Abbotsford, was
situated in a border county, by the river Tweed.—M.
f At this time, the authorship of the Waverley Novels was unacknowledged.—M.
f Constable was Sir Walter Scott's publisher—M.
§ The “mount of Proclamation” was the cross (since removed) on the High street, Edin-
burgh, where Constable's shop.then was.-M.
| The late Professor Jameson, of Jºdinburgh University. He was born at Joppa, a village on
the Frith of Forth, near Edinburgh.-M.
#4. He occupied the Chair of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, and died in
1854.-M.
++ He was a distinguished mineralogist, and an advocate of the Wernerian in. opposition to
the Huttonian hypothesis.—M.
# Sir David Brewster, now Principal of the University of Edinburgh.
hand,” refers to his philosophical and practical writings and experiments on Light.—M.
Iſaving “a light in his
\.
§§ Patrick Fraser Tytler, Esq., advocate, author of the Iſistory of Scotland, &c., son of Lord
voodhouselee, one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Scotland. He died in 1840–M.
a.
THE CEIALDEE MANUSCRIPT.
ing a bundle of letters, touching the
aſſairs of men, in his right hand.*
57 He spake also unto a sweet singer,
who is cunning to play all stringed
instruments, # who weareth a charm
upon his bosom, even a stone, whereon
is engraved ancient writing. And he
frameth songs, and waxeth very wroth
against the horn which is in the fore-
head of the man which is crafty.
58 Also to one who had been a phy-
sician in his youth, and who had dwelt
with the keeper of the gates of the
wise men :
59 But he was now a dealer in wine
and oil, and in the fishes which are
taken in the nets of the people of the
west;
60 Also in strong drink.
61 Then sent he for one cunning in
sharp instruments and edged tools,
even in razors; but he had taken unto
himself a wiſe, and could not come.
62 But, behold, while they were yet
Speaking, they heard a voice of one
Screeching in the gate, and the voice
was a sharp voice, even like the voice
of the unclean bird which buildeth its
nest in the corner of the temple, and
defilell the holy places.t
63 But they opened not the door,
neither answered they a word to the
Voice of its screaming. So the unclean
thing flew away, neither could they
find any trace of its going.
64 And there was a silence in the
assembly. And, behold, when they
began to speak, thoy were too many,
neither could the man know what was
the meaning of their counsel, for they
XXV
spake together, and the voice of their
speaking was mingled.
65 So the man was sore perplexed,
and he wist not what for to do.
CHAPTER II.
MTOW, behold, as soon as they were
gone, he sat down in his inner
chamber, which looketh toward th:
street of Oman, and the road of Ga-
briel, as thou goest up into the land of
Ambrose, Š and the man leaned with
his face upon his hand. -
2 And while he was yet musing,
there stood before him a man clothed
in dark garments, having a veil upor.
his head; and there was a rod in his
hand.
3 And he said, Arise, let not thine
heart be discouraged, neither let it be
afraid. -
4 Behold, if thou wilt listen unto
me, I will deliver thee out of all thy
distresses, neither shall any be able to
touch a hair of thy head.
5 And when the man heard the
voice of his speaking, behold, there was
in his voice courage, and in his coun-
sel boldness. And he said unto him,
Do thou as it seemeth good unto thee;
as thou sayest even so will I do.
6 And the man who had come in
answered and said, Behold, I will call
mighty creatures which will comfort
thee, and destroy the power of thy ad-
vorsary, and will devour the two beasts.
7 So he gave unto the man in plain
* The Postmaster-General of Scotland. The coachmen, guards, and letter-carriers, then wore
a uniform of which a scarlet coat was the most remarkable portion.—M.
* Mr. Peter Hil), then a young Edinburgh bookseller—in Peter's Letters to his Könsfolk
Lockhart says, “I declare to you that you never heard a sweeter pipe.
himself is no whit his superior.”—M.
Gur friend Tom Moore.
# Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, a clever caricaturist, and full of small gossip.—M.
$ Oman kept a hotel in Edinburgh. Ambrose's Tavern was situated at the back of Prince's
Street, in a place called Gabriel's Road, from a murder committed thereby a tutor named Gabrie.
on two of his pupils. He was caught in the act (“red-handed”), and, by power of an ancient
law, was hanged on the spot, with the bloody knife around his neck.-M. -
}This man, thus mysteriously veiled, was the unknown Editor of Blackwood. The person-
ality of Christophe" North was not invented until September, 1819.—M.
xxvi
HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD's MAGAZINE.
unknown tongue, which flieth over the
ruins of the ancient cities, and hath his
dwelling among the tombs of the wise
Inon.**
16 Also the stork}} which buildeth
upon the house-top, and devoureth all
manner of unclean things, and all bee-
tles, and all manner of flies, and much
WOTmS. *
17 And the hyaenaff which eschew-
eth the light, and cometh forth at the
evening tide to raise up and gnaw the
bones of the dead, and is as a riddle
unto the vain man.
18 And the beagle and the slow-
hound after their kind, and all the
beasts of the field, more than could be
numbered, they were so many. -
19 || And when they were all ga-
thered together, the man which was
clothed in plain apparel looked abóut,
and his heart was right merry when he
saw the mighty creatures which had
come in unto him, and heard the tu-
mult of their voices, and the noise of
the flapping of their wings.
20 And he lifted up his voice, and
shouted with a great shout, and said,
Behold, I am increased greatly, and I
will do terrible things to the man who
is crafty and to his two beasts.
21 And he sent away a swift mes-
senger for a physician, which healeth
all manner of bruises, and wounds,
and putrefying sores, lest that he
should go forth to heal up the wounds
of the man that is crafty, or of his two
beasts.
22 (Now this physician was a mild
man, neither was there any gall within
him, yet he went near.)S$
apparel a tablet, containing the names
of those upon whom he should call.
And when he called, they came ; and
whomsoever he asked, he came.
8 And the man with the veil stood
by, but there was a cloud about him,
neither could they which came See
him, nor tell who it was that com-
pelled their coming.
9 And they came in the likeness of
living things, but I knew not who were
they which camo.
10 And the first which came was
after the likeness of the beautiful leop-
ard, from the valley of the palm-trees,
whose going forth was comely as the
greyhound, and his eyes like the light-
ning of fiery flame.
11 And the second was the lynx, *
that lurketh behind the 'white cottage
in the mountains.
12 There came also, from a far
country, the scorpion, which delighteth
to sting the faces of men, that he might
sting sorely the countenance of the
man which is crafty, and of the two
beasts.
13 Also the great wild boart from the
forest of Lebanon, and he roused up his
spirit, and I saw him whetting his
dreadful tusks for the battle.S -
14 And the griffin came with a roll
of the names of those whose blood had
been shed between his teeth; and I
saw him standing over the body of one
that had been buried long in the grave,
defending it from all men; and behold
there were none which durst come
near him.
15 Also the black eagle of the de-
sort, whose cry is as the Sound of an
* Arthur Mower, Esq., author of a little tale called The White Cottage, was the lynx-M.
+ John Gibson Lockhort was the scorpion.—M.
+ James IIogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, was the “great boar from the Forest."--M.
§ Wilson was the leopard.—M.
: The griffin was the Rev. Dr. McCrie, author of the The Life of Know.—M.
** Sir William Hamilton, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh,
was the black eagle.—M.
+ James Wilson, an eminent naturalist, brother of Professor Wilson, was the stork.-M.
# John Riddle, advocate, a profound legal antiquarian, was the hyaena-M.
§§ Dr. John Gordon, an able physician, who died young, and wrote against Gall, the phreno-
logist.—M.
t;
TEIE GEIALDEE MANUSCRIPT.
z'
CHAPTER III.
ND while these things were yet
doing, I heard a great rushing, and
the sound as of a mighty wind:* and I
looked over the valley into the old
city, and there was a tumult over
against the mount of Proclamation.}
2 For when tidings of these things
came to the man which was crafty, his
heart died within him, and he waxed
Sore afraid, -
3 And he said unto himself, What
is this? Behold mine adversary is very
mighty, neither can I go forth to fight
him : for whom have I save myself
only, and my two beasts?
4 And while he was yet speaking,
the two beasts stood before him.
5 And the beast which was like
unto a bear said, Behold, it is yet har-
vest, and how can I leave my corn
which is in the fields? If I go forth
to make war upon the man whose name
is as ebony, the Philistines will come
into my farm, and carry away all the
full sheaves which are ready,
6 And the beast which was like
unto a lambí answered and said, Lol
iny legs are weary, and the Egyptians
which were wont for to carry me are
cleau gone; and where withal shall I
go forth to make war upon the man
whose name is as ebony ?
7 Nevertheless will I put a sweet
Song against him into thy Book.
8 But the man which was crafty
answered and said, Unprofitable gen-
eration | ye have given unto me a
born which is empty, and a horse
which hath no feet. If ye go not forth
to fight with mine adversary, deliver
xxvii
me up the meat which I have given
unto you, and the penny which ye
have of me, that I may bire others
who will fight with the man whose
name is as ebony.S
9 And the beasts spake not at all,
neither answered they him one word.
10 But as they sat before him, the
beast which was like unto a bearſ took
courage; and he opened his mouth and
said, -
11 O man, thou hast fed me here-
| tofore, and whatever entereth into my
lips is thine. Why now should we fall
out about this thing 7
12 Call unto thee thy counsellors,
the spirits, and the wise men, and the
magicians, if haply they may advise
thee touching the man whose name is
as ebony, and the creatures which are
within his gates. Whatsoever they
Say, that shall be done.
13 Yet the man was not pleased,
neither was his countenance light-
ened; nevertheless, he did even as the
beast said.
14 So he called unto him a familiar
spirit, unto whom he had sold him-
Solf kºk
15 But the spirit was a wicked
spirit and a cruel: so he answered and
said, Lo, have I not put great might
into the horn which is in thy forehead?
What more said I ever that I would
do unto thee ? Thy soul is in my
hands: do as thou listest in this thing.
16. But the man entreated him sore-
ly, yet he listened not:++ for he had
great fear of the vision of the man who
was clothed in dark garments, and
who had a veil upon his head;
17 (For he was of the seed of those
which have command over the devils.)ff
* A tumult in Constable's camp.–M.
t The Mount of Proclamation was a part of the Old Town of Edinburgh, on which, while the
Stuarts reigned, heralds and criers used to read royal mandates and proclamations.—M. "
£ Pringle, the Lamb, was the collaboratewr of the articles on the Gypsies, which appeared in
the early numbers of Blackwood. Sir Walter Scott, however, supplied the principal part.—M.
§ Constable's dissatisfaction with the two beasts, Pringle and Cleghorn.
! Cleghorn tenders his advice.—M.
* I'rancis Jeffroy was Constable's “familiar spirit.”—M.
tº Jeffrey refuses to assist Constable.—M.
$3 Printers' devils —M.
xxviii
HISTORY OF BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE.
25 And they vanished from his sight:
and he heard the voice of their laugh-
ter, both he and his two beasts.
26 "I But when the spirits were
gone, he said unto himself, I will arise
and go unto a magician which is of
my friends: of a surety he will devise
some remedy, and free me out of all
my distresses.
27 So he arose and came unto that
great magician which hath his dwell-
ing in the old/fastness, hard by the
river Jordan, which is by the Border.
28 And the magician opened his
mouth and said, Lo! my heart wisheth
thy good, and let the thing prosper
which is in thy hands to do it:
29 But thou seest that my hands are
full of working, and my labor is great.
For, lo, I have to feed all the people
of my land, and none knoweth whence
his food cometh; but each man open-
eth his mouth, and my hand filleth it
with pleasant things. -
30 Moreover, thine adversary also is
of my familiars.
31 The land is before thee: draw
thou up thine hosts for the battle on
the mount of Proclamation, and defy
boldly thine enemy, which hath his
camp in the place of Princes; quit ye
as men, and let favor be shown unto
him which is most valiant.
32 Yet be thou silent: peradven-
ture will I help thee some little.
33 But the man which is crafty saw
that the magician loved him not. For
he knew him of old, and they had
had many dealings; and he perceived
that he would not assist him in the
day of his adversity.
34 So he turned about, and went
out of his fastness. And he shook the
dust from his feet, and said, Behold, I
18 And while the beasts were yet
looking, lo, he was not;
19 For even in the twinkling of an
eye he was present in the courts of
the palace, to tempt the souls of the
chief priests, and the scribes, and all
those which administer the law for the
Ring, and to deliver some malefactors
which he loved out of their hand.*
20 'ſ Then the man called with a loud
voice on some other spirits in whom he
put his trust.
21 And the first was a cunning
spirit, which hath its dwelling in the
Secret places of the earth, and hath
command over the snow and the hail,
and is as a pestilence to the poor man:
for when he is hungry he lifteth up
the lid of his meal-garnel, to take out
meal, and lo! it is full of strong ice.}
22 And the second was a little blind
spirit, which hath a number upon his
forehead; and he walketh to and fro
continually, and is the chief of the
heathen which are the worshippers of
fire. He is also of the seed of the
prophet, and ministered in the temple
while he was yet young; but he went
out, and became one of the scoffers.f
23 But when these spirits heard the
words of the man, and perceived his
trouble, they gave no ear unto his out-
cry, neither listened they to the voice
of his supplication.
24 And they laughed at the man
with a loud laughter, and said unto
him, Lo, shall we leave our digging
into the bowels of the earth, or our
ice, or our fire, with which we deceive
the nations, and come down to be as it
were servants unto thee and these two
beasts, which are lame beasts, and un-
profitable 7 Go to, man, seek thou
them which are thy fellows.
* Jeffrey, at this time (1817), was engaged in the defence of the Kilmarnock Radicals, accused
of sedition, and had fairly beaten the public prosecutor in the Court of Justiciary.—M. -
t John Leslie, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh. The allusion is
to his freezing process, in which oatmeal is used. Early in 1832 he was knighted, and died in
November in that year.—M.
f John Playfair, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. His
father was a clergyman, and he succeeded him as minister of Berwie, near Dundee, but resigned
the ministry to pursue the study of mathematics. He died in 1819–M.
TENE CEIALDEE MANUSCRIPT.
have given this magician much money,
yet see now, he hath utterly deserted
me.* Verily, my fine gold hath per-
ished.
35 But when he had come back
unto his house, he found the two beasts
which were yet there; and behold the
beasts were gabbling together, and
making much noise. And when he
looked in, behold yet another beast;
and they were all gabbling together.
36 Now the other beast was a beast
which he loved not. A beast of bur-
den which he hath in his courts to
hew wood and carry water, and to do
all manner of unclean things. His
face was like unto the face of an ape,
and he chattered continually, and his
nether parts were uncomely. Never-
theless, his thighs were hairy, and the
hair was as the shining of a Satin rai-
ment, and he skipped with the branch
of a tree in his hand, and he chewed
a snail between his teeth. . .
37 Then said the man, Verily this
beast is altogether unprofitable, and
whatsoever I have given unto him to
do he has spoiled: he is a sinful thing,
and speaketh abominably: his doings
are impure, and all people are aston-
ished that he abideth so long within my
gates.
38 But if thou lookest upon him
and observest his ways, behold he was
born of his mother before yet the
months were fulfilled, and the sub-
stance of a living thing is not in him,
and his bones are like the potsherd
which is broken against any stone.
39 Therefore my heart pitieth him,
and I wish not that he be utterly famish-
ed; and I give unto him a little bread
and wine that his soul may not faint;
and I send him messages unto the
xxix
towns and villages which are round
about; and I give him such work as
is meet for him.
40 But if we go forth to the battle,
let him not go with us.
41 For behold the griffin hath here-
tofore wounded him, and the scorpion
hath stung him Sorely in the hips and
the thighs, and also in the face.
42 Moreover, the eagle of heaven
also is his dread, and he is terrified for
the flapping of his huge wings, and for
his cry, which is like the voice of an
unknown tongue, also his talons, which
are sharper than any two-edged sword.
43 And if it cometh to pass that he
Seeth them in the battle, he will not
Stand, but Surely turn back and flee.
44. Therefore let us not take him
with us, lest he be for an ensample
unto the simple ones.
45 And while he was yet speaking,
behold he heard a knocking upon the
Stair, as if yet another beast had been
stirring.
46 And lo, it was even so.
47 And another beast came in,
whose disease was the murrain, who
had eyes yet saw not, and whose
laughter was like the laughter of them
whose life is hidden, and which know
not what they do.
48 And I heard a voice cry, Alas !
alas ! even as if it were Heu ! heulf
49 Now the man was sick at heart
when he perceived that he was there
with the four beasts,f and he said,
Wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the weight of beasts
which presseth sore upon me?
50 Then the four beasts waxed very
wroth, and they all began for to cry
out against the man which is crafty.
51 And he said, O race of beasts,
* Scott and Constable long had intimate relations, as author and publisher; but, taking of-
fence at some expression of Constable's partner, Scott employed Blackwood as his publisher,
greatly to the annoyance and loss of “The Crafty.”
After a time, Constable resumed his rela-
tions with Scott, and they were continued, until the Panic of 1825 caused Constable's bankrupt-
cy and Scott's ruin.—M.
t Another Editor of Constable's, whose Christian name was Hugh.-M.
# I au unable to say who were the two other “beasts" here introduced.—M.
xxx
HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
be ye still, and keep silence until I
consider what shall be done in this
matter. . . .
52 And while he spake, it seemed
as if he trembled and were afraid of
the four beasts and of the staves where-
with they skipped.
*
CHAPTER IV.
DUT while he was yet trembling, lo,
D there came in one which was his
familiar friend from his youth upwards,
who keepeth the books of the scribes,
and is hired to expound things which
he knoweth not, and collecteth togeth-
er the remains of the wise men.”
2 And he opened his mouth, and
said, Lo, I have come even this hour
from the camp of the enemy, and I
have spoken with the man whose
name is as ebony. 4
3 And while I was speaking with
him kindly, lo, some of the creatures
which are within his gates took notice
of me, and they warned him. So he
put no faith nor trust, in me. -
4. But take thou good heed to thy-
self, for they that are against thee are
mighty, and I have seen their num-
bors. -
5 Now when the man heard this,
Ue waxed yet more fearful.
6 Then there came into his cham-
ber another of his friends, one whose
nose is like the beak of a bird of prey,
whose mouth is foul, and his teeth
reach from the right ear even unto the
left; and he said, For why art thou so
cast down 7 be of good cheer; behold
I have an old breastplate which I will
put on, and go forth with thee unto
the battle. -
7 And further, he began to speak of
the north, and the great men of the
north, even the giants, and the painted,
folk, but they stopped him, for of his
speaking there is no end.
8 Then there came into his chamber
a lean man, which hath his dwelling
by the great pool to the north of the
New City;f -
9 Which had been of the familiars
..] of the man in plain apparel while they
were yet youths, before he had been
tempted of the man which is crafty;
10 Whose name had gone abroad
among the nations on many books, Š
even as his fathef's name had gone
abroad; -
ll. One which delighteth in trees,
and fruits, and flowers; the palm-tree
and the olive, the pomegranate and
the vine, the fig and the date, the tulip
and the lily;
12 Which had sojourned in far lands,
gathering herbs for the chief position.
13 And he had a rotten melon on
his head, after the fashion of an helmet.
14 And the man which is crafty be-
gan to take courage when his friends
were gathered unto him, and he took
his trumpet with boldness, and began
to blow for them over which he had
power.
15 But of them which listened to
him, their limbs were weak, and their
swords blunt, and the strings of their
bows were moist.
16 Nevertheless he made an assem-
blage of them over against the mount
of Proclamation; and these are the
names of his host, and the number of
his banners, whom he marshalled by
the mount of Proclamation the day
that he went forth to make war upon
the man whose name is as ebony.
17 Now behold the four beasts were
* Macvey Napier, Writer of the Signet, Keeper of the Writer's Library: and Editor of the
Edinbwrgh Review after Jeffrey, and Professor of Conveyancing in the University of Edin-
burgh. He also edited the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britanovica. He died in
1S47.—M.
+ A writer of some northern ballads and antiquities, now forgotten.—M.
f This was Mr. Patrick Neill, who lived by Canonmill's Loch, long since drained.—M.
§ He was a printer, and a great arbori- and horti-culturist.—M.
XXXJ
25 And Andrew the chief physician,
and Andrew his son, # who is a smooth.
man, and one which handleth all wind
instruments, and boweth himself down
continually before the horn which is
in the forehead of the man which is
crafty, and worshippeth it.
26 With James, the baker of sweet-
breads,ff which weareth a green mantle,
which inhabiteth the dwelling of the
nobles, and delighteth in the tongue
of the strange man.
27 And Peter, who raileth at his
master.
28 And in the fourth band I saw the
face of Samuel, §§ which is a mason, who
is clothed in gorgeous apparel, and his
face was as the face of the moon Shin-
ing in the north-west.
29 The number of his bands was
four; and in the first band there were
the four beasts,
30 And in the second band there
were nine men of war, and in the third
six, and in the fourth ten.
31 And the number of the bands
was four: and the number of them
which were in the bands was twenty
and nine; and the man which was
crafty commanded them.
32 And the screaming bird sat upon
his shoulder.
33 And there followed him many
women which know not their right
hand from the left, also some cattle.
34 And John the brother of Francis,
He is duly honored in Peter's Letters to his
TEIE CEIALDEE MANUSCRIPT.
lm the first band, yet they trembled,
and desired not to be in the front of
the host. *
18 And in the second band was one
which teacheth in the schools of the
young men, and he was clad in gray
garment whereof one-half his wife had
Weaved.* - &
19 Also, Samuel, a vain young man,
and a simple, which sitteth in the
King's Courts, and is a tool without
edge in the hands of the oppressors.
20. Also, John,f the brother of James,
Which is a man of low stature, and
giveth out merry things, and is a lover
of fables from his youth up.
21 Also, James, the young man which
cometh out of the west country, which
feareth God, and hateth all manner of
usury;$ who babbleth of many things,
and nibbleth the shoe-latchets of the
mighty; one which darkeneth counsel
With the multiplying of vain words;
22 To whose sayings no man taketh
heed. -
23 And in the third band were a
grave man, even George, the chief of
the Synagogue, a principal man, yea,
the leader of the doctors, whose beard
reacheth down unto his girdle;
24 And one David, which dwelleth at
the Corner as thou goest up to the
place of the old prison-house, which
talketh touching all manner of pic-
tures and graven images;* and he came
with a feather on his head.
* James Gray, one of the masters of the High School, Edinburgh. He was a fine linguist, and
a great friend of Hogg's.-M.
t A cousin of Professor Wilson's, and at this time one of the Crown Counsel,-M.
f John Ballantyne, brother of James, one of Sir Walter Scott's familiars, and commonly called
I?iffdºwn funnidos by him.—M.
§ The author of a pamphlet in defence of usury, and of a reply to Malthus—M.
| The Rev. Dr. George Baird, then principal of the University of Edinburgh—M.
* David Bridges, a clothier on the High Street, Edinburgh, near the prison, connoisseur in the
Fine Arts, and owner of many choice pictures.
Kim Sfolk.-M.
+h The two Andrew Duncans, father and Son, were eminent physicians in Edinburgh at this
time. The younger was author or compiler of “The Edinburgh Dispensatory.”—
tº James Baxter, Esq.-M. -
§§ This was Samuel Anderson, high among the Freemasons of Scotland. He was a wine-mer-
chant, but in Brougham's Chancellorship, received the lucrative appointment of Registrar of the
English Court of Chancery.
He figures in “The Noctes,” as one of North's guests.--M.
| John Jeffrey, younger brother of the critic.—M.
xxxii
HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD's MAGAZINE.
and the man which offered Consola-
tion to the man which is crafty.*
35 Also seven young men, whereof
no man could tell by what name they
the beagle, and all the mighty crea-
tures which are within the gates of the
man in plain apparel. -
39 Verily, the man which is craſty
shall be defeated, and there shall not
escape one to tell of his overthrow.
40 And while I was yet speaking,
the hosts drew near, and the city was
moved;f and my spirit failed within
me, and I was sore afraid, and I turned
to escape away. 4. " w
41 And he that was like unto the
messenger of a king, said unto me, Cry.
And I said, What shall I cry? for the
day of vengeance is come upon all
those that ruled the nations with a rod
of iron.
42 And I fled into an inner cham
ber to hide myself, and I heard a great
tumult, but I wist not what it was.
were called.}
36 But when I saw them all gath-
ered together, I said unto myself, Of a
truth the man which is crafty hath
many in his host, yet think I that
scarcely will these be found sufficient
against them which are in the gates of
the man who is clothed in plain ap-
parel.
37 And I thought of the vision of
the man which was clothed in dark
garments, and of the leopard, and the
lynx, and the scorpion, and the eagle,
and the great boar of Lebanon, and
the griffin;
38 The stork, and the hyaena, and
* The Rev. Wm. Gillespie was the author of “Consolation,” and other poems, published in
1815.-M.
t Nobody knew who “the seven young men” were. They are often mentioned through the
Magazine, and at “The Noctes,” but there is no clue to their identity—if any.—M.
f The Tories under Blackwood and the Whigs under Constable go together by the ears.--M.
eitristopher it the attitt.
No. I.—AUGUST, 1819.
WE have just returned from the Moors;* and as many erroneous
reports of our proceedings must doubtlessly have been put into cir-
culation, we do not see how we can do better than fill our last sheet
with an account of our shooting excursion. Sir John Sinclair re-
marks, that he has a more numerous family than generally falls to
the lot of literary men.f Now, though we can boast of no such
achievements, being to a man bachelors, yet we really believe that
for literati we are most extraordinary shots—and we hereby chal-
lenge all Scotland for a dinner at Young's, and a hundred pounds to
the erection of the National Monument.[
Immediately after the publication of our last number, an unusual
stir and bustle was observable among the members of our conclave.
At our monthly dinner at Ambrose's, the conversation could not be
confined within its wonted channel—and a continual fire was kept up,
blazing away right and left, much to the astonishment of our worthy
* The first part of this article, entituled “The true and authentic Account of the Twelfth of
August, 1819,” was the concluding paper in No. XXXIX of Blackwood's Magazine. It is cu-
rious to find how early Wilson took up the idea (carried out to the last in his “Dies Boreales,
or Christopher under Canvas”) of holding colloquies in a Tent. It may be mecessary to add, in
explanation of a particular day and month being singled out, that by the British game laws,
º: shooting does not commence until the 12th August, partridge shooting on 1st Septem-
er, and pheasant shooting on the 1st October, in each year.—M.
ºf Sir John Sinclair, the greatest rural economist, perhaps (because the most practical), that
Great Britain can boast of, was partly author and wholly editor of the Statistical Account of
Scotland, the most minute account of a kingdom ever published. His writings on agricultural
and financial science, extending over sixty years (he died, aged 82, in 1835), were distinguished
for their good sense. His family was numerous—thirteen children surviving him. In his
Hints on Longevity, he mentions one fact as the result of his inquiries among aged people—
that, whether they went to bed sober or drunk, at early even-tide, or long past the small hours,
all the long-lived persons whom he knew, male or fernale. had in variably been early risers.—M.
#young's Tavern, in High-street, Edinburgh. The locale was by morneans a pleasant one,
but most of the young wits of the city, including the Society called the lyilettānti, used to
frequent it. The Dilettanti, in 1819, had John Wilson for their president, and among the
members were Allan, Schetky, Nicholson and Baxter, artists; Lockhart, l'eter Robertson, now a
Scottish Judge, and in any more, them in early manhood, who have since attained eminence.
Young’s was such a small, smoky, dingy place, that it was conirmonly called “ The Coffin-
Hole.” Lockhart denounced it, in “Teters’ Ivetters,” as “ situated in one of the filthiest closes
in the city of Edinburgh,” where visitors had to “brave with heroic courage the risk of an
ilupure baptism from the neighboring windows.” What is called the National Monument
Stands on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, and is an unfortunate attempt to imitate the Parthenom of
Athens. It is unfinished. The part erected consists of thirteen columns, on the west side, each
9f which cost £1,000. They were put up between 1824 and 1830, and are not deficient in pic-
$uresque grace. The object of the Inonument was to commemorate those Scotchmen who had
fallen in battle during the war with Napoleon,-M.
WOL. I.-3
2 CEIRISTOPETER IN THE TENT.
publisher, who generally graces by his presence these our lunar
orgies. Not a word was uttered about “Articles.” Don Juan was
(for the time) silently sent to the devil”—cold water was thrown in
a moment on all the Lake Poets—and a motion was put from the
chair, and carried by acclamation, that the first man who smelt of the
shop should undergo a tumbler of salt and small beer. Ambrose
was astomished 1 || | - *
About midnight it was decided, that a letter should be written by
the editor to Lord Fife, requesting a week's shooting for himself and
the eight principal supporters of Blackwood's Magazine, with permis-
sion to pitch a Tent on the Twelfth on his Lordship's moors, at the
head of the Dee. As from his Lordship's well-known liberality, no
doubt could be felt on that score, it was resolved, that we should all
meet on the evening of the 11th at Braemar, whither our tent and
assistants should be sent a day or two previous, that all might be in
good order on our arrival. A letter was also written to Dr. Peter
Morris of Aberystwith, and Mr. Jarvie, Saltmarket, Glasgow, order-
ing their attendance.j
IFor the next fortnight, all was preparation. If a Contributor
showed his face in No. 17, Prince's Street, it was but for a moment,
and “with a short uneasy motion,” that proved “he had no business
there.” Our visits were indeed like those of angels, “few and far
between.” Before the end of the month, Mr. Wastle entered the
shop, like an apparition, in a pair of old buckskin breeches furbished
up for the nonce—leather gaiters, in which his spindle-shanks looked
peculiarly gentlemanly—and a jean jacket, with pockets “number
without mumber,” and of all sizes—the main inside one, like the
mouth of a sack, and cummingly intended to stow away roe or the
young of the red deer. Tickler was excellent. A man of six feet
* The two opening cantos of Don Juan, which did “fright the isle from its propriety,” ap-
peared in July, 1819. Murray, who had purchased them, was afraid to let his name appear on
the title-page, as publisher, and only the printer's name (“Thomas Davison, Whitefriars”) was
placed thereom.—M. -
f James Duff, Earl of Fife, was a wealthy man in 1819, with vast landed estates, in the Scot-
tish counties of Bamff, Moray, and Aberdeen. His principal residence (for he had several, in-
cluding two castles) was Duſſ House, mear the town of Banff, only part of which is built, on a
plan supplied by Inigo Jones. Lord Fife served with distinction in the Peninsular War, and is
a general in the Spanish army, as well as a grandee of Spain. At one time he was on most
intimate terms with George IV., to whom he lent vast sums, which have never been repaid
The result of this, and of extravagant expenditure on handsome ballet-dancers of the opera-
house, so nearly ruined him, that he had to retire from high life, to place his estates in the
hands of trustees (in payment of his debts), and to live on 64,000, which they allow him. The
trustees have done several harsh things in his mame, one of the most notorious being their illegal
caption of the original portrait of Charles the First, painted by Velasquez, at Madrid, in 1623,
which fortnerly belonged to the Farl’s father, and had been purchased at a sale by Mr. Snare,
a bookseller in Reading. The Scottish judges declared that the picture belonged to Mr. Smare,
who brought it to New York, in 1852, where it now is. All through Blackwood Lord Fife is
called “The Thane.” The source of the Dee (a river famous for its salmon, which runs into the
sea by the city of Aberdeen) is near Mar Lodge, on Lord Fife's property.—M.
| Dr. Morris was the pseudo-writer of “Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk” (Lockhart's Satire on
the Whigs of Edinburgh and Glasgow), and Mr. Jarvie (a pretended grandson of Bailie Nico.
Jarvie, of “Rob Roy”) had written some sarcastic letters to Maga, as if from Glasgow.—M.
| Blackwoºd's shop, where Maga was them published.—M. -
3
TICKLER—IIOGG-ODOHERTY.
and a half looks well in a round blue jacket—and if to that you
add a white waistcoat with a red spot—a large shirt-ruffle—corduroy
breeches very short at the knees—grey worsted stockings of the sort
in Scotland called “rig and fur,” and laced quarter boots, you un-
questionably have before you the figure of a finished Contributor.”
The Ettrick Shepherd condescended to show himself in the shop only
once between the 20th of last month and the 6th of August, on which
occasion, he was arrayed in white raiment from top to toe—his hat
being made of partridge feathers, and his shoes of untanned leather.
He was accompanied by a couple of very alarming animals, not un-
apparently of the canine race—one of which commenced an imme-
diate attack on an old harmless Advertiser, while the other began
rather unadvisedly to worry the Scotsman?—the consequence of
which, as was foreseen, has been hydrophobia, and the brute is now
chained up. . . Mr. Odoherty alone went in his usual way—and Čould
not help smiling at the Editor, who came strutting into the front shop
as boldly as his rheumatism would permit, with a dog-whip looking
out of his pocket, and a call hung round his neck like a boatswain's
whistle. As after a few minutes’ confabulation with Ebony, he hob-
bled off with Daniel’s Rural Sports beneath his arm, it is under.
stood, that Odoherty applied for his situation, alleging that the man
would be for ever spoiled as an editor by the mountain-dew of Brae-
mar—and that it was indeed the Edinburgh Review to Constable's
Magazine, or Lord Bacon to Macvey Napier, that he would not
“come to time.” But it would be quite endless to describe the ap-
pearance of each man in the regiment, before we entered on actual
service—so suffice it to say, that it is now the evening of the 11th of
August, and that our arrival is anxiously expected at the Inn of
Braemar.| *
* William Wastle, of that Ilk (which means “Wastle of Wastle”), was supplying Maga, at
this time with a satirical and de omnibus rebus poem, called “The Mad Banker of Amster-
dam,” in the Don Juan metre. In the second of “Peter's Letters” he is noticeduvery fully as a
living person, with close descriptions of his dress, features, and habits, but was only a creation
of the brain—one of the many mystifications of Blackwood’s Magazine. He is supposed to
have represented Lockhart. Timothy Tickler was an Edinburgh lawyer, named Sym, and
was Professor Wilson’s maternal uncle. - -
f The Scotsman, then edited by J. R. McCulloch (the political, economist and Edinburgh
reviewer, who contended that Absenteeism was not injurious to the country whence it drew
immense rents, inasmuch as it did not matter where the money was spent, so that it was dis-
bursed somewhere !) was a mewspaper, which was assumed to be the organ of the whig party
in Edinburgh. It was heavy, but clever, at that time, and rmuch ridiculed in Maga.-M.
# Ensign and Adjutant Morgan Odoherty was the well-known Dr. William Magimºn, who
contributed largely to Blackwood, from 1818 to 1830, and from that time to his death, in 1842,
was the leading contributor to Fraser's Magazine. He was introduced to the Tent by amiici-
pation, as he did not visit Scotland until June, 1821. Magimm was one of the rmost versatile
and fertile writers of modern times.—MI. - *:
| Braemar is a village in Aberdeem-shire, not far from Loch-ma-gar, the mountain celebrated
by Byron, in his earliest and his latest poems—llours of Idleness and 1)on Juan. He describes
it (erroneously) as “the highest mountain, perhaps, in Great Britain,” and with eternal snow
upon its summit. In 1838-’39 I ascended this mountain repeatedly, and saw no snow. On the
Summit is a spring of ice-cold water. On a clear day, ſrom this height, may be seem the waters
of the Atlantic on the west, and of the German Ocean on the east. From the source of the Dee
the ascent is diſficult and tedious; but so gradual is the slope from the summit to Braemar that
a pcºmy can easily ride it. In this manner Queen Victoria, whose seat of Balmoral is adja.
cent, reached the top of Loch-ma-gar, in 1853.-M.
4. CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
Notwithstanding our rheumatism, we arrived first at the place of
rendezvous, having gone direct to Aberdeen on the top of the mail,
and thence, on the dicky of a friend's chariot, to Panmanich Wells,
from which we contrived to pad the hoof to Braemar, attended by
our old bitch, than which a better newer was shot over, but which we
now took with us chiefly for companionship-sake. We did not en-
cumber ourselves with a gun, trusting to Mr. Kempferhausen being
soon knocked up, and being besides, under the necessity, on the
twelfth, of looking over our “Contributors' Box,” which Mr. Wastle
was good enough to promise to bring in his dog-cart. We had just
dined and finished half a mutchkin of whisky-toddy, when, looking
out of the window, we beheld beneath us the Ettrick Shepherd,
mounted on a tall brown horse with four white feet, and a counte-
nance equally so, who, on our throwing up the window, turned up
his large wall-eyes, with a placid expression, that showed at once he
was a steed quite above starting at trifles. The Poet's dog, some-
thing between a Newfoundland and a colley, was not equally pacific—
but went to work on an old turnspit belonging to the house, which
was with difficulty rescued from his jaws.
During this temporary disturbance the sound of wheels was heard,
and the Shepherd, running to the gabel-end of the house, exclaimed,
“A Morris | A Morris P’ and there, in good truth, was the worthy
Doctor in his shandrydan, with his man John, both looking extremely
well, and formidably appointed.* The clock in the kitchen struck
six. “Wastle will be here in ten minutes,” quoth the Doctor, “if
he be a man of his word, as I trow he is.” While he spake the sound
of a bugle-horn was heard, and in a few minutes up drove Wastle, in
high style, in his dog-cart, tandemwise, and making a sweep round
the court, he pulled up at the hall-door to an inch. We want nothing
but Tickler and Odoherty, cried the Shepherd; and, extraordinary as
it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the words were scarcely out
of his mouth, when Tickler rose up before us, on a pony under twelve
hands, so that he absolutely seemed as if he had been mounted on a
velocipede. Behind him came the Standard-bearer, on a white horse,
once the property of Marshal Soult, but which fell into the Adju-
tant's hands on the evening of Albuera's bloody day. He came into
the court-yard, side foremost, under the insidious left heel of his
Heroic master; and when Odoherty dismounted, it is impossible to
tell what life and spirit was struck into the scene and company
around from the clanging of his fixed spurs. No symptoms yet of
Kempferhausen,f Mullion, and Bailie Jarvie, who were to travel to-
* Dr. Morris's shandrydan was a high two-wheeled gig, drawn by a single horse, and with a
seat for two persons.—M.
f Kempferhausen was the name assumed by a contributor who wrote letters from the Lakes,
descriptive of Wordsworti, and Southey. Robert Pearce Gillies, whose poem of Childe Alarique
obtained more attention than saie, in 1813, was the author of Horæ Germanica, and Horie Dani.
THE Airºlº[WAT. 5
gether in a jaunting car of the Bailie’s, which had been left on his
hands by an Irish gentleman from Belfast, a dealer in lineas, in part
payment of a bad debt. The Shepherd laughed at the idea of expect-
ing them for several days---as “give Kempferhausen his pipe,” said
he, “and the ither twa their plotty,” and deevil, an inch will they
budge frae the first change-house they speer at in the Highlands.”
However, here were we assembled in great force—Editor, Wastle,
Morris, Tickler, Ettrick Shepherd, and Odoherty. As we perceived
that only the first of these gentlemen had dined, we kept our thumb
on that circumstance, and joined the dinner-party as if nothing had
happened, being indeed, in spite of a weakish constitution and con-
firmed rheumatism, a sure card on such occasions. A galion of
hodge-podge—the turkey-cock roasted—five or six dozen of poached
eggs—and some chops of rather a problematical character (though
we shrewdly suspect them to have been pork, in direct opposition to
Odoherty, who swore they were bull-beef) assuaged the fames, or
rather rabies edendi—and by eight o'clock we were ready to start
for the Limm of Dee, near which our Tent had, as we were informed,
already been pitched for two days, through the accustomed kindness
of the Thane, who had ordered his steward, Mr. Harden, to get it up
with all suitable accommodations.
As, with Wastle's and Morris' servants, we were only eight in all,
dog-cart and shandrydan took us up, out, and in, very comfortably,
and with room to spare ; aud, as the mags were in high condition, we
made the tent, under the hour, being received with three hearty
cheers, and “the clans are coming,” from a pair of bagpipes, whose
drones were assuredly far from idle ones. We returned the cheers
with spirit, and Wastle, who plays the bugle in a way worthy of the
late Leander himself, with a sudden blast startled the grouse and the
red deer through all the mountains and forests of Mar.
We found our Tent pitched on a smooth greensward, that looked
as if it had been artificially formed among the tall heather that
encircled it. It was placed on the confluence of several valleys, so
that on whatever side the canvas was raised, we had before our eyes
a long reach of the most magnificent mountain scenery. The clear
cap in Maga, which first made England and America acquainted with the dramatic writers of
Germany and Scandinavia. He was a great sonnet-writer, and had the honor of having a son-
net specially addressed to him by Wordsworth, in 1814. He was the first editor of the Foreign
2uarterly Review (commenced in 1827), wrote Recollections of Sir Walter Scott in Fraser’s
Magazine, 1835–36, and published his own Memoirs of a Literary Veteran in 1851.-M.
* I'lotty is mulled, or rather burnt port wine, dolectabie (as a night-cap) in the cold mights
of winter. Claret, so treated, is not a bad substitute, but a double dose of it is requisite.-M.
f The Limm of Dee is a deep circular cavity in the hard black rock into which the waters fall,
from the source, and whirl round and round—a miniature maelstrom. Much of Byron's child-
hood was passed close to this, and, while yet a very young boy, he used to lie in the sum, on the
steep bank which sloped down to the Linn. On one occasion he rolled down this slope, to the
horror of the hand-maiden who attended him, and expected to see him killed in “the hell of
waters” far below ; but a small shrub caught his dress as he was passing, and saved him.
The shrub remains—when I saw it, a tree would have been the better name.-M.
6 CEIRISTOPEIER IN THE TENT.
waters of the Dee murmured not twenty yards off—and one of those
little springs, so pleasant to the Shepherd, welled out from its hillock
yet closer to the tent. Here we found that excellent fisher Walter
Ritchie from Peebles, and that trusty caddy John Mackay, Frederick
Street, Edinburgh, who had escorted the Adjutant's tent, and many
et ceteras, in an old baggage-wagon purchased at Jock's Lodge, on
the departure of the Enniskillen Dragoons, and made as good as new
at the magical coach-yard of Crichton.* With Walter and John we
were now ten in number, while the Thane's three kilted gillies and
John of Sky, whom the MIGHTY MINSTREL had kindly sent to enliven
our festivities, made precisely the devil's dozen. -
“Haud mora,” there was no delay. The shandrydan and dog-
cart were emptied in a trice, and we ourselves were particularly
anxious to see “The Contributors' Box” safely stowed away among
our own furniture. Busy as we all were, each with his own concerns,
none of us could help smiling at the Ettrick Shepherd, who imme-
diately, on entering the Tent, had got astride on a pretty corpulent
3ask of whisky, and was filling a jug on which he had instinctively
laid his hands. “It’s no canny to sleep here a nicht for fear of the
fairies without sainingſ ourselves, so we'll e'en pit round the jug,
and pour out a drappochſ to King Lu !” In a short time the Tent
was in fair array—while Odoherty proposed that we should see that
our pieces were all in good order, and to ascertain their comparative
excellence, and the skill of the owners, that we should fire at a mark.
We accordingly assembled our forces for that purpose. -
By some accident or other which will probably never be explained,
a copy of the last part of the Transactions of the Royal Society was
found lying in the tent. Whether Wastle had brought it in his
dog-cart—but the thing is inexplicable, so let it pass. The volume
was opened by chance somewhere about the middle, and set up at
forty yards' distance to be fired at by the contributors. The follow-
ing scale will show the result of the trial.
* Ritchie has been repeatedly mentioned in Wilson's writings. The caddies are a race
peculiar to Edinburgh, coming from the wilds of Lochaber and Braemar, whence the stock is
re-inforced. They are dying out, but, even as late as twenty years ago, were the only trusted
and recognized message-bearers in Auld Reekie knowing every man, woman, and child there;-
every street, lane, and close, every shop, house, and staircase. TMackay, above mentiomed.
was a real personage, and mightily elevated of course, by this motice in Blackwood. In
“l’eter's Letters,” Lockhart has done full justice to the caddies.—M.
t John of Sky was a tall and stalwart bag-piper, who formed one of Scott's household at
Abbotsford. His marne was John Bruce, and attired in full Highland costurne, he used to play
on the pipes, stalking up and down in front of the hous'), when Scott gave a set dinner, coming
in at the close, to receive a quaigh (or Celtic wooden drinking vessel) of Glen livet, from Scott's
hand. Saluting the cornpany, he would diink off the contents, about a quarter-pint of strong
raw spirits, at a gulp, without moving a muscle of his face, and resume his out-of-door
pibrochs, which he ceiltinued until after twilight had set in.—M.
j: Blessing cºurselves.—Dr. Jamieson. -
| As drappie means a little drop, it is probable that the Shepherd's drappoch has a like
signification.—M. *
7
Trial on the 11th at 40 yards' distance, all shooting with No. 4, at an expanded
volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society.
SNORING !
Wadding. sº Grains put in. Leaves pierced.
Z
Wastle,. . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . Hat, . 1% 78 40
Tickler, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Card. 1% 65 30
Morris,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unknown. 1+ 65 32
Odoherty, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | Hat, 1# || 30 - 25
Ettrick Shepherd, . . . . . . . . Wool. 4. O O
Iºditor,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MSS. Article. 2 20 90
A very remarkable phenomenon, and one well worthy the atten.
tion of the Royal Society, was observed on this occasion. While the
left hand page, 372, was riddled to pieces, the right hand page did
not exhibit a single shot. The cause of this, we who are no philoso-
phers are not able to explain; but such is the fact ; and on the page
thus miraculously unhurt, were written the following words, “an
Essay on the Scope and Tendency of the Philosophical Writings of
Lord Bacon, by Macvey Napier, Esq.” Such impenetrable stuff
was it proved to be.*
By this time it had become rather darkish, and John of the Isles
began playing so sleepy an air, that it reminded us of the house of
rest. In about an hour we were all fourteen stretched upon our
backs with our feet meeting, in the true campaign fashion, in the
centre of the tent. The last observation that was uttered came from
Dr. Morris, who lamented much that Kempferhausen had not arrived,
as the moon would soon rise, and the young poet might have had an
opportunity of addressing a sonnet to her in High Dutch. Wastle
indistinctly muttered something in reply, for the hand of Morpheus
was passing over his mouth. For our own part, we were unable to
close an eye, thinking of the Magazine, for, when we left Edinburgh,
only two half-sheets had gone to press, and Mr. Blackwood looked
unutterable things.
While considering what ought to be the opening article, such a
noise arose as might have passed in America, for a frog concert.
What a snore! not one of the fourteen noses, Lowland or Highland,
Scotch, Irish, or Welsh, lay idle. The sum total was tremendous.
By degrees our ears got somewhat aggustomed to the sound, and we
could distinguish the characteristic snore of every sleeper. Above
all the menial and plebeian rhoncus rose the clear silver-nosed
trumpet of Tickler, playing its bold reveillé—there was heard the
equable, but not monotonous, and most gentlemanly smore of Wastie
* Macvey Napier, who edited the Encyclopedia Britannica, and succeeded Jeffrey as conductor.
of the Edinburgh Review, in 1829, was also one of the principal clerks of the Scottish Court
of Session, and Professor of Conveyancing in Edinburgh University. He had perpetrated an
article on Lord Bacon, which the Blackwood writers greatly ridiculed. Ha was a very decided
Whig, -which may account for these Tory sneers. MacVey latterly occupied the house, 39
North Castle-street, Edinburgh, in which Scott lived, from 1798 to July, 1826, and died in
1847.--M. *
8 - CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
—Dr. Morris snored in such a manner as he did mock himself, and
ever and amon ceased, as if he were listening, and then after a little
uncertain sniffling as if tuning his instrument to concert-pitch, broke
out again into full possession of his powers—Odoherty betrayed a
good deal of the masal brogue of his country, for sleeping or waking
the Adjutant is a true Milesian, snoring by fits and starts in a hurried
and impassioned manner like a man dreaming of Feuntes D’Onore
or Donnybrook Fair”—while, from the breast, neck, shoulders, head
and nose of the Ettrick Shepherd came a deep, hollow, grunting-
growl, like that of the royal tiger, so admirably described by Lady
H. in the last number of the Literary and Scientific Journal. When
this had lasted for a couple of hours, sometimes one performer lead-
ing the band, and sometimes another, we felt that the drum of our
ear could bear it no longer—so we picked our way out of the tent
over limbs of Celt and Saxon, and retired from the concert-room, to
hear the music “by distance made more sweet.” Nearly half a mile
off, we heard the
“Solemn hum,
Voice of the desert never dumb,”
and through its multitudinous murmur were distinctly audible the
majestic base of the author of the above lines, and the pure tenor of
Tickler—the first resembling a subterranean grumble, and the latter
striking on the ear like the sound of iron against rock in a frost.
During all this time, the moon was sitting in Heaven, “apparent
queen,” not with a stoical indifference, as Mr. Southey reports of her
on the night after Prince Madoc had defeated the Mexicans, but
evidently much pleased with the scene below her—both with what
she saw and what she heard. We shortly after returned to the Tent;
and “joining at last the general troop of sleep,” we no doubt added
one instrumental performer more to the grand chorus of this Musical
Festival. . .
We do not pretend to conceal the fact, that we felt ourselves
carried in a dream to the back shop, the sanctum sanctorum of No.
17 Prince's Street; and that we never thought Mr. Blackwood so
beautiful as in that vision. But just as he had given us a proof to
correct, it seemed as if the roof had fallen in and crushed us in the
ruins. We awoke—and found that Odoherty had fired the morning-
gun, as a signal. We buckled on our armor in less than no time,
and the adjutant was pleased to say, that he had never seen men
sharper at an alarm through the whole course of the Peninsular war.
“No fear lost breakfast cool”—for in ten minutes each man had
* “Who eer has the luck to see Donnybrook Fair,
An Irishman all in hus glory is there,
With his sprig of shilleiah and shamrock so green.” —M.
FETROSPECTION. 9
housed half a pound at least of mutton-ham, and a dash of the dew.
Early as the hour was, there was nothing like squeamishness—and it
must not be omitted, that each Contributor, like a good soldier and
good citizen, after an appropriate address by Odoherty, emptied his
quech to the health of the Prince Regent.*
Dr. Morris, Wastle, and Odoherty, each attended by a Highland
guide, provided for them, as we have said, by the munificence of the
Thane, took their departure to the mountains; the Dr. ascending the
pass of the Geonly Water, with a view to the ground towards the
head of Glen Tilt, Wastle taking up the glen of the source of the
Dee, and the Adjutant meditating a cast or two with our own
ſavorite bitch, over the ground behind Mar-Lodge. Tickler, who
had never seen a red Deer, went to the forest with John of the Isles,
and small Donald Dhu of Invercauld, having, ere he parted, fixed his
bayonet at the mouth of the tent. The Ettrick Shepherd, apparently
discouraged by his last night's discomfiture in shooting at the Trans-
actions, accompanied Walter Ritchie to the Dee, to try for a salmon;
while we ourselves, along with John Mackay, remained at home in
the tent, to overhaul the “Contributors' Box,” and if necessary, to
Write a leading article.
Our friends were now all gone, and we were left alone in the
silence of the morning. Many years had elapsed, since our health
had permitted us to be among the mountains, though in our youth,
We could have “trodden the bent,” with the best man in Scotland.
Our heart leapt within us, as we gazed on the sea of mountains,
emerging from the soft mists in which they had been shrouded during
the might. The wide and sunny silence was like the bright atmosphere
of former days. And when the Eagle sailed away on his broad
vans, from that magnificent cliff above the Linn of Dee, we recol-
lected our own strength, which we once thought nothing could have
tamed ; and w nºch used to carry us, as on wings, unwearied and
exulting, over heights that we could now travel only in the dream of
fancy. Here a twinge of the rheumatism made us sensibly feel the
truth of these reflections, and we hobbled into our tent with a sigh,
but the comfortable arrangement of the interior, and above all the
jolly cask of whisky, soon awakened us to a sense of the extreme
folly of repining retrospection, and we could not help thinking, that
the Editor in his camp, had greatly the advantage over his Contribu-
tors, now out in all directions on foraging parties.f
* George, Prince of Wales, was Regent, from February, 18 11, (when the confirmed madness of
George III., was indisputable), until January, 1820, when he became King, by Succession.—Ml.
f Im Peter's Letters to his Kimsfolk, we, the Editor, are spoken of as an obscure mail, a mariyr
to rheumatism, and one who only draws plans, which others execute. That we are not so
luminous a body as Dr. Morris, we admit—and that we are a martyr to rheumatism, is unfortu-
mately true, in spite of the well-known skill of our townsman, Dr. Balfour—but we beg leave
to contradict the illustrious Physician of Aberystwith on the last charge. We both plan and
execute—and flatter ourselves that there is a something in our articles that betrays the hand
10 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
On opening the Box, it was found to be rich in various matter—
and we amused ourselves for a couple of hours with an excellent
article on the National Monument—one on Bait-Fishing—and an-
other “on the Mechanism of the Foot and Leg.” While reading
the last, we heard the noise of wings, and going to the mouth of the
tent, saw a numerous pack of grouse sit down close to the little
spring already mentioned. We are no poachers—but it must not
be expected that a martyr to rheumatism is to be bound by the same
rules with sportsmen who have the free use of their limbs. We
accordingly took up Hogg's double barrel, and let fly at the pack as
they were all sitting together in a smug family-party—and before
they could recover from their confusion, we repeated the salutation.
John Mackay went leisurely forward—and returned with five brace
and a half of as fine young birds as might be looked at—and the old
cock. We maintain that no man is entitled to form an opinion of
our conduct in this, who has not suffered under confirmed rheumatism
for ten years at least, or, which is as well, under the gout for five.f
John Mackay had scarcely got the birds hung up by the legs, when
we were considerably alarmed by loud shouts or yells from the
river side, which we knew to be from the Shepherd—and running
down as expeditiously as our knee would permit, we found that the
Bard had hooked a Fish. There was he capering along the some-
what rugged banks of the Dee, with his hair on end, and his eyes
sticking out of his head, holding the butt-end of his rod with both
hands in perfect desperation. -
“Fit statue for the court of fear !” -
Walter Ritchie ever and anon “his soul-subduing voice applied”
close to his ear, instructing him how to act in this unexpected
emergency; and above all things, imploring him to get the better of
his fright ! Unluckily the Shepherd's reel-line was too short, so, to
prevent the Salmon from running it out, he was under the necessity
of following him up close at the heels. At every plunge the fish
of the Editor. Dr. Morris, who had never seem us when he published his “Letters,” has since
apologised to us in the handsomest manner, both for his unfounded charge of obscurity and
incapacity, but we wish also that the world should know it. We hear that several other
persons, equally opaque as ourselves, have taken it grievously to heart, that the Doctor has
overlooked them altogether, and attempt to carry their heads very high when his maine is
mentioned. Such persons may be said to belong to the High School—See Gray’s Elegy,
“And leave the world to darkness and to me.”—C. N. -
* These articles actually did appear in the current No. of Blackwood. The first strongly
urged that the suggested National Monument on Calton Hill, should consist of a restoration of
the Parthenon. The second, professedly written by one Peter McFinn, was a graphic account
of a fishing excursion in Duinſrieshire, with remarks on bait-fishing. The third was a very
amusing review of Dr. John Cross's book On the Mechanism and Motions of the Human Leg
and Foot.—M. §
f We have been so long out of the sporting world that we scarcely know what the public
feeling is on subjects of this kind. We remember an old gentleman long ago, when we had a
shooting box in Northamptonshire, who always shot hares sitting, on the principle that it was
more difficult to shoot them in that situationſ Wo despise all such sophistry.—C. N.
EIOGG AND THE SALMON. 11.
made—at every rush he took, the Shepherd was fearfully agitated—
and floundered, stumbled, fell and recovered himself again among the
large round slippery stones, in a manner wondrous to behold. For
a man of his years, his activity is prodigious. “Look there, Mr.
Editor . There is a Ly:ADING ARTICLE for you !” Scarcely had he
spoken, when the fish took a sullen fit, and sinking to the bottom, lay
there like a log, - -
“Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees l’
The Shepherd seemed truly thankful for this short respite from
toil, and helping himself cautiously to a pinch of snuff, handed over
the mull* to us with that air of courteous generosity observable on
such occasions. At length he became desirous of another heat, but
the salmon would not budge, and the Shepherd, forgetting how much
he stood in awe of the monarch of the flood when he was in motion,
began insulting him in the grossest manner in his repose. Finally,
he proposed to us to strip and dive down to alarm him, some fifteen
or twenty feet—a modest proposal to a man of fiftyf-an editor—
and a martyr to the rheumatism. Here the fish darted off like light-
ning, and then threw a somerset many feet in the air. Though this
was what the Shepherd had wished, it seemed not to be what he had
expected, and the rod was twitched out of his grasp, as neatly as at a
match of single stick. Walter Ritchie, however, recovered the wea-
pon, and returned it to its master yet standing in blank discomfiture.
His pride did not allow him to decline it—though it was apparent
that he would have exchanged situations with Mazeppa or John
Gilpin. --
But why prolong the agitating narrative'. Suffice it to say, that
after a chase of two miles down the Dee, and from an observation of
the Sun's altitude of two hours' duration, the salmon gave in—and
came unexpectedly to shore. There, on the green turf, lay salmon
and Shepherd, both quite exhausted, and with scarcely any symptoms
of life. They reminded us of one of those interesting scenes in Bor-
der History, where two gallant foemen lie side by side—or like one
of those no less interesting scenes in coursing, where greyhound and
hare are stretched gasping together on the wold. The Fish gave his
last convulsive bound from the sod, and the shepherd, with a faint
voice, cried, “take care o' yoursels or he'll lame some o' you”—but
his fears were groundless, for Waltar Ritchie had already given him
* A null is a Scotch snuff-box, made out of a ram's-horn, polished, and fitted with a cover,
often embellished with a silver setting, on which is fixed a cairn-gorm, or Scotch topaz.-MI.
# At this tirne, the Editor of Black wood had neither assumed the name of CH R1STOPIIER
NORTH, nor quite decided what his age should be. A man of 50, in 1818, would have been born
in 1769. Sribsequently, the year 1751 was given as the actual date, which wouid have made
Kit Nolth GS, at the time he and his colleagues were at Braordar. Throughout the “Noctes.”
he is represented as in venerable old age, and must have been S4 when they closed, in 1835.-MI.
12 . . CEIRISTOIPLIER IN THE TENT.
the coup de grace, and holding him up by the gills, pronounced his
eulogy with a simple pathos, worthy of better times, “a brave fish !
de'el tak me ginna he binna twenty pun weight !” -
The first thing the shepherd said, on coming to himself, was, “gude
save us, I wou'd gie half a croon for a gill o' whusky 1’’ The sun,
however, had dissolved the mountain-dew—so we had to return (a
distance of nearly three miles) to our tent, within the coolness of whose
shadow we knew some of the “tears of the morning” were to be
found. .
On entering the tent, only judge of our surprise when we found
Kempferhausen, Mullion, and Jarvie, tearing away tooth and mail at
the “Branxy,” and gulping down the aqua vitae as if it had been
small beer | The swallow of the young German, in particular, was
prodigious; and much must he have astonished the Westmoreland
peasantry, when in training to write his celebrated letters from the
Lakes. He assured us that he had ate little or nothing for three
days, which seemed to us but a partial avowal of the truth, for his
present voracity could only have been satisfactorily accounted for on
the theory of a fast for three weeks. That excellent actor Jones, in
Jeremy Diddler, was a mere joke to him. Mullion made a masterly
meal of it; while of Jarvie it is sufficient to say, that he upheld the
high character of a citizen of Glasgow. We introduced the Shepherd
to Kempferhausen and Jarvie (Mullion being an old acquaintance),
and nothing could be more amusing than the contrast of the Glasgow
and the Hamburgh manner. Jarvie got into such glee, that he abso-
lutely began to “trot”f the shepherd round the room; but James
was soon up to him, and played off in his turn upon the bailie, assert-
ing with meritorious gravity of face, that he had shot the salmon with
a single ball, at the distance of half a mile, as he was rashly attempt-
ing, with his tail in his mouth, to leap the Linn of Dee.
It was now wearing on to two o'clock, and it is not to be denied,
that though “no that fou,” we had got “a drappy in our ee,”—though
* Brancy is the name given to mutton hams made from the sheep that have died of their
own accord, or met with some fatal accident among the mountains. lt is quite superior to any
other, both in flavor and nutriment. It is a perquisite of the shepherds; and in this instance
we had it warranted sound by the head of Lord Fife's pastoral establishment. The best we
ever ate was at Dugald Campbell's, 13sq. of Achlian, Argyllshire.—C. N.
f Richard Jones, commonly called “Gentleman Jones,” was a great favorite at the Edin-
bu-gh theatre, as comedian, and finally settled in London, where he died a few years ago, after
having realized a large fortune as a teacher of elocution.--M.
f To trot means to hoax. It used to be much practised in Glasgow, and also at Bolton, in
Lancashire. A famous Bolton trot was the wager with one “in verdure clad,” that he would
not put one of his feet into hot water, and keep it therein as long as a certain Boltonian who
was present. The trial was made, them and there. Bouh plunged a stocking-covered leg into
a tub of boiling water. The “ Bolton fellow” appeared entirely u aaffected by the increased
temperature: the other instantaneously withdrew his pin, dreadfully, scalded, and paid the
dozen of wine which he had lost. When the party were on the last bottle; the green young
gentleman was informed and shown, that it was his opponent's cork leg which had competed
with his own, of fiesh and bone. This was a thorough trol—equivalent to a modern sell / In
Lancashire, by the way, the inhabitants of certain towns are characteristically designated as
“Liverpool gentlemen, Manchester men, Wigan chaps, and Bolton fellows.”-M1.
TICKLER—HOGG---ODOH ERTY. 13
it was more owing to the heat of the sun and the salmon-hunt than
anything else, that we found any difficulty in preserving our equilib.
rium. Kempferhausen and Hogg were prodigiously great, and we
overheard the foreigner vowing that he would publish a German
translation of the Queen's Wake ; while, in another corner of the
Tent, and with the whisky quech placed before us on the Contribu-
tors' box, we and Jarvie were “unco kind and couth thegither,” and
the Bailie solemnly promised us before winter, his article entitled
“The devil on Two Sticks, on the Top of the Ram's Horn.”
While matters were thus going on, Walter Ritchie came hastily
into the Tent, and let us know that “four strange gentlemen” were
making the best of their way towards us, over the large stones and
loose rocks of a heathery hill behind. In a few minutes he ushered
two of them in. They were a brace of Smart springals enough,
with no small portion of self-assurance and nonchalance. “My
name,” quoth the tallest, “is Seward of Christchurch, and this is
Buller of Brazennose.”f We had heard something of Oxford ease
and affluence, and indeed reckon more than one Oxonian among our
contributors; but without seeing it, we could not have credited the
concentration of so much self-satisfaction in any one individual of the
species as in this avowed Seward of Christchurch. “Cursed com-
fortable marqué, Buller, and plenty of prog;-come, my old boy,
tip us a beaker of your stingo.” “Pray,” replied we, “may I ask
which of you is the Brazennose man º’” “Ha! Buller, to be sure,
Buller of Brazennose !—first-class-man, sir—devilish clever fellow;-
allow me to introduce him to you more particularly, sir :—This, sir,
is Bob Buller of Brazennose—first-class-man, sir, both in Litt. Hum.
and Class. Phys.-their crack-man, sir, since the days of Milman.f
But pray, sir, may I ask to whom I have the honor of address-
ing myself?” “Why,” replied we politely, but with dignity,
“Mr. Seward, we are the veiled Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine !”
“The veiled Editor of Blackwood's Magazine ! By the scythe
of Saturn and all that is cutting ! my worthy old cock | Lend me
your feelers, Buller—isn't he as like old Gaisford as two pigs Mr.
£ditor, you know Gaisford—damned good fellow—one of the well
booted Greeks.”—“It is my misfortune, sir, never to have seen Mr
Gaisford, but I have a copy of his Hephæstion.”|| Here we chanced
* The “Ram's Horn” is the name of a church in Glasgow, from the top of whose spire the De-
vil on Two Sticks would unquestionably have a commanding bird’s-eye view of that city.—C. N.
i Buller, of Brazem nose College, Oxford, was John Hughes, (who really belonged to Oriel,)
and author of am ſtimerary of the Rhone. He was a great friend of Ainsworth, the movelist,
Thomas Ingoldsby (the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, a member of the same college), and The-
odore Hook. There was no representative, to my knowledge, of Seward.
# When a student at Oxford wins the highest honors, at the degree-examination, in classics
and science, he is called “a double first”—as conqueror in both. The late Sir Robert Peel was
So distinguished. The Rev. Henry Hart Milman here mentioned, was a Brazen nose man, and
is now Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Lon lon. He has written much in prose and verse—
chiefly dramatic in the latter, of which his play of “Fazio” is the only one on the stage.—M.
|| The Tev. Dr. Thornus Gaisford, lycam of Christchurch, Oxford, since 1831, was appointed
gius I'rofessor of Greek in 1811.--M. -
14 CHRISTOPEIER IN THE TENT.
to look around us, and saw the faces of the Shepherd, Mullion, and
Jarvie, close to each other, and all fixed with various expressions of
fear, wonder, and astonishment on Mr. Seward of Christchurch.
They kept cautiously advancing towards him inch by inch, somewhat
in the style of three Arctic Highlanders towards Captain Ross on his
supposed descent from the moon; Jarvie bent down in a crouching
attitude, with his hands on his knees, like a frog ready to make a
spring; Mullion, with one fist on his chim, and the other unconsciously
clawing his head, while his broad purple face was one gleam or rather
“glower” of curiosity; and the Shepherd with his noble buck teeth,
displayed in all their brown irregularity, like a seer in a fit of second
sight. “Whare the deevil cum ye frae º quoth the Shepherd. “Ha,
ha! Buller, here is a rum one to go.” On this we introduced the
Shepherd to the Oxonians, as the author of the Queen's Wake, Pil-
grims of the Sun, &c., and in return, with some difficulty explained
to him in what part of the globe Oxford stood, and to what purpose
it was dedicated, though on this latter point we did not seem to make
ourselves very intelligible. “Weel, weel, gentlemen,” continued the
Shepherd, “I’se warrant your twa big scholars, but hech sers, there's
something about you baith that is enough to mak ane split their sides
with laughing. Buller o' Brazennose, I ne'er heard the like o' sic an
a name as that in a my born days, except it were the Bullers o' Bu-
chan.” Then the Shepherd put his hands to his sides, and burst
into a long loud triumphant guffaw.
Meanwhile, we had wholly forgotten the other two “strange
gentlemen,” and found that they were sitting outside the tent.
Wastle very politely asked them in ; one was a dapper little fellow,
but as pale as death; and had his left hand wrapt up in a handker
chief. The other was tall and lusty, but with a face of vulgar
effeminacy, and altogether breathing rather offensively of a large
town. “My name is Tims,” piteously uttered the small pale dapper
young man; and my two-barrelled gun has cracked, and carried away
my little finger, and a ring that was a real diamond. I bought it at
Rundle and Bridges.”f “They calls me Price,” said the dandy; “a
nephy of the late Sir Charles Price, that was o' Lunnun; and I am
come down into Scotland here to shoot in these hereabout parts.”
* The Bullers of Bucham, in Aberdeenshire, are among the wonders of Scotland. They are
mear Slaine's Castle, the residence of the Earl of Errol, and are remarkable for the noise and
ſorce with which, at a certain state of the tides, the sea-water is driven up through a sort of well-
like cavity in a rock. When Dr. Johnson was in Scotland, the Bullers especially attracted his
attention.—-M.
f Originally, this Mr. Tims was as much a real character as Wastle or Mullion, but on the
appearance. (as a translation from the French of Viscount Victoire de Soligny.) of a tour in
England, the wits of Blackwood insisted that their own cockney, Tims, had written it, and
ever afterwards, in the “Noctes,” and out of it, spoke of Tims, as “the Wicount Wictoire.”
The jewellers, Rundell and Bridges, whom he names, were the leading jewellers in London
for many years, (their shop was on Ludgate Hill, near St. Paul's Cathedral,) and the wife of
Mr. Rundell was authoress of the famous cooking-book, of which, between 1811 and 1854,
about five million copies have been sold. Sir Charles Price was a London banker.—M.
TEIIE GA ME-T3A.G.S. 15
During this explanation, the Oxonians did not deign to look towards
the Cockneys, but Seward kept humming “the bold dragoon,” and
the “first class man both in Litt. Hum. and Class Phys.,” whose
voice we had not yet heard, was peeping somewhat inquisitively into
the quechs, jugs, and bottles, and occasionally applying one or other
of them to his mouth, without meeting any suitable return to his
ardor. - - -
We at length found that the Oxonians and the Cockneys had left
the Spittal of Glenshee by sunrise, in two totally distinct parties.
But that the geography of so wild a country as Scotland, not being
much known either in Oxford or the City, both had got bewildered
among the everlasting hills and valleys, till, as their good luck would
have it, they had joined forces within half a mile of our Tent. A
bumper of whisky gave a slight tinge of red to the cadaverous phiz of
Tims; and Price got quite jaunty, pulling up the collar of his shirt
above his ears, which, you may well believe, were none of the shortest.
Nothing could be more amusing to us, than the ineffable contempt
with which Christchurch and Brazennose regarded Cheapside and
Ludgate Hill; though, to say the truth, the two former seemed just
as much out of place as the latter, among the wilds of Braemar;
while, in spite of all we could do, to divert the conversation from
such subjects, Seward kept perpetually chattering of Jack Ireland,
little Jenkins of Baliol, the Dean, the great Tom of Christchurch, and
other literary characters of credit and renown. P. &
The Shepherd, eager to put a stop, if possible, to these mystical
allusions, requested to see what the gentlemen had got in their bags,
and Messrs. Tims and Price silently submitted theirs to the scrutiny.
James put his hand boldly in—as well he might—for the lean sides of
the wallet plainly showed that there was no danger of his being bitten,
and it was seen by the expression of his face, on withdrawing his
arm, how truly nature abhors a vacuum. Mr. Tims stood on high
ground, for he had burst his gun the first fire, and Mr. Price
declared, that though in other respects a finished sportsman, he had
never till that day fired a shot. Mr. Seward then called on his man,
by the facetious appellation of “Katterfelto,” “to bring the spoil,”
and a knowing knave immediately emptied a huge bag containing
two brace of “chirpers” (pouts evidently taken by the hand), and, to
the petrifaction of the spectators, an enormous Fox. Tims and Price
eyed the animal with intense curiosity, and on hearing its name, the
latter declared that though he had now hunted with the Surrey-
hounds for six years, he had never caught a view of reynard, and
would think his journey to Scotland well repaid by the sight of an
animal which he had long given up all hopes of ever beholding on
this side of the grave. Seward told him, (it was the first time he
had ever deigned to address the Cockney) that he was welcome to
16 CEIRISTOPETER IN TETE TENT.
Mr. Fox, only he begged leave to retain the brush; and Price leapt
at the offer, declaring he would have him stuffed, and placed at the
winder of his Box at Hampstead. -
“That's the Captain's lauch,” quoth the Shepherd, and forthwith
entered Odoherty, picturesquely ornamented with moorfowl, snipes,
and flappers, all dangling round his waist, as one might suppose as
many scalps round an Indian warrior. His fine features were stained
with gunpowder and blood, and Mr. Tims had nearly fainted away.
“Allow me, gentlemen, to introduce Timothy Tickler, Esq.,” said
the Standard-bearer, and in a trice he stood before us in all his
altitude. His musket, with the bayonet fixed, was in his hand, and
over his shoulders hung a young roe which he had slain in the forest.
Even Seward of Christchurch, and Buller of Brazennose, stood
astounded at the apparition. “By the ghost of Dinah Gray, Buller,
there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in
Aristotle's philosophy.” “There, Mr. Editor,” quoth Tickler, “is
John Roe—Richard Doe has escaped mortally wounded;” and with
that, he threw down the creature at our feet. At that moment was
heard the bugle-horn of Wastle; and by the time “that a man with
moderate haste might count a thousand,” he and the physician
were in the tent. “My dear friend, Dr. Morris P’ “What,
Buller of Brazennose !” The meeting was most cordial; but the
heat of the tent was quite insupportable, being about 96 of Henry
Watson's thermometer—so it was proposed by Tickler to adjourn
to the antechamber, whose dimensions could not easily have been
taken. We mustered very strong—Editor, wide, Morris, Ticker,
oacherty, shepherd, * *ie. Milion, Kenyº, sewººd of
Christchurch, Buller of Brazennose, Tims, Price, John of Sky, Lord
Fife's * gillies, walter" Ritchie, J om"Mºy, Kaºlo,
Bullerºvale, the cockney, Londoner, four Higinders from the
- - 27 28
Spittal of Glenshee, Peter's man John, Wastle's man Thomas.
It was altogether a most animating scene; audit is incredible in how
short a time one kind and genial spirit seemed transferred through
so great a body of men. “It’s all the world like the coffee-room o'
Glasgow about four o'clock,” said Jarvie; “but, ochone, they’ll be no
punch—none o' Provost Hamilton's best here.” John Mackay
informed us, that he and his assistants were all at work, and that in
an hour and a half dinner would be on the table. “But hae ye
killed ony thing, doctor,” quoth the Shepherd. Here Peter's man
John, and Walter Ritchie, came forward, dragging several bags along
ANTE-PRANDIAL. - 17
with them, which disembogued a brown flood of grouse, that over-
flowed many yards of the sod. Mr. Tims could not believe his eyes,
when he saw, counted before them, thirty-seven brace. “There are
thirty brace mair o' them,” said Watty Ritchie, “scouring for the
pan.” So much for Wastle and Morris.
The whole party now retired to their toilette, and most of us
performed our ablutions in the limpid Dee. We, the Contributors,
had greatly the advantage over the Oxonians and the Cockneys,
whose wardrobe was at the Spittal of Glenshee; and we could not
help observing, that when we ourselves returned to the tent in a full
suit of black, little the worse for the gentle wear of three years
Sundays, we were looked at with a pleasant surprise, and, if possible,
an increased admiration, not only by Tims and Price, but also by
Seward of Christchurch, and Buller of Brazennose.
When we all assembled again, furbished and figged up, we made a
splendid figure on the mountain-side; and rarely had the heather
waved over a finer body of men since the days of Fingal. It is true,
that most of us were too sharp-set fully to enjoy the magnificence of
the prospect. Yet it made itself be felt. Many hundred stupendous
mountains towered up into the cloud-piled sky over a wide horizon
—nor was it easy to distinguish earth from heaven as they lay
blended together in that sublime confusion. The dark pine-forests
of Mar stretched off into the dim and distant day, overshadowing
rock and precipice; and in the blue misty hollows of the hill, we knew
that unseen tarms and lakes were lying in their solitary beauty.
Scarce visible in the dark blue sky, an eagle was heard yelling in
wild and sullen fits; and when one gazed up' to his flight, it was a
grand feeling to imagine the boundless expanse of earth, sea, and sky,
that must then have been submitted to the ken of the majestic Bird.
Our readers will observe, that the above little bit of description is
not our own, but copied out of Kempferhausen's journal; and we
think it not so much amiss, considering that it was pencilled under a
severe fit of the toothache. One hour in the drawing-room before din-
mer is longer than three in the dining-room after it, and this we all ex-
perienced, while lying on the greensward before our tent. Even the
unwearied wit of Tickler, who lay stretched “many a rood” among
the heather, was beginning to lose its charm, when Wastle's man
Thomas, a comely varlet about his master's age, advanced with the
ceremonious air of a true butler of the old school, and announced that
dinner was on the table. Never did thunder follow the lightening so
instantaneously, as we all leapt up on this enunciation; and on
looking round, we found ourselves in the chair, supported by Wastle
and Morris—while Tickler was seated croupier,” supported by
* Crow pier,-vice-chairman. Trobably derived from two men riding on a horse, in which
case one must sil, on the croup, or loins of the aniºnal, i.e. occupy a secondary or infirm position,
WOL. I.-4
18 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
Odoherty and Buller of Brazennose. A principle of the most
beautiful adaptation and fitness of parts secrued undesignedly to
regulate the seating of the whole party; and we especially observed
how finely the High-street face of Seward of Christchurch contrasted
itself with the Cowgate face of the Shepherd on the one hand, and
the Saltmarket one of Jarvie on the other—while that of Tims looked
quite pale and interesting between the long Sallow countenance of
Kempferhausen and the broad rubicundity of Mullion. ‘. . .
By what magical process the dinner had been cooked we know
not; but a fine cut of salmon lay before the chair; while Tickler
cried, with a loud voice, “Dr. Morris, shall I help you to some roe.
soup 7" On the middle of the table, midway between Mullion and
Jarvie, was an immense tureen of grouse soup, composed, as Peter's
man John declared, with uplifted hands and eyes, of fifteen brace of
birds ! Placed at judicious intervals, smoked trenchers of grouse
roasted, stewed, and grilled—while a haunch of John Doe gave a
crown and consummation to a feast fit for the Immortal Gods.
The party had just been helped to grouse or roe-soup, when a card
was handed to the Chairman (we shall henceforth substitute Chair-
man in place of Editor) with the single word, A CoNTRIBUTOR, writ-
ten upon it in large characters. We left our seat for an instant to
usher in the GREAT UNKNOWN. IT WAS DR. Scott, 'THE CELEBRATED
ODONTIST of GLASGow.” He was still seated on his famous white
trotting pony, with his legs boldly extended in ultra-dragoon fashion
from its sides, and his armed heels so much depressed, that his feet
stood perfectly perpendicular with elevated toes, and exposed to our
gaze those well-known broad and formidable soles which could belong
to no other living man but the doctor. On his head was a hat white
as Snow, and in circumference wide as a fairy-ring on a hill-side—his
ortly frame was shrouded in a light-drab surtout, and his sturdy
#. in trowsers of the purest milled cord, which, by the action of
riding, had been worked up to his knees, and considerately suffered
the eye to rest on a pair of valuable top-boots spick and span new for
the occasion—no unworthy successors they to those of the Ettrick
Shepherd, now no more. A green silk umbrella was gorgeously ex-,
panded over the illustrious Odontist, who, having remained a full
minute in all his pride of place, that we might have leisure to con.
template the fülness of his perfections, furled his banner in a style
worthy of the Adjutant himself; and shouldering it as if he had been
serving in the Scotch Fusileers, exclaimed, “You didna ask me to
your tent, ye decwil, but here ſ am, in spite of your teeth. I heard
o' you at Gordom Castle,f and I hae just come up to keep ye a' right
This Scott, whom it pleased North to call Doctor, and pass off as a miracle of wit and learn-
ing, was an obese odomiist (or dentist) in Glasgow, eminent for nothing beyond tooth-drawing,
except punch-drinking. -
{ In Aberdeenshire. It was the seat of the Duke of Gordon ; and Willis, who visited it, has
described it in his Pencillings by the Way.—M. -
TEIE SQUABASII. 19
and tight, ye nest o' veepers.” We assured the Doctor that his
honest face was always a welcome contribution to us, and that we had
not asked him to join the party, solely from a feeling of compassion
to his patients. The doctor's boy now ran up to assist his respected
master to dismount, in a livery of blue and red, and a smart Cock-
ade; for the doctor had been a soldier in his youth, and performed
many signal acts of valor in the green of Glasgow, along with the An-
derston Volunteers, when that fine body of operatives were com-
manded by the gallant Colonel Geddes, and the invincible Major
Cross. “Gentlemen, Dr. Scott from Glasgow,”—when such a shout
arose as can only be described to those not present by its effects.
“So far was heard the mighty knell,
The stag sprung up upon the fell,
Spread his broad nostril to the wind,
Listed, before, aside, behind—
Then couched him down beside the hind—
And quaked among the mountain fern,
To hear that sound,” &c.
The Doctor was soon seated; and the drab surtout being felt rather
close, he imitated the fashion of Lady Heron in Marmion, and
“It all for heat was laid aside.”
“Hoo are a' the people o’ the West ?” quoth Jarvie, delighted to see
a Glasgow face in so high a northern latitude. “Just as you left
them, Bailie—a’ breaking clean aff by the stump—There's scarcely
a house I wad uphald langer than a loose tooth—it's just a' ae gene-
ral squabash!”
A short pause succeeded; and in the silence of the tent nothing
was heard, save the clattering of knives and forks—the clashing of
trenchers—the Smacking of lips—and occasionally those long deep
sighs of full and perfect enjoyment, that, be our theoretical creed
what it may concerning the summum bonum, are ever felt to breathe
out the very inmost soul of all earthly felicity. -
Just then arose outside of the tent such a throttling noise of un-
numbered dogs, that had Earl Walter, the wild huntsman, been a
daylight vision, we must have expected to see him now realized.
Amidst the savage growl were heard the loud curses of Celt and
Sasenach, maddening the fray which they sought to assuage. “Demme
if the Highland curs be not murdering my Juno,” exclaimed Mr.
Seward of Christchurch, “I would not lose her for the Indies—she
was bred by Jack Burton P’ We had our own suspicion that Mr. Com-
stable's brown bitch was at the bottom of all this disturbance—but
we found it impossible to discover, in this general “colleshangy”* its
* See again Dr Jainieson, C. N.
20 CHRISTOPETER IN THE TENT.
prime mover. Mr. Price declared himself at ease about the isºtle
of this conflict, as he had purchased his dog Randal from Bill Gib-
bons,” and a better never Čntered a ring. The Shepherd did not
allow this bravado to pass unnoticed—and we are almost confident
that we heard him through the din offering to fight his Hector against
the “Southron dog, for a gallon o' whisky and a haggis P’ Mean-
while almost a score of dogs were fiercely at work among the heather
—mor could we help contrasting with the agitated action of the rest
of the party, the cool composure of Morris, the calm curiosity of
Wastle, and the eager ecstasy of Tickler, who, standing together on
a rock elevated above the scene of action, might, perhaps, be com-
pared to Bonaparte and his staff witnessing the Great Battle from
the observatory on the heights of Mont St. Jean. -
Order was at last restored—and all the dogs came shaking their
ears close to the heels of their respective masters—some of them
piteously limping, and others licking their wounds, which were so
numerous that it would have required Monsieur Larreyf himself to
bind them all up on the field of battle. But a scene, if possible, of
yet greater confusion was at hand. A strong body of Celts, collected
among the mountains towards the Spittal of Glenshee, advanced,
with a most hostile demonstration, to the tent, and demanded £20 for
the slaughter committed among their flocks by the outlandish dogs
of the four English Gentlemen. We drew up our forces in battle
array, to repel the threatened charge of these fierce mountaineers—
ourselves commanding in the centre, Odoherty on the right wing, and
Dr. Scott on the left. On seeing this, the enemy took up a position
in our rear, as if wishing to cut off our retreat to Braemar. Being
averse to the unnecessary effusion of blood, we sent off, with a flag
of truce, (a sprig of heather in a bottle of whisky) a deputation to
the enemy’s camp, consisting of the Shepherd and Walter Ritchie as
Assessors, and John Mackay as Interpreter, to estimate the damage.
On the return of the deputation we found that only one sheep had
been worried, and an old tup severely wounded. The fact seemed
to be clearly brought home to Mr. Price's dog Randal, and to Mr.
Tim's dog Flash—and “as, by the laws of this and every other well- .
governed realm, the crime of murder, more especially when aggra-
vated, &c., is, &c.,” preparations were instantly made for carrying the
law into effect. Indeed, no other expiation but blood for blood
seemed likely to pacify the exasperated Highlanders. Tickler, how-
ever, interceded for the lives of both culprits, maintaining, in favor
of Randal, that he was born and bred a fighting dog, and that, there-
fore, to put him to death for such an offence as this now laid to his
charge, would be to fly in the very face of mature. His defence of
Flash was not equally successful—and indeed it terminated with be.
.* A London pugilist of some motoriety.—M. f Napoleon's favorite surgeon-—M,
PRANIſ Al. 21
seeching the jury to recommend him to mercy. But he took occa-
sion, at the same time, to observe, that, in point of law, Mr. Tims
might recover the price from Haggart. Here Mr. Odoherty ex-
pressed some doubts as to Mr. Tim's success before the Sheriff, main-
taining that a dog-seller is not liable to repayment of the price on a
dog's fondness for mutton being discovered, unless special warrandice
from that particular vice is expressly given. Tickler, on the other
hand, was clearly of opinion, that a fair price infers warrandice of
every kind, besides steadiness to fur, feather, and flint. The full dis-
cussion, however, of this difficult subject was reserved for a future
occasion—nor should we have mentioned it now, had it not been that
both Tickler and Odoherty are such high authorities, they having
written the two best treatises extant on the Game Laws. Our inter-
preter by this time returned to his countrymen, and succeeded in
“smoothing the raven down of their darkness till it smiled.” They
joined our party in an amicable manner, and we all ratified the treaty
of peace over a flowing quech. Indeed, we, whom it is not easy to
humbug, could not help having our suspicions, that the whole story
of the worried sheep was got up for the occasion, and that these bash-
ful Celts preferred, as it were, storming our intrenchments to get at
the grouse and whisky, to that more pacific and more regular, ap-
proach which they were prevented from adopting by their well-known
national modesty. - *
On returning to the tent, we found that Kempferhausen and Buller
of Brazennose had stolen away from the scene of strife, and had been
for some time actually playing a pair of formidable knives and forks
on the grouse and venison, thus taking the start, in no very handsome
manner, of the rest of the party, who had probably as good appetites,
and certainly better manners, than themselves. When we were all
seated again, “Pretty well, Master Kempferhausen,” cried Odoherty,
“for a young gentleman with a toothache.” Meanwhile, John of Sky
kept pacing round the tent, and from his bag-pipes, ornamented with
a hundred streamers, blew such soul-ennobling din, that each man felt
his stomach growing more capacious within him, and the chairman
forthwith ordered a round of mountain-dew. TIow the dinner came
at last to a termination, we never could discover; but the best of
friends must part, and so felt we when the last tureen of grouse dis-
appeared. A slight breeze had by this time providentially sprung
up among the hills; and as not a wind could blow without our tent
standing in its way, and as the lower canvas had been dexterously
furled up by Odoherty, a grateful coolness stole over our saloon, and
nothing seemed wanting to complete our happiness, but a bowl or
good cold rum-punch.*
• Ruſſ, punch, made of one part of rum to six of cold sherbet, is the peculiar drink of Glas-
gow.—
22 CHRISTOPELER IN THE TENT.
We had not been so improvident as to let the baggage-wagon leave
Rdinburgh without a ten-gallon cask of rum (Potts of Glasgow), and
a gross of lemons, individually lodged in paper; and Bailie Jarvie
had been busily employed for some time past (though we were all
too well occupied to miss him) in manufacturing, not a bowl, but a
tub of punch, from the waters of that clear cold spring, which no
sun could affect. “I would like to lay my lugs in’t,” cried the
Shepherd, in his most impassioned manner, when the tub appeared;
and indeed we all crowded round it with as much eagerness as ever
we ourselves have seen parched soldiers in India crowd round
an unexpected tank. Dr. Scott, who is constantly armed at all
points, requested Peter's man John to bring him his surtout, and
slyly asking Mr. Buller of Brazennose if he had ever seen the small
dwarf Caribbee lemon, brought to light, from the dark depth of
these unfathomable pockets, half a dozen ripe marriageable limes,
which we permitted him to squeeze into the tub with all the grace,
dignity, and dexterity of a Glasgow Maker.
Of course we again drank the Prince Regent's health, and all the
toasts usual at public meetings. The Chairman then rose, and in a
speech, of which we regret it is impossible for us at present to give
even a sketch, proposed - x,
THE EARL OF FIFE.
When the pealing thunders of applause had in a few minutes
ceased, Odoherty rose, and with that charming modesty which so
sets off his manifold accomplishments, said, that if not disagreeable to
the company, he would recite a few verses which he had that morn-
ing composed, as he was drinking a cup of whisky and water at a
spring in the mountains behind Mar-Lodge.
POEM.
Recited by Odoherty at a Grand Dinner-Party of the Contributors, in their Tent
near Mar-Lodge, on the 12th of August, 1819.
1
Hail to thy waters! softly-flowing Deel
Hail to their shaded pure transparency 1
Hail to the royal oak and mountain-pine,
With whose reflected pride those waters shine!
2. -
And hail, ye central glories of the plain
All hail, ye towers ancestral of the THANE!
Clear as the Scottish stream whose honor flows,
Broad as the Scottish grove whose bounty grows.
“SONG. To A SALMON.” 23
\
3.
Can he whose eye on many a field of war
Has traced the progress of thy lord, Braemar,
Pass, yet not bless, this grove's majestic sweep,
Where worth can still expand, though valor sleep.
4. "
Souls of primeval heroes I nobly won
Is the repose of your heroic son 1
Sure in those awful hours of patriot strife,
Macbeth's destroyer nerved the soul of Fife.
5.
A softer influence now your spirits send
Into the bosom of “the poor man's friend”—
Keys, stars, and crosses, are but glittering stuff;
The genuine jewel is THE HEART of DUFF.
It is impossible to conceive what effect was given to these lines
(which are certainly better than any of Mr. W. Fitzgerald’s” or Mr.
James Thomson's) by the graceful and spirited elocution of the
Standard-bearer; and Seward of Christchurch, now above all foolish
prejudices, and following the impulses of his own fine classical tº gº."
and feeling, vowed that he had never heard more sweetly-pretty
verses recited in the Sheldon Theatre, Oxford, at a Commemoration,
On Odoherty's health and verses being drunk, that excellent poe:
again rose, and begged leave to call upon his friend, the Ettrick Shep-
herd, for a poem or a song. Says the Shepherd, “Ye hae a' eaten a
gude dinner I’m thinking—but recollect it was me that killed the
sawmon, and I’ll now gie you an elegy, or eulogy, on him—deil tak
me gin I ken the difference. But I canna stan', I maun. receet
sitting.” - -
SONG TO A SALMON.
By the Ettrick Shepherd.
I
Thou bonny fish from the far sea
Whose waves unwearied roll
In primitive immensity
Aye buffeting the pole !
From millions of thy silvery kind
In that wide waste that dwell
Thou only power and path didst find,
To reach this lonely dell.
* This is he of whom Byron wrote—
“Shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl
Iſis creaking couplets in a tavern hall ?”
At the annual dimmer of the Literary Fund, in Londom, he used to mount on one of the tables
and recite verses of his own composing, greatly to the amusement of all who heard him. ln the
." Rejected Addresses.” written by Horace and James Smith, thero is an excellent parody
one of these compositions.—M.
24 - CHRISTOPEIER IN THE TENT.
II.
That wond’rous region was thy own,
That home upon the deep— -
To thee were all the secrets known
In that dark breast that sleep—
Thou, while thy form midst heave and toss
Had still the billows play been,
Perhaps kneweat more than Captain Ross,
Or yet than Captain Sabine.*
III.
Yea, Fish l nor wise alone wast thou,
But happy—what's far better—
Ne'er did thy fins to Barrow bow,
They feared not Croker's letter—
But far and wide their strokes they plied
Smooth thro’ the ocean smoother,
Nor drab-clad Gifford chilled their pride,
Nor Leslie's buff and blue there.}
IV.
And now, my Beauty lºbold and well
Thy pilgrim-course hath been—
For thou, like Wordsworth's Peter Bell,
Hast gazed on Aberdeen I
And all those sweetest banks between,
By Invercauld's broad tree,
The world of beauty hast thou seen
That sleeps upon the Dee.
W.
There oft in silence clear and bright
Thou lay est a shadow still,
In some green nook where with delight
Joined in the mountain-rill,
There, 'mid the water's scarce-heard boom,
Didst thou float, rise, and sink,
While o'er the breathing banks of broom
The wild deer came to drink.
WI.
Vain sparry grot and verdant cave
The stranger to detain—
For thou wast wearied of the wave
And loud voice of the main ; -
And naught thy heart could satisfy
But those clear gravelly rills,
Where once a young and happy fry
Thou danced among the hills l
* Captains Ross and Sabine, engaged at this time in trying to discover the northwest pas-
Eage.—M. * e e -
# Barrow and Croker were then officials in the Adrpiralty at London. Giſſord edited the
Quarterly Review, which has a drab-colored cover, and Leslie was contributing tº the Edin-
burgh, which was clothed in the buff and blue of the Whigs.-M. - -
2
5
TICRLER's SONG.
VII.
The river roaring down the rock,
The fierce and foaming linn,
Essayed to stay thee with the shock,
The dark and dizzy din—
With wilier malice nets did twist
To perfect thy undoing,
But all those dangers hast thou miss'd,
True to thy destined ruin!
VIII.
Sure, no inglorious death is thine !
Death said I? Thou'lt ne'er die,
But swim upon a Poet's line
Down to Eternity,+
While, on our board, we'll all allow,
O 1 odd Fish bright and sheen I
A prime Contributor art thou
To BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE |
It was some hours before we could prevail on any of our friends to
favor us with another poem or song, naturally so much awed were
they all by the splendid efforts of a Hogg and an Odoherty. At last
Tickler, to get rid of unceasing importunities from every side,
chanted to the bagpipe the following song, which excited one feeling
of regret that its length should have been in an inverse ratio to that
of the singer. -
TICKLER’s SONG. To A BROTHER SPORTSMAN AT A DISTANCE.
1. l
Though I rove through the wilds of majestic Braemar,
*Mid the haunts of the buck and the roe,
O 1 oft are my thoughts with my dear friends afar,
'Mid the black-cocks of Minnard that go.
2.
O sweet upon bonny Loch-Fyne be your weather,
As is mine on the banks of the Deel
And light be your steps o'er Kilberry's braw heather,
As on Fife's mine own footsteps can be l
3
May the scent still lie warm on the heath of Argyle,
Thy pointers stand staunch, and unerring thine aim—
As I bring down the birds right and left—why I smile
To think that my friend may be doing the same.
4.
Nor your trophies alone is my fancy revealing
Well I picture the scores that have bled
Long—oh long ere this hour, round the laird's lonely sheiling,
That murderous lair, Caddenlıead .
26 CEIRISTOPEIER IN THE TENT,
5.
Every shot that we fire, as it peals through the air,
I consider a kind of a greeting—
There is naught of forgetfulness, here, John nor there—
Taste your flask to our blythe winter-meeting l
Mr. Seward said he had never sung a single stave in his life, and
called on Buller of Brazennose, to confirm his statement; but he said,
that since the example of simple recitative had been set, he should not
hesitate to favor us with a copy of verses which he had written last
year for Sir Roger Newdyate's prize—subject, the Coliseum. His
verses had not indeed gained the prize, but flattering testimony had
been borne to their merit by his tutor, Mr. Goodenough,” and many
other exquisite judges. *
- TEIF COLISEUM.
Ye circling walls, whose melancholy bound,
In lonely echoes, whisper all around !
Ye towers antique, whose shapeless shadows tell
Of Roman glory the forlorn farewell
Dark o'er the sod with heroes' dust commix’d
Ye frown in monumental silence fix’d l
Ah! could a voice to your faint forms be given
By some supernal sympathy of heaven,
Deep were the descant of departed years,
And marble groans would blend with nature's tears!
The pensive pilgrim bending by the shrine,
Where all is mortal, and yet half divine,
Would mix a sigh as plaintive as your own,
O'er the dim relics of the splendors gone,
Mix with the sobbings of the wind-stirred trees,
Whose roots are in th’ imperial palaces !
See —or does fancy, from her fetters freed,
With airy visions the fond eyeballs feed—
Airy, yet bright, as they which lore sublime
Drew to the enthusiast of the elder time,
In rich redundance of imparted light,
All radiant, rushing on the Augur's sight,
And mocking with their glare the temple's mystic night
Majestic dreams of Rome's primeval day.
Oh list and answer | Oh I &c.
Unfortunately as Mr. Seward warmed in his recitation, he began
to speak with such extreme volubility, that to have taken down his
words accurately, would have required nothing less than the presence
of that PRINCE OF STENogRAPHERS, MR. Jolix Dow HIMSELF. So
that we hope that Mr. Seward will yield to the solicitations of the
Contributors, and give his poem to the world. The next we knocked
down was Dr. Scott, who, in compliance with Bailie Jarvie's earnest
request, favored us with the following ballad of his own composition,
at present the most popular ditty in the west of Scotland -
* Son of Dr. Goodenough, Bishop of Carlisle.—M. tº a º e
f Dow was then, and for many years aſter, the best short-hand writer in Edinburgh.-M.
PUNCH, TITE PEACEMAKER. 27
THE MEMORY OF SANDY FERGUSON.
Written, Composed, and Sung, by JAMEs Scott, Esq., of Millar-street, Glasgow
1. -
If e'er at Peggy Jardine's it was your luck to dwell,
It is odds but ye knew Sandy Ferguson well;
If you opened but your window, you could not choose but see
The lemons in his window shining one, two, three.
---. 2.
Ochon 1 for Sandy Ferguson the lemons still are there—
The jargonelle and pippin and the carvy-seed so fair;
But in spite of figs and oranges, and stalks of sugar candy,
I turn not in—I stagger by—ochon I ochon for Sandy.
- 3.
A wee wee chap upon the bowl, then I pray you to put in,
And to leave a drop of heeltap I’d hold it for a sin;
For though sad it be and silent—yet a bumper it must be
That ye fill unto the kind ghost of Sandy with me.
# 4.
There were prouder on the mart—there were gayer on the mall,
Thére were louder at the What-you-please, and wittier at the Stall—
But I will give my heart's blood, though every drop were brandy,
If either Stall or What-you-please knew such a heart as Sandy I
5.
Then fill ye up your bumpers, friends, and join your hands around,
And drink your measure heartily, that sorrow may be drowned ;
For what avails our sorrow, friends, the best of beings maun die,
And here's a woeful proof of that—the Memory of Sandy 1
There is nothing more worthy of observation and praise in the
character of that precious fluid, punch, than its power of amalgama-
tion. Under its benign influence the most conflicting qualities
become reconciled; and a party of weak, strong, sweet, and sour
people, form, like the “charmed drink” which they imbibe, one safe
and agreeable whole. This cannot be authorizedly predicted of any
other liquid comprehended within the range of our wide experience.
We had seen Thracian quarrels around all sorts of “Pocula,” except
punch-bowls; but there seems to be a divine air breathed from the
surface of a circle of china, or even of stone or wood, when a wave-
less well of punch sleeps within, that soothes every ruder feeling into
peace, and awakens in the soul all the finer emotions of sensibility
and friendship. We are satisfied, that if punch were the umi-
versal tipple of Europe, there would be no more war—especially
if all the Continental States were to employ a judicious intermixture
of Lime juice. In our Tent had been assembled for several hours
men of different countries, education, and pursuits; and who shall
28 - CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
pretend to know all the infinite varieties of principle and opinion
that must have been collected within that marrow circumference 2
Yet all was perfect harmony—the Shepherd sat down with the
Dentist—and the Cockney may be said to have played in the Editor’s
den. -
Politics had been drowned in punch; and the following list of
toasts, which were all received with boundless acclamations during
the evening, will show that we looked only to SPORTING CHARACTERs,
“And left all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.”
Mr. H. Mackenzie, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Dr. Morris.
Mr. Walter Scott, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Ettrick Shepherd.
Mr. Francis Jeffrey, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Wastle.
Duke of Wellington,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Odoherty.
Mr. James Machel,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Mullion.
Mr. Croker,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by the Editor.
Mr. Canning,. . . . . . . tº s e. e. e is º is e º ºs e e º 'º by Mr. Seward.
IMr. John Hamilton, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Tickler.
Collector M'Nair,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Jarvie.
Mr. Coke of Norfolk, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Buller.
Mr. Wordsworth, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Kempferbausen.
Sir Dan. Donnelly,” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mr. Tims.
Mr. Thomas Belcher, . . . . . . . . . . . . ... by Mr. Price.
We should think very meanly of ourselves were we to attempt to
impose on public credulity, by asserting that we have a perfectly
distinct recollection of the latter part of the evening. We do, how-
ever, clearly remember that Kempferhausen who had most heroically
endured a gnawing tooth-ache for many hours, finally submitted his
jaw to the algebraical hand of Dr. Scott, who was not long of
extracting the square root—and that the ingenious German having
soon after incautiously gone into the open air to admire the moon,
returned to his seat with one cheek whose magnitude was well
entitled to hold the other in derision, and whose colors were, indeed,
vruly prismatical. Such a face has rarely been seen—and we may
say to Dr. Scott of his patient, in the words of his great namesake,
“Alas! the mother that him bore
Had scarcely known her child.”
Of this subject Dr. Morris made on the spot a most spirited
* “Immediately after his victory over Oliver, Donelly set off in a chariot and four to Brighton,
where he was knighted by a Prince Regent. He is therefore, now, Sir Daniel Donelly.”–Irish
Paper. Donelly was a strong, hard-fisted Irishman, a carpenter by trade, who had fought with
Oliver, an English pugilist, in July, 1819, and beaten him. On returning to Dublin, Donelly
opened a public-house, and used to relate, to gaping and admiring auditors, how the Prince
Regent had sent for him, after the fight, and knighted him. A couple of years’ hard drinking
finished him, and he died in February, 1820,-his immediate cause of illness being thirty-seven
tumblers of punch taken im one sitting . . Magimm, in Blackwood for May. 1820, gave a “Luctus
§. . *: of Sir Dam. Donelly,” in which learning and wit were largely employed and well
, Lendag.—ly. - - **
THE FI NISII. --- 29
sketch, which he intends to finish in oil, and present to us, that when
Kempferhausen returns to the Continent, we, his Scottish friends, may
still retain the image of one of our most enthusiastic contributors.
We have likewise a confused but delightful remembrance of the
whole party assembled at the Tent door, (while the domestics were
removing the furniture and preparing beds) in solemn contemplation
of the starry heavens. Never before did we so feel the genius of
Burns as when looking at our old friend the moon and her horns.
“Whether she had three or four,
We could na tell.”
The Shepherd most vehemently asserted that he saw the comet—
and began spouting some obscure and opaque verses to her as
extemporaneous, which were, however, instantly detected by the
tenacious memory of Tickler to have been written in 1811, when the
pastoral bard was flirting with the long tail of the celestial beauty of
that year. It was in vain for him to appeal to a late number of
Constable's Magazine, which no mortal had seen, and which the
Shepherd himself was forced to acknowledge had a sad trick of
trying” . --- • - * **
“To mak auld claes
Appear amaist as well as new l’
After this, there surely must have been a match at hop-step-and-
jump between Tickler and Dr. Scott—unless, indeed, it were on our
part all a dream. Yet we cannot get rid of the impression on our
minds, that we saw the latter making most surprising bounds among
the heather, and coming down with “a thud” posterior to each essay
—while the former cleared the ground like one of those gigantic
shadowy figures that are seen stalking across the hills at sunset.
There was also a very anxious search among the heather for Peter's
man John, and Wastle's man Thomas, who were nowhere to be
found—and though the whole party, at one time, agreed that they
heard a snore from a jungle of brackens, we tried in vain to start the
game. We afterwards discovered that the sound must have pro-
ceeded from one of the numerous Highlanders stretched in their
plaids in each direction around the Tent; for our two gentlemen
had, under the auspices of the Thane's gillies, paid a nocturmal visit
to a Still at work no great way off, from which it was not till a
decent hour after sunrise that they groped their way back to the
encampment. The last thing we recollect before going to bed, was
Odoherty's selling to Mr. Tims, for £45, his gun, which we have
good reason to know he had purchased at the General Agency Office,
* The letter from Hogg, a copy of which is given in the present edition, will show that even
up to the last year of his life, he was addicted to this “sad trick.”—M.
30 CHRISTOPEIER IN THE TENT,
JEdinburgh, for £4, 4S, ; but we must also add, to the credit of the
Adjutant, that with his accustomed generosity he returned £5 of the
purchase-money. A general anxiety also prevailed among the party,
before bundling in, to send presents of birds to some of our chief
absent Contributors; but it appeared that we had, “gentle and
simple,” devoured upwards of sixty brace, and none but the
Editor's pack remained, which was judicially retained for the relish at
breakfast. -
We have no room, now, to describe our feelings on awaking in the
morning. For some minutes we could not form even the most
distant conjecture where or among whom we were ; but as the mist
gradually rose up from our brain, and freed our memory from obfus-
cation, there came upon us a pleasant dawning of the truth ; and on
beholding the bold nose and piercing eyes of Tickler looking out
from below an old worsted stocking tastefully wreathed into a might-
cap, with a long tail Swaggering behind—and the fine Spanish face
of the Standard-bearer enjoying a magnificent yawn under a veteran
foraging-cap—we were at once let in to a perfect knowledge of our
situation, and we all then sprung from our heather-bed together, just.
as Jolm of Sky blew up his pipes to
“Hey! Johnnie Coup, are ye waking yet?
Or are your drums a-beating yet?
If ye were waking, I would wait
To gang to the Grouse i' the morning”
Čiuristopher it the gºt ut.
No. II.-SEPTEMBER, 1819.
WE have no wish to inform the public of all the difficulties we had
to encounter in bringing out the last Number of our valuable Miscel-
lany.* It was on the evening of the 16th of August that we arrived
in Edinburgh from our Tent; and as we had to ship off to London
on the 20th, the hurry-skurry and the helter-skelter at the Printing-
Office may be more easily imagined than described. Immediately
on stepping out of the Aberdeen coach, we came bob against Mr.
Blackwood, who exclaimed, “My gracious ! Mr. Editor, this is a fine
prank you have been playing us all ! The cry for copy is most
terrible—dog on it . . . . But goodness be praised, here you
are—come away up to Ambrose’s.” ...?
We soon found ourselves sitting before a sirloin of beef and a pot
of porter; and Mr. Ambrose, who saw there was something in the
wind more than usual, brought in the Steel Pen, our best japan ink,
and a quire of wire-wove. Having travelled much in coaches during
the early part of our life, we even now ate our dinner as in fear of
the horn; so that in less than quarter of an hour the sirloin was
removed with a deep gash on his side, and the empty porter pot rose
from the table at a touch. We scarcely took time to wipe our
mouths, and, fell to, “totis viribus,” like a giant refreshed, to the
“Twelfth of August,” an article which we finished at a sitting, and
which we are happy to find has given very great and general satisfac.
tion. Ebony, meanwhile, lost not a moment in running down to the
Printing-Office with a packet we had brought from the Tent—and on
his return, by way of showing his satisfaction, he whispered mine
host to place near our right hand a small bowl of cold punch, which
a Glasgow gentleman in the adjacent parlor had been kind enough to
manufacture; and we felt it to be no less our duty to ourselves than
*The whole of Blackwood for September, 1819, was devoted to this article relating the
sayings and doings of North and his companions in the Tent. There evidently was a number
of miscellaneous articles already in type, and, with some ingenuity, these were worked into
the narrative, occasionally, however, without much regard to consistency. The articles so
introduced occupied about half of the September mumber.—M. -
f This was in the olden days of mail and stage-coach travelling, before railways were. It
may be here incidentally noticed that railway travelling, as we have it now, did not commence
in England, until the 15th September, 1830, when the Liverpool and Manchester railway was
opened, with great state.--M.
32 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
to Messrs. Blackwood and Ambrose, to take a bumper at the close
of every paragraph, which may possibly account for their being
somewhat shorter than is usual in our full, free, and flowing style of
composition. - -
Por three days—and we may almost add nights, there was no
occasion to say to us “saepe vertas stylum,” for we boldly dashed at .
every thing, from Don Juan to Slack, the Pugilist; and flew in a
moment from the Cape-of-Good-Hope to the Pyramids of Egypt.”
“My gracious, your versatility is most fearsome,” murmured our
astonished publisher: “It will be one of our best Numbers after
all.” The truth is, that we felt nettled by the remark of Dr. Morris,
in his “Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,” that we only laid plans for
others to execute,f and were determined to show the physician and
all the rest of the world,—first, that we are no sinecurists, and,
secondly, that our seat is not at a Board under Government.
We are not personally known at the Printing-Office, so we hob-
bled down one midnight along with Ebonyi to witness the opera-
tions. What motion of many twinkling hands among compositors
What display of brawny arms among pressmen What a stir of
rinter's-devils | “The Editor’s MS. is growing worse and worse
22 ſº tº e •. 5.
every month,” said a long sallow-faced stripling, with a page of the
Twelfth of August close to his eyes, as if he were going to apply a
bandage—“What makes the young lads ay sae sair on Hairy
Brougham, I wonder,” quoth another—“Here's another slap at
Macvey,” said a third, “that's really too bad.” “I would not
grudge sitting up all night at another Canto of the Mad Banker of
Amsterdam,” added a fourth—but not to be tedious, we were
pleased to observe, that on the whole a spirit of good humor and
alacrity pervaded the Office, and above all, that that vile Jacobinical
spirit, unfortunately but too prevalent among persons of their profes
sion, had given way beneath the monthly influence of our principles;
and that the inflammatory and seditious lucubrations of the Yellow
~ Dwarf, Examiner; Scotsman, and other bawling demagogues, the
* It was even so. Besides the articles already mentioned (page 10), the August number
had papers on tho opening Cantos of Don Juam, Emigration to the Cape of Good-Hope, the
Pyramid of Caphremes. (opened by Belzoni, in 1818, and found to contain the bones of a cow or
bull,) and the conquest, in the prize-ring, of Broughton by Slack, the butcher.--M.
t in Peter's Letters (Vol. ii. p. 225.) we find it thus written :-" It is not known who the
JEditor is—I do not see how that secret can ever be divulged, as things now stand—but my friend
Wastle tells ine that he is an obscure man, alrmost continually confined to his apartments by
rheumatism, whose labors extend to little more than correcting proof-sheets, and drawing up
plans, which are mostly executed by other people.”—M. -
# “And I looked, and behold a man clothed in plain apparel stood in the door of his house :
and I saw his name, and the number of his marne ; and his name was as it had been the colur
of Ebony, and his number was the number of a maiden, when the days of the year of her
virginity have expired.”—Chaldee Manuscript, Chap. I., v. 3. In this Oriental prolixity was
mention made of Mr. Blackwood. No. 17 Princes-street, Edinburgh.-M.
| A bitter attack, “On a late Attempt to White-wash Mr. Brougham” was one of the articles
in Blackwood for August, 1819. There was sarcastic mention, in another paper, on Maxvey
Napier's dissertation on Lord Bacom.—M.
§ The Yellow Dwarf was a violent veekly journal, published in London by an ultra-Radical,
named Wooler. At the same time, T he Examiner was conducted by Leigh Hunt.—M.
CARMEN DIABOILICUM. 33
fruits of whose doctrines are now being reaped by the deluded
people of the north of England, were spoken of with indignation and
disgust. • . . .
We had slyly ordered a few gallons of punch to be brought down
to the office, to give a fillup to the worthy workmen at the close of
their labors, and an excellent article might be written—indeed shall
be—entitled, “The Humors of a Printing-Office;” but for the pre-
sent, our readers must rest satisfied with the following song, which
we understand was written by a devil not exceeding twelve years,
an instance of precocious genius unrivalled in the history of Pan-
demonium.
CARMEN DIABOLICUM.
Sung in OLIVER & Boyd's Printing-Office,” on the Midnight between the 19th ana
- 20th of August, 1819.
SOLO, BY BOWZY BEELZEBUB.
1.
WHEN the vessel she is ready, all her rigging right and steady,
And the fine folks arranged on the shore,
Then they shove her from the dock with a thunder of a shock,
And the ord'nance salutes with a roar;
But before the hausers slip to give sea-room to the ship,
To propitiate the winds, there is thrown
A flask of generous red, all along the bowsprit shed—
Then God bless her, they cry, and she's gone—
Grand Chorus of Devils.
God bless her—God bless her—she's gone—
With a yo-hee-vo.
2.
SoLo, BY TIPSY THAMMUZ.
Thus when our latest sheet, to make Ebony complete,
Is revised, and thrown off, and stitched in,
And the Editor-so staunch is preparing for his launch,
Then he plunges his hand in the Bin.
“Now let every jolly soul lay his ears in the punch bowl,
“And be ready,” he cries, with a shout—
“That our enemies may know, when they hear our yo-hee-vo
We'll play hellf with them all when we're out.”
Grand Chorus of Devils.
“We'll play hell, we'll play hell, when we're out—
With a yo-hee-vo!”
* At this time Blackwood was printed by Oliver & Boyd. In 1820, it was tº ansherred to
James Ballanty me’s Office, where it remained for more than thirty years.--M. -
i Pope says, of a fashionable preacher, -
“And never mentioms Hell 'fore ears polite.”
This, we think, is excellent advice, bºth to the Clergy and the Laity, even in less refined
society: but the reader will bear in mind that this Chorus was written by a devil, and sung by
a batch of devils. These local allusions are, therefore, quite in place, and are sanctioned also be
the authority of Milton.—C. N.
WOL. I.-5
34 CEIRISTOPEDER IN THE TEN'I.
Well, out came the Magazine, as usual, on the 20th, when, according
to Hogg's celebrated sonnet, -
“One breathless hush expectant reigns from shore to shore.”
But such is the strong inconsistency of all human desires, that no
sooner was the load off our shoulders, than we almost wished it on
again, and began to wonder what we should do with ourselves for the
next fortnight. It was not mere ennui that beset us, for (since the
story will out, it is best we ourselves tell it) during our absence we
had suffered a domestic affliction which time may alleviate, but never
car, wholly cure. For home had now no charms for us—that loſty
home once so still and pleasant, fourteen flats nearer heaven than the
grovelling ground-floors of ordinary men—and commanding a mag-
nificent view, not only of the whole New Town of Edinburgh, but
of the kingdom of Fife in front, to the west far as the towers of
Snowdon, and to the east the sail-studded expanse of the noble Frith,
and the rich corn-fields of Lothian,
“The empire of Edinburgh, to the farthest Bass.”
Our housekeeper* had eloped with an English Bagman, who had meſ,
the homest woman as she was coming home from market with a cou-
ple of herrings in a kail-blade, and had been but too successful in
filling her imagination with those romantic notions of love and happi-
ness which that eloquent and accomplished class of men know so well
to instil into the too susceptible heart. The following letter was
lying on the little tri-clawed table at which we had so often drunk
tea together, and occasionally, perhaps, “sterner stuff.”—and ours,
you may be assured, was not a soul to peruse it without tears.
“BEST AND KINDEST OF MASTERS-Several nights before you read this, my fate
will have been indissolubly united with that of Mr. Perkins. I am no love-sick
girl, sir, of eighteen—and though I have known Mr. Perkins only a few days, yet
I have not entered rashly into this solemn league and covenant. I have observed
in him a truly devout apd serious spirit, and have no doubt that he will turn out
so as to satisfy all my most anxious desires. Our marriage is a marriage of souls
—and as our religious principles are to a tittle the same, I trust that, unworthy
as we are, some portion of sublunary happiness may be vouchsafed to us. Mr.
Perkins, it is true, is some years younger than myself, being about thirty-five, but
he looks considerably older than that, and has a sobriety and discretion far beyond
his years. I know well that there will be much evil-speaking throughout Scot-
* Of this very extraordinary woman we shall give a short memoir in an early Number, ac-
- companied with specimens of her compositions, both in prose and verse. Her matural talents
were great, and her literary attainments by no means contemptible. She was lost to us in the
57th year of her age, a dangerous time of life to a female of cultivated mind, and rather too
strict ideas on the subject of religion.—C. N. [An unfulfilled promise.—M.]
f It is an ascertained fact, that although a young man rarely, with his own free will, mar-
ries an old woman, be she spinster or widow : persons of the female sex are mever found to havo
an antipathy to a marriage with men very much their juniors in age. The fortitude and resig-
mation with which an old maid of forty submits to a matrimonial alliance with a bachelºr
or widower of twenty-five, are very exemplary.—M.
GRIZZY TURNBULL's ELOPEMENT. 35
land about this matter-and that the public, censorious on pcople far my supe-
riors in all things, will not spare poor Grizzy Turnbull—but my heart knoweth
its own purity, and the idle gossip of an idle world will soon die away.
“And now, my ever dear master, let me confide to you a secret which I have
treasured up in my heart these last twenty years—years, alas I of misery and of
happiness, never again to return. SINCE THE FIRST NIGHT I SLEPT BENEATH YOUR
Roof I HAVE LOVED, MADLY LOVED YOU 1 yes, the confession is made on paper at
last—written over and over again, crossed and recrossed in every possible way,
as it long has been, by the trembling hand of passion on my heart of hearts O !
my sweet master (surely that word may be allowed to me in our parting hour),
for twenty years, come the Martinmasterm, have I doted upon theel yes! I have
watched the progress of thy rheumatism with feelings which even thine own
matchless pen would fail to analyze l Lord Byron himself could not paint the
conflict of passions that turmoiled within my bosom, when, under the guidance of
that angel of a man, Dr. Balfour, I rubbed that dear rheumatic leg on the Sofa
O ! our little tea-drinkings | . . . . . . but in the sweet words of Campbell,
“Be hushed, my dark spirit, for wisdom condemns,
When the faint and the feeble deplore,
De firm as a rock of the ocean, that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore l
Through the scowl of mischance, and the smile of disdain,
Let thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate,
YEA, EVEN TuF NAME I HAVE worsRIPPED IN VAIN,
Shall awake not a throb of remembrance again ;
To bear is to conquer our fate l l l
“Mr. Perkins must now be all in all to me—but though I will cherish him in
my bosom, no code of laws, either human or divine, passes sentence of oblivion on
vanished hours of innocent enjoyment—and be assured, that if I be ever blessed
with a family, my second son (for I must call the first after its grandfather) shall
bear the christian and surname of my too, too dear master. But away with de-
lightful dreams, never, perhaps, to be realized l and with such feelings as a new-
born infant might avow, I subscribe myself, yours as fit only, -
“GRACE PERRINs.
- “14th of August,
“Written in the dear little blue parlor.”
Had this unexpected blow fallen upon us during the bustle of win-
ter, we could have borne it. But at this solitary season, there was
nothing to lighten that load of grief—in the words of Michael An-
gelo, ** -
El importune et grave selma,
that absolutely bowed us down to the earth, a grief the more acute,
from the sad conviction, that our inestimable Housekeeper had been
partly driven into Mrs. Perkins, by a hopeless and therefore undi
vulged passion for the Editor of this Magazine. To kill thought and
time, we lay in bed till eleven; then ate some muffins from M’Ewan's,
“which did coldly furnish up our breakfast-table,” and hobbled down
the Mound, witless where to go. All was silence and desolation.
Not a soul going into the panorama of Algiers; and the long line of
36 CEIRISTOPIIER IN THE TENT.
Prince's Street, from St. John's chapel to the Prince Regent Bridge,”
unbroken, save perhaps by some coach wheeling along its pile of
dust-covered outsides. At the corner of some cross street sat some
hopeless fruiterer, with her basket of gooseberries, “alas ! all too
ripe;” while perhaps some unlucky school-boy, who was drawling his
dull holidays in town, hesitatingly eyed the small red hairy circlets,
and had the resolution to pass by with his halfpenny in his hand.
The linen-blinds shaded the shop-windows, in winter and spring so
gorgeously displayed, and not one gay and buzzing insect was seen
to enter or issue from the deserted hive. The Middle Shop itself,
two little months ago, before our shoes were old in which we went to
the moors,
“So full of laughing faces and bright eyes,”
stood empty and silent, save when some summer-stranger from the
South came in to ask for a copy of the last Number of Blackwood's
Magazine or of Peter's Letters, or when we ourselves hobbled in, and
received an unwitnessed greeting from our publisher, whom the well
known sound of our foot had brought forth with a pen behind his ear,
from the Sanctum Sanctorum. Even in Ambrose's the sound of the
grinders was low. The ordinary in Barclay's tavern, at which we
have seen thirty pair of knives and forks at play, did well if it exhib
ited half-a-dozen mouths; and the matchless weekly suppers of the
Dilettanti at Young's (to which we are sometimes admitted), had, in
the heat of the weather, melted quite away. True, the Theatre was
open, but it was likewise empty; and O’Neill, Farren, Abbott, and
Jones, sighed, wept, doted, laughed, and whisked about in vain.
Would you go down to the sea-side 2 There some solitary bathing
machine voided its nudity into the waves, or some parsimonious
bachelor sat wiping his hairy length on a stone; while, perchance,
one of the London packets sailed briskly from the pier, and seemed
soon to carry away into the dim distance the scanty remains of the
population of Edinburgh.
In this state of mind, it would have been folly to remain in town;
so we resolved once more to join the Tent, which had now taken root
in the Highlands; and while trying to take courage to buy a ticket
in the Perth Breakneck, we strolled into our favorite snuff and to-
bacco shop, and filled our cannister with Princes' mixture and segars.
There, while admiring the beautiful arrangements of pipes, boxes,
&c., and regarding with a friendly affection the light, airy, and grace-
ful figure of the fair Miss Fanny Forman, ; we mentally indited the
following lines:— - -
* Localities in Edinburgh .—M. f An appropriate mame for a very fast-going stage-coach:—M.
t In a previous number of Maga, a son net by Mr. Gillies had celebrated the charms of Miss
Forman, who kept a tobacconist’s shop in Prince's-street, Edinburgh.-M.
JOHN BALLANTYNE. 37
LINES To MISS FANNY FORMAN, ON BIDDING HER FAREWELL.
By the Veiled EDITOR of Blackwood's Magazine.
I
OH ! the grass it springs green on the Street of the gay,
And the mall 'tis a desolate sight:
And the beaux and the belles they are all far away,
And the city's a wilderness quite.
And I too will wander—at dawn of the day
I will leave the dull city behind;
I will tread the free hills, and my spirits shall play,
As of old, in the spring of the wind.
II.
Yet, a lowly voice whispers, that, not as of old,
Shall to me the glad spirit be given:
Tho' the lakes beaming broad in their glens I behold,
And the hills soaring blue in the heaven:
That the kind hand of Nature in vain shall unfold
All her banner of innocent glee—
For the depths of my soul in despondence are rolled,
And her mirth has no music for me.
III.
Yes, o'er valley and mountain, where'er I may go,
That voice whispers sadly and true, -
I shall bear, lovely Fanny my burden of woe—
Cruel maid—my remembrance of you!
As some cloud whose dim fleeces of envious snow,
The rays of the evening-star cover,
Thy memory still a soft dimness shall throw,
O'er the languishing breast of thy lover.
While we were casting about in this way whom should we see
turning the corner of Hanover-street in an elegant dennet, and at a
noble trot, but our excellent friend Mr. John Ballantyne 7% We
thought he had still been on the Continent, and have seldom been
more gratified than by the unexpected apparition. There he was, as
usual, arrayed in the very pink of knowingness—grey frock and
pebble buttons, Buckskins, top-boots, &c.—the whip—for Old
* John Ballantyme was next brother to James, Scott’s printer and confidential friend, and like
him, was in the secret of the Waverley Novels. . In 1809, he was started by Scott and his brother,
it, the publishing house of “John Ballantyne & Company,” at Edinburgh, in opposition to
Constable. One of his first publications was Scott's Lady of the Lake. After the success of
Waverley, he published a wretched novel, “The Widow’s Lodgings.” The publishing business
did not succeed, and the firm was dissolved. John Ballantyme then became an auctioneer, a
business for which he was well qualified. In 1817. Scott contributed several minor poems to a
periodical of his called “The Sale Room.” Ballantyne died June, 1821, aged 45. Scott attend-
ed his funeral, and said, “I feel as if there would be less sunshine for me from this day forth.”
Lockhart says, “He was a quick, active, intrepid little fellow ; and in society so very lively and
amusing, so full of ſum and merriment; such a theroughly light-hearted droll, all over quaint-
mess and humorous mimicry ; and moreover, such a keem and skilful devotee to all manner of
field-sports, from fox-hunting to badger-bating inclusive, that it was no wonder he should have
made a favorable impression on Scott.” And again, “Of his style of story-telling it is sufficient
to say that this late Charles Mathews’s “Old Scotch Lady,’ was but an imperfect copy of the
original, which the great imitator first heard it my presence from his lips.”—M. -
38 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
Mortality needs no whip—dangling from the horn behind—and that
fine young grew, Dominie Sampson, capering round about him in
the madness of his hilarity.” Whenever we met last spring we used
to have at least a half-hour's doleful chat on the progress and symp-
toms of our respective rheumatisms—but Ballantyne now cut that
topic short in a twinkling, assuring us he had got rid of the plague
entirely—and, indeed, nobody could look in his merry face without
seeing that it was so. We never croak to people that are in sound
health—and, therefore, not likely to enter into the spirit of our
miseries; so, affecting an air of perfect vigor, we began to talk, in
the most pompous manner, about our late exploits in the moors,
regretting, at the same time, that Ballantyne had not come home in
time to make one of our party on the 12th of August. “We are
just off again for Braemar,” said we. “The devil you are,” said
John, “I don’t much care to go with you if you'll take me.” “B.
all means, you delight us,” said we. “Well,” cried he, “what
signifies bothering, come along, I'll just call at Trinity? for half a
dozen clean shirts and neckcloths, and let's be off.” “Done,” said we,
mounting to the lower cushion, “only just drive us over the way and
pick up our portmanteau.” No sooner said than done. In less than
an hour we found ourselves, with all the cargo on board, Scudding
away at twelve knots an hour on the Queens-ferry road.
During the whole journey to our Tent, we were kept in a state of
unflagging enjoyment by the conversation of our companion. Who,
indeed, could be dull in immediate juxta-position with so delightful a
compound of wit and warm-heartedness'. We have heard a thou-
sand story-tellers, but we do not remember among the whole of them
more than one single individual, who can sustain the briefest com-
parison with our exquisite bibliopole. Even were he to be as silent
as the tomb of the Capulets, the beaming eloquence of that counte-
nance alone would be enough to diffuse a spirit of gentle jovialty
over all who might come into his presence. We do not think Allan
has quite done justice to Mr. Ballantyne's face, in his celebrated
master-piece, “Hogg's IIouse-heating.” He has caught, indeed, the
quaint, sly, archness of the grin, and the light, quick, irresistible
glance of the eyes; but he has omitted entirely that fine cordial suf.
fusion of glad, kind, honest, manly mirth, which lends the truest
charm to the whole physiognomy, because it reveals the essential
* Lockhart says, “IIis horses were all called after heroes in Scott's poorms or movels; and at
this time he usually rode up to his auction on a tall milk-white humter, yelept Old Mortality,
attended by a leash or two of greyhounds,--Die Vernon, Jenny Dennison, &c., by namé.-M.
f In John Ballantyne's latter days, he was fitting up a mansion mear Kelso, which he called
Walton lſall, but in 1819, he inhabited Harmony Hall, by Trinity, near the Prith of Forth.
“Here,” says Iockhart, “ Braham quavered, and here Liston drolled his best,--here Johnstone,
and Murray, and Yates, mixed jest and stave-here Kean revelled and rioted,—and here did the
Rorman Memble often play the Greek from sunset to dawn. Not did the popular cantatrict or
danseuse of the time disdaim to freshen her roses, aſter a laborious week, amidst these Puplian
bowers of Flarmony Hall.--M.
*
THEODORE HOOK. 39
elements of the character, whose index that most original physiog.
nomy is. But the voice is the jewel—who shall ever describe its
wonders ? Passing at will through every note of seriousness and
passion, down into the most dry, husky, vibrations of gruffness, or
the most sharp feeble chirpings of old woman's querulousness,
according to the minutest specialties of the character introduced for
the moment upon the stage of that perpetual Aristophanic comedy;
his conversation—why, Bannister, Mathews, Liston, Yates, Russel—
none of them all is like John Ballantyne, when that eye of his has
fairly caught its inspiration from the sparkle of his glass.”
Even here in our gig where we had neither bottle nor glass, a few
puffs of one of Miss Forman's segars, as Odoherty describes them,
The true Havana smooth, and moist, and brown,
were enough to kindle and rekindle as much mirth as was consistent
with the safety of the vehicle that contained us. Among other things
he told us a great many capital stories about his late tour to the
Netherlands, expressing, as he went on, in every particular of look,
voice, and gesture, the very corporal presence and essence of his
friends the Iſogam-mogans. Theodore Hook*—Provost Creech—
and Joseph Gillon, each had his niche in this Peristrephic Panorama
of remembered merriment, and of each he told us innumerable new
anecdotes—new to us at least—which we would give not a little to
be able to reproduce for the edification of our readèrs; but alas ! it
would require a much bolder man than we are to attempt the hazard-
ous experiment of serving up such dainties in a hash. One of Joseph
Gillon's good things, however, we shall venture on, because the wit
of it is of that kind which disdains to be improved by passing through
the lips of any man, even of Ballantyne. Joseph happened to be in
a certain pretty numerous party at Edinburgh (would he had never
* High as this eulogy is, contemporary report fully confirms it. Scott used to call John
Ballantyne by the name of Rigdum Funmidos, while to his brother James, who was pompous
and solemn, he gave the familiar title of Aldiboronte phoscophormio.—M.
f Theodore Edward Hook, whose dramas and novels have been very popular, and show
lively wit and much knowledge of the world, was born in 1788, and produced his first play
before he was 17. The work of fiction called “Sayings and Doings,” of which three series
were published, rank among his best works—but others were popular also, such as Jack Brag,
Gilbert Gurney (in which he sketched some of his own adventures), literally filled with
fun. He was editor of the John Bull, a London newspaper, commemoed in order to aid the
Tory party, by keem and humorous attacks . Queen Caroline, (wife of George IV.) in
1820–21. In that journal appeared the celebrated Letters of Mrs. Ramsbottom, in which, follow-
ing the example of Smollet's Winifred Jenkins, bad spelling was managed so as to excite the
merriment usually elicited by humorous writing. Mr. Thackeray has extended, perhaps not im-
proved, this description of composition. As an improvisatore, Hook had no equal in England
in his time. He died in August, 1841,–Creech was a bookseller in Edinburgh, who, in the
early part of the present century was the Prince of the Trade. Well educated (for he had been
intended for the church), he was the life of good society, a capital story-teller, a lively com-
panion, and even a composer of jeux d'esprit for the newspapers. He attained the high position
of Lord Provost of Edinburgh, but the publication of the Edinburgh Review, by Constable,
may be said to have virtually dethromed him.—Joseph Gillon was a W. S. (writer of the Signet),
and I believe, eventually became one of the door-keepers in the House of Lords, in London.-M
40 CEIRISTOPEIER IN TEIE TENT.
left us!) at the time when the Northern Whigs were everywhere
exerting their lungs in the first of those systematic blasts which have
since swelled the inflammable balloon of Brougham to that immode-
rate bulk. “Joseph,” whispered a modest Tory in company, “you
have seen this young fellow—what is your real opinion of him 7 Do
gyou think the man will rise, Joseph 3’ “Aye,” quoth Joseph, “I’ll be
bound he will—at a general rising.” One day Gillon was very
unwell (it was in July), and Mr. Ballantyne went to visit him. He
found him on a couch in his writing chamber, surrounded by all his
clerks and apprentices; “What, Gillon,” said he, “this place is
enough to kill ye, man, it is as hot as an oven;” “and what for no,
man?” cried Joseph, “it’s the place whar I mak my bread, man.”
We beg pardon for these stories; but really Joseph was a true wit.
Why does he not try his hand at a contribution now and then But
perhaps the worthy “door-keeper in the Lord's house” would have a
text against us were we to make the application. .
A great deal of his talk turned also (guis dubitaverit 3) on Paris.
He seems, in deed and in truth, to have done what Miladi Morgan was
said to have done,—he has seen Paris from the garret to the saloon,
from the Palais Royal to the Catacombs. We had great pleasure
in hearing his account of all the strange doings and goings on of that
remarkable city—a city in which we ourselves have spent many
happy—alas! very happy days and nights. While the names of the
modern beaux and belles of that Regal City fell glibly from the lips
of the bibliopole, faint and shadowy visions of the beaux and belles
of her former days rose in dim and fleet succession before our too
faithful eye of imagination. Kind, jovial, elegant Duc de la Cirela-
bouche, friend of our youth—friend and patron 1—alas ! where be
now thy petits soupers Beautiful, radiant, luxurious Madame la
Biche || but wherefore renew yet again these soul-piercing retro-
spections? While we were in the midst of our melancholy abstrac.
tion, our friend began chanting, in his own light, elastic, bounding
style, that excellent French song,
En Angleterre a ce qu'on dit
C'est une chose des plus rares
Mourir dans son lit—
Ah! ces Anglais barbares 1
Siune dame est cruelle
Et ne laisserien d'espoir—
Son adjeu a la belle—
Est par corde ou razoir, &c. &c.
“By the way, Monsieur Jean,” said we, “did you take any lessons
* This is one of the most venerable and motorious of the late Mr. Joseph Miller's Jokes.—M.
t John Ballantyne frequently visited the Continent to purchase, or take consignments of
articles of virtu, &c., for his very celebrated auctions in Hanover-street, Edinburgh.-M.
f These titles appear suspicious. Cere-la-bott cho might be interpreted wax-inouth, and LG
Biche reminds us of a dog's sister.—M.
THE sworD EXERCISE. 41
in fencing when you were in Paris 7” To be sure,” said he, “I spent
three or four hours every morning in the Salle des armes, and I
believe I could now take my inches even at contre point against any
swordsman in Scotland.” “Not so fast, friend,” said we, “not quite
so fast, neither. Have you measured foils yet with Francalanza!”
“No, faith,” quoth he ; “but I have seen his advertisement, and
shall certainly call upon him the very day I return to Auld Reekie.”
“Have your doublet well lined then, Giovanni,” we returned, “and
see that your mask sits close about your ears, and expect, with all
your precautions, to come back with the marks of his button between
every pair of your ribs; for we have fenced with the Rolands, the
Angelos, and most of the amateurs in the three kingdoms—but
Heaven forbid we should ever venture a second trial with this
Italian l’” “An Italian is he?” cries Ballantyne; “I think I have
heard his name mentioned in Paris.” “Very probably,” said we,
“he is well known there—he fenced a great many years ago with
Augereau, who said he had the finest turn of a wrist, and, without
exception, the most irresistible pair of eyes he had ever met with.”
“The marshal,” quoth John, “must be admitted to be an excellent
iudge; he is allowed to be the first homme-d'epeć in all France, old
as he is.” “Our own Prince Regent,” we continued, “is not a bad
judge neither; and we have reason to know that he has seen
Francalanza fence, and thinks at least as highly of him as Marshal
Augereau.} We ourselves have heard both Leslie and Underwood,
the two finest amateur swordsmen in these islands, bear the most
unequivocal testimony to his merits; we used to meet with them.
often at his rooms in Cateaton-street. IIe is a glorious fellow—and
let us tell you, Mr. Ballantyne, his fingers manage the guitar just as
well as they do the rapier. He sings and plays much in the same
charming style with that prince of good fellows and artists, John
Schetky.” “Why, he will be quite an acquisition,” cried Ballan-
tyne; “we must get him into the Dilettanti with all speed.” “We
wish to heavens you would get ourselves into the Dilettanti, Mr.
John,” returned we ; “we have spoken of it a thousand times, but
you’ll never condescend to propose us when a ballot comes about.”
* Francalamza and Roland were eminent fencing-masters, in Edinburgh, in 1819.-M.
t Augereau, one of Napoleon’s marshals, created Duke of Castigliome, for his bravery at the
battles of Castigliome and Arcola, in 1796. He served Napoleon faithfully, yet, on his fall in
1814, was one of the first to join the Bourbons. On the return from Elba, in 1815, he offered to
serve his old master, who declined having any thing to do with him, a double traitor.
Augereau, was one of the best swordsmen in the Grand Army.—M.
f John Schetky had been a staff-surgeon. under Wellington, in the Peninsular War, and had
attained some erminence, as an amateur, before the peace of 1815 ended his professional career.
Settling at Edinburgh he earnestly applied ...P. painting. Dr. Morris (Lockhart) says,
in Peter's Letters, “ that his trees—his rocks—his Pyrenees, seem to breathe and be alive with
the spirit of their Maker, and he has no superior, but one [Turner 2], in every thing that regards
the grand and mysterious eloquence of the cloud and sky.” Schetky was one of the Dilettanti.
jºy. § which Wilson was president, which may account for the friendly notice of him as
{\bove.—M. - *
42 CEIRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
“Wait a little; have patience, my dear Editor,” cried John ; “there's
a braw time coming yet.” We shall keep our eye upon Mr. John
Ballantyne next winter, and, depend on it, if he neglects to introduce
us to this illustrious society, we shall not be easily pacified.” In the
mean time, seeing that we had given him a little offence, we pro-
posed to enliven our journey by singing a few duets together, which
we did. We think both of us were particularly happy in that:
exquisite genuine old High Dutch one,—
Persantribat clericus
J)wreh einem griinem waldt
Widebat ibi stantem, staniem, stantem,
£in Magdelein wohlgestallt
Salvasis puellula
Godt gruss dich Magdelein fein, &c, &c.
“I hope,” said Ballantyne, “that you will return to Edinburgh In
time, at least, for the grand Musical Festival. We never could do
without you. By the way, I cannot but be rather surprised that you
are not one of the directors, Mr. Editor.”—We assured our good
friend, that the omission of our name in that list was entirely owing
to ourselves; that it had been early put down by Lord Gray; but
we hate all kind of notoriety, and therefore requested his Lordship
to be so good as to withdraw our name, at the same time promising
him, or any other of the directors, every assistance and advice in our
power. “You see that we are to have Dragonetti's double bass—
what a perfect volcano!—a very earthquake it is, Mr. Editor —but
I am extremely anxious that you should hear little Signora Corri.”—
“Hear little Signora Corri !” we replied: “have we not dandled the
little syren on our knee a hundred times, when she was in frock? and
were not we ourselves the first to prophecy her future noise in the
world, and suggest to her papa the propriety of sending her to Cata-
lami ?|| Those were pleasant nights, John, when we used to sit at the
long supper-table of Signor Corri, and sometimes inspirited by no-
yeau and cherry bounce, venture our own cracked voice in a glee;
* The Dilettanti of Edinburgh professed to be arbitri elegantiarum in all matters of art and
º ºut ºnly did little more than eat good dinners, and spend social evenings at Young's
{\.Vel' in . -IVl.
f A º peer, and not to be comfounded with the English learl Grey, Prime Minister,
1S3()—"34.—M.
! What Bottesini is in 1854 (the best double-bass in the world), Dominico Dragonetti was in
1819, and for more than twenty years aſter.—M.
| Angelica. Catalani, who made her debut at Rome in 1802; her immediate and immense
guccess obtained her excellent engagements at the principal theatres in Italy. New triumphs
awaited her at Lisbon, Madrid, and Paris, which were outshone by her brilliant success in Lon-
uon in 1806. She remained eight years in England, singing at the Italian Opera, and in the
rovinces. After the Restoration she went to Paris, became manager of the Opera Buſſa, there,
ost her money, returned to 12 mgland in 1822, and was greeted as an old and deserving favorite
In 1825 she commenced a farewell round of engagements in the chief European cities, and re-
turned in 1830. In her youth she was handsome, and had a good figure ; when I saw her, in
1828, she was middle-aged and stout, but her voice had wonderful brilliancy and power. Her
busband, a French officer, named Valaberque, used to say, “l)oo or dree poupets and mine ladv
-voila the opera.” She died of cholera, in 1849, at Paris.--M.
INTERIOR OF TIII. TENT. 43
but, in truth, ear is everything—‘tutto, tutto, tutto;'—as the Corri
used to say, ‘I do like vast well for to hear Signor Christophero
sing Il 8wo gusto e perfetto.’” º
A message from our compositor forces us to cut short, and to re-
serve for another Number our account of Dunkeld, and other noble
Highland scenery which we visited on our way to the Tent. Indeed
we have whole volumes in our brain about the Highlands, and can
never hope to live long enough to utter all we think, feel, and know
of that wonderful country. For the present, gentle reader, imagine
yourself sitting between ourselves and Mr. Ballantyne a little for-
ward on the seat for the sake of room, and once more behold our
Tent rising before you, almost like a native production—that snow-
white graceful pyramid. Who are those figures issuing from the
door —Need you ask?—Tickler and the Standard-bearer. Mr. Bal-
lantyne gently pulled up Old Mortality, when about quarter of a
mile from the Tent, and took out of his pocket that seven-league
spy-glass of his, presented to him by Adie, that most piercing of op-
ticians; and putting it into our hands, said, “Tak a keek at the cal-
lans.” We did so—and Tickler and Odoherty"seemed standing by
the very nose of Old Mortality. The Sage had a prodigious whisky-
bottle in his hand, from which the Adjutant was receiving a bumper
with a steady hand and determined countenance; and never saw we
any mortal man take “his morning” with more relish—we almost
thought we heard the smack of his lips, as the warm genial fluid de-
scended into his penetralia. “Give me a keek,” said the Bibliopole.
He applied the tube to his Ogles; but just as he had caught a glimpse
of Tickler in the act of having the compliment returned by the Stand-
ard-bearer, a fine hare sprung up from a bush on the roadside, and
after her away scoured Dominie Sampson. Mr. Ballantyne bounced
out of the dennet as if he had been discharged from a catapulta, and
lighting upon his feet, he joined the pursuit straight up a steep, stony,
heathy hill, shouting aloud, “Halloo ! halloo! halloo !” and was out
of sight in less than no time. We laid the reins on Old Mortality’s
back, and told him to jog on quietly to the Tent. “God bless you
all, our dear Contributors,” was all we could say, for our heart was
full to behold them again all looking so well, and so happy to see
us. When the first burst of congratulation was over, we were espe-
cially delighted to see Tims, whom we again shook cordially by the
hand, his little finger being now, he said, quite healed under the care
of Drs. Scott and Morris. Tims seemed quite an altered man. He
had let his beard grow, that he might have a rural, a pastoral ap-
pearance, like the Ettrick Shepherd; and he was ready to leap out
of his skin when we remarked the resemblance. This beard of his
consisted of perhaps about one hundred hairs, seemingly very soft
and silky, and altogether of a different character from the mustachios
44 CITRISTOPEDER IN TELE TENT,
of the 10th Hussars. “My dear Tims, you are a perfect Aaron.”—
“I h’ant shove since you went away to Scotland,” said the little ex-
ulting Cockney—“neither no more has Pricey.” The gentleman
designated by this endearing diminutive then caught my eye, and
beard enough he had with. a vengeance, Price is a big lumbering
fellow, not so much amiss in the way of good looks; and we do not
know how it is, but he always reminds us of that able-bodied barber,
who comes lollopping into one's bed-room, of a morning, in the Old
Hummums, Covent-Garden, insisting upon the immediate detonsure
of you, nolentis volentis. But we had little time to spend upon
Mister Price and his whiskers; for we missed Dr. Scott in the
throng, and loudly called for the Odontist. Alas! he too soon ap-
peared, mounted upon his white pony—in every respect the same
vision that so delighted us some weeks ago.
“But, ohon I the Doctor's departure is near,
Umbrella unfurled, and mounted his gear.”
“It’s a sad thing, Mr. Editor, for freens to part; but aff I maun
gang; I deliver up the Tent and the Contributors all hale and hearty
into your ain hauns (the Doctor had been Viceroy during our ab-
sence), see you keep them a' as quate as I hae done. O ! he's a sair
rumpawger, that Odoherty, and gude faith, Tickler's but little better.
Mr. Buller,” with the brazen nose, is a fine civil, clever, weel-informed
laddie ; and I canna say that I dislike that Seward either; but ye ken
a’ their characters brawly yoursel’—so, fareweel—fareweel. O !
Mr. Editor, I’m maist like to greet.” We need not say how much
affected we ourselves were ; and we wanted words to express our
concern when the Ettrick Shepherd advanced, and proposed a round
of genuine Glasgow punch (from a small bowl which he held in his
fist) to the health of the worthy Doctor, a safe journey, and a hearty
welcome in No. 7, Millar-street. Just as the TJoctor had received
his glass, the Shepherd threw his plaid over his shoulder, and fixing
his honest light grey eyes, swimming in tears, on the departing Odon-
tist, he thus gave vent to his own and our feelings in immortal song.
L’ENvoy; AN EXCELLENT NEW SONG IN HONOR OF DR. 8COTT.
By the ETTRIOR SHEPHERD.
TUNE—“Grammachree.”
I.
DRAw water of the coldest—draw ye water from the spring,
And heaps of snow-white sugar into the china fling,
And squeeze the fairest lemon, and pour the richest rum,
That our parting mayn't be dry at least, although it may be dumb.
* John Hughes (son of the Rev. Dr. Hughes, a Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's, London),
who is known to the readers of Ebony as “Buller of Brazen mose,” had his Itinerary of the
Rhome kindly and favorably noticed by Scott, in the lintroduction to Quentin Durward. In a
poem by Mr. Hughes, entitled “Walter Childe,” published in Bentley’s Miscellany, in 1838
there is an elegant and affectionate tribute to Scott's memory —M.
L'ENVOY. 45
2.
We'll consecrate a bumper, and a bumper of the best—
We'll consecrate a bumper to speed our going guest;
And we'll pour the dear libation, with the tear-drops in our een,
For a noble fellow's leaving us, and a nobler ne'er was seen.
3.
With right good will we'd keep him—we would keep him in our Tent;
But since go he must—oh lightly be his course out owre the bent—
May his pony’s feet be steady, through the heather and the whins,
And may ne'er a thorn hae power to jag the hide upon his shins.
4.
May that pony ne'er be startled by brackenbush or post—
May no stravaiging heifer be mistaken for a ghost— . .
May no reaver bands disturb him, though, in crossing of yon hill,
He'll perhaps have no objection for to stumble on a still.
5.
Oh! may the skies be crystal clear above you as you ride,
And the sun be shining brightly upon the mountains' side,
That the brightness and the beauty may cheer you as ye go,
And your heart may dance within you like a young and happy roel
6.
May ye ne'er want for good quarters to rest yourself at e'en—
A bonny lass to stir the fire—and a table-cloth ful clean;
And when ye rise at cock-crow, may that lassie's hand be nigh
To reach the stirrup goblet, and sweetly say—Good-bye.
7.
O blythe be a your journey, and blythe your coming home,
That oft ye may take heart again in the merry hearst to roam ;
And whene'er the Doctor's roaming—oh 1 near him may we be,
For meikle can we do without, but not his canty e'e.
8.
Meantime, if worth and kindness be beauteous in your eyes,
And if genius be a jewel, all with one accord you'll rise;
You'll rise, my lads, as I do, and toss your cups with me,
To—Blessings on the Doctor's head 1 with a hearty three times three l
During the recitation of these noble verses, Dr. Scott occasionalſy
hid his face with his umbrella, and often cast up his eyes to heaven.
“Too, too much,” he would sometimes exclaim, in a choked, tremu-
lous voice, but when the L’Envoy ceased, he seemed “rapt, in-
spired;” and rising upon his stirrups, and at the same time elevating
his umbrella, till the whole man and his accoutrements seemed some-
thing more than mortal, he chanted the following hymn:—
46 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
DR. SCOTT's FAREWELL To BRAEMAR.
AIR-" Lochaber.”
- 1. * *
FAREWELL, then, ye mountains in finystery piled,
Where the birth-place and home of the tempest is lound;
Farewell, ye red torrents all foaming and wild;
Farewell to your dreamy and desolate sound;
And farewell, ye wide plains, where the heath and the fern
Bloom in beauty forlorn, while above them is skimming,
Far up in the rack, the majestical Earne,
To the lone ear of Nature his orison hymning.
2
And farewell to thy shadow, thou Queen of Pavillions,
Pitched on turf that is smooth as the eider-bird's wing,
'Neath the dais of his splendor, the monarch of millions
Might envy the bliss that hath hallowed thy ring 1
What is purple, that floats in the weight of perfume,
And the gold-circled mirrors that parasites see,
To the rich twilight-breath of the languishing broom,
And the pure native crystal of pastoral Dee ?
- 3.
And farewell to the friends that I leave in thy shade,
Wit, mirth, and affection exalting their cheerl
Oh I ne'er shall their forms from my memory fade:
Still, whate'er may be absent, my heart shall be here ;
Though o'er flood, field, and mountain my wanderings be wide,
Back, still back to Braemar faithful fancy shall flee,
And the beauty of Kelvin—the grandeur of Clyde—
Shall but deepen my sigh for the banks of the Dee.
4.
Yet one cup ere we part, ye dear friends of my bosom 1
One sweet-flowing measure—one more—only one l
Life's gay moments are few : then why needlessly lose 'em
You'll have plenty of time for regrets when I’m gone.
In dulness to meet, and in dryness to part,
Suits the barren of feeling, the narrow of soul—
Be it ours, lads, the gladness, the grief of the heart
To improve, to assuage, by the juice of the bowl!
Long did every straining eye follow the Doctor, till the last green
gleam of his umbrella faded in the distant woods. “An homester—
better—cleverer fallow ’s no in a' Scotland than that very same Doc-
tor whom we have lost,” said the Shepherd; with which eulogy we
all cordially agreed; while Buller, turning toward our own person,
repeated sonorously from Aristophanes— -
Nvv' oov epyov čg , śayeudºn
Tmu go?”v et Ampeg, fivarep
Elżec eş apxng—aſażlv
'Avaved; euv d'avtov aſſet,
THE ROLL-CAT,L. 47
Kat 3Åeciety aiſlug To detvov,
Etóe Wapa?,"pov ć%00 et,
Kat 6&7.7g tº plaž0alcov,
Aüfflg alpeoffat a' awayıcı,
Ect waſ..tv Ta spouata.
We did not, however, come to the Tent to indulge unavailing
sorrow; so we issued two regimental orders, one for our breakfast
and dinner conjoined, without loss of time; and another for a general
muster of Contributors in the Tent after mess, to take into considera-
tion the state of the Magazine. There is no occasion to describe the
déjeunér & la fourchette ; and after it the Editor hung out his well-
known signal—“Scotland EXPECTS EVERY MAN To Do HIs DUTY.”
We knew that the eyes of our country were upon us, and felt con-
fident of the result. On the roll being called by the Adjutant, not a
man was missing from his post. The coup d'oeil was most imposing.
Wastle took his seaf at one corner of the table, almost in the open
air, in the same full court-dress which attracted so much notice last
May when he walked with the Commissioner; immediately opposite
the Laird, Morris sported his black silk stock, and richly-furred sur-
tout;* on the Physician’s right hand sat, in earnest confabulation,
Buller of Brazennose in his cap and gown; both he and Seward hav-
ing brought their academical dress down to Scotland to astonish the
natives; between ourselves and Buller sat Mr. Price in the cap, or,
as Tims Galled it, the black silk bonnet of the Surrey hunt, and kept
his eyes fixed, with unceasing wonder, on Bailie Jarvie, who, in a full
suit of black, with his “three cockit” and gold chain, looked up gashly
in our face from the right, and obviously contained within himself the
germ or elements of future Dean of Guild and my Lord Provost of
Glasgow; on the Bailie's right shoulder, that is behind it, for he of the
Salt-market absolutely turned his back on him of Ludgate, sat Tims,
with a strange mixture of self-importance from feeling himself one of
the Tent, and of personal fear from being at such an immense distance
from the sound of Bow-Bell, which expression of face was not lessened
by the consciousness of the immediate contiguity of Tickler, who had
stretched as many feet of his legs beneath the table as possible, to
bring his head on a line with the organization of the other in-door
Contributors; behind Dr. Morris sat Kempferhausen, who had
mounted his Hanseatic Legion cap; and on his right stood uncovered
the jocund Bibliopole, with a face incommunicable both to copper and
canvas; in front sat Seward, with all the gracefulness of a Christ-
church man, on a cask of whisky, from which John of Sky ever and
anon let off a quech of the dew, unnoticed from behind; at Seward's
* In Peter’s Letters there is a description of this suit (a deputy-lieutenant's uniform of blue.
and red, with the little cross of Dannebrog), and the frontispiece (an imaginary portrait) shows
T}r. Morris, attired in a coat with a collar of rich fur.—M. -
48 CHRISTOPFIER IN THE TENT.
right hand lay in his plaid the Ettrick Shepherd, his attention wholly
absorbed by a large salmon that was floating exhausted to the bank
in tow of Wastle's tall valet, who had become quite a prime angler
under the tuition of Walter Ritchie ; but we refer the world to the .
Tºrontispiece, which was sketched on the spot by Odoherty, the only
departure from truth of any great moment, being the introduction
of Dr. Scott, whom the literary and scientific world will easily recog-
nize in the portly figure smoking a pipe of tobacco on the foreground
to the left of the chairman. The affection of the Adjutant could not
be satisfied without this tribute to his much-regretted brother bard,
and he has introduced his own figure with foraging-cap, &c., reposing
close by the side of the Odontist.*
When Kempferbausen sat down, after reading an essay on the cha-
racter and manners of the Tyrolese, we must say, that the feeling up-
permost in our mind was one of regret that he should have brought
it so speedily to a termination. In looking round the Tent, however,
it is not to be denied that we observed some slight symptoms, as if
the whole of our friends had not been quite so uniformly and unin-
terruptedly delighted as ourselves. In short, Tickler, Odoherty, and
the Ettrick Shepherd, manifested pretty plainly, that they thought
the Hamburgher was still somewhat subject to his old infirmity of
amplification. Wastle and Morris, on the contrary, Jarvie, Mullion,
and Buller of Brazennosc, were enthusiastic in their applauses of the
German's Essay; and, supported by their decision, we could not hesi-
tate to express to the Essayist himself, our conviction that his powers
were expanding themselves in a manner most luxuriantly promising,
and our hope and confidence that henceforth he would form one of
the most efficient and vigorous of all our Contributors. The Shep.
herd remarked, that “the Essay might be a braw essay for aught he
kenned, but he was sure it was an umco lang ame—and luik,” quoth
he, “gin Hector be not shaking himself frae side to side, and yawning
and muzzling as if he had been listening to ame of Mr. R— of
Y 'st very weariesomest action-sermons. The lad will not be the
worse of a glass to weet his whistle ony way.”—“Gie him a bumper
* This refers to an outline sketch, so indifferent in execution, that we do not think it worth
while to have it engraved. In later editions of this number of Maga, this sketch was not
ive m.—M. -
§ # Of this excellent gentleman we embrace this opportunity of recording am interesting am ec-
dote. Some years ago, when the Ettrick Shepherd had Dr. Anderson (editor of the British
Poets) and Mr. Wordsworth (author of the Excursion) as his guests in Yarrow, he carried them.
one foremoon to eat some bread and cheese in the manse, and taste the minister's home-brewed,
which is proverbial for its good qualities in that part. of the country. During this cold colla-
tion, a great deal of highly instructive and intellectual conversation occurred, as might have
naturally been expected, at a meeting of four such gifted men. As they were going away, the
minister called back Hogg, and—“Faith, Jemmy,” said he, “he’s a fine chiel that Words-
worth—he's very discreet and well-informed. I really never heard of a horse-couper quoting
poetry before in all my life.” It is almost needless to observe, that the excellent minister had
supposed himself to be entertaining the eminent horse-dealer of Leith Walk, -a conjecture
which was doubtless sufficiently matural, considering Hogg's well-known love for appearing
at the weekly sales at that gentleman's repository. The Shepherd, we suppose, now undo.
ceived him.—C. N.
EUIN BURG if 131.W. F.W. 49
by all means,” quoth Jarvie;—“indeed, if he we c to get his right,
he would get mair nor ane, for here's twa or three that have not been
dry listeners—only look, Mr. Tickler, we’ve scarcely left enough to
.É. anither bowl.”—“You may make the next one yourself,
ailie,” says Tickler, “for it's my turn to be spokesman—you know
the article goes round the opposite way from the bottle.” Then
turning to the chair, “Mr. Editor,” continued the Senior, “we’ve
got a new Number of the Edinburgh Review since you left us, and,
if you please, I shall read a few remarks I have jotted down concern-
ing it. I would not have taken so much trouble, only I was surprised
to see them holding up their heads so briskly on some points, con-
sidering what a mailer you gave them so very lately.”
“Go on, Mr. Tickler,” we interrupted; “you need not hesitate to
enter upon any topic from fear of being tedious. As yet nihil Quod
tetigist; non ornasti, and even here we have no doubt, materiam, Su-
perabit opus!”—Encouraged by these words, the Sage drew down
his spectacles from his forehead, and after clearing his throat with a
few portentous hems, he thrust his left hand in his waistcoat pocket,
and stretching forth the dexter with its MSS. to within a few inches
of ourself, began to read as follows in a distinct voice. The myste-
rious music of some of his solemn cadences, seemed at first to alarm
and astonish the southern part of his hearers, but the strong sense of
the man soon overcame all these lesser emotions, and seldom has
even a Tickler been listened to by a more attentive auditory.
[Mr. Tickler's comments on an old number of the Edinburgh Re-
view so little suit the humor which prevailed in “the Tent,” that
they are omitted altogether.] .
Here Tickler ceased, and a low breathing of applause from every
auditor around hailed him on the conclusion of his labors. The vete-
ran was then invited by Mr. Mullion to refresh himself with a glass
of Mrs. Weddel's best cherry brandy from a private bottle, which
that worthy produced for the first time on this occasion. Dr. Mor-
ris pledged him, and then, with great good humor, made a number
of little remarks on the elaborate performance he had just been hear-
ing. We ourselves made only one single observation, and it referred
entirely to the last sentence of Mr. Tickler's paper, in which allusion
is made to the soft sighs breathed by the Edinburgh Reviewers over
Some of the supposed inconveniences of the present situation of the
Ex-Emperor, f Among other things we remarked, the Reviewers
seemed to pity Bonaparte very much, because he is restricted from
reading their journal—in spite, as they would insinuate, of his earnest
* We believe, that to fang a well signifies to pour into it sufficient liquid to set the punp a
work again.—C. N. - * *
f Napoleon. He did not die until May, 1821. –M.
WOL. I.—6
50 - CEl RISTOPELER IN TEIE TENT.
quarterly longings after a participation in that great intellectual ban-
quet—and indeed they show pretty plainly that they consider this a
still more grievous kind of restriction than the short commons to
which their hero is supposed to be reduced, in regard to bread,
cheese, mutton, garlic, and charenton.” Now it so happens, that we
have good reason to know this is a point on which Bonaparte himself
is very far from soliciting the sympathies of his admirers. Our ex-
cellent old friend, Colonel Fehrszen of the 53d, was lately in St. He-
lena, on his way to India, and he writes to us, that he paid a visit of
several hours' length to the Emperor, with whom, on a previous oc-
... casion, he had formed a very considerable intimacy. Thinking it
might amuse the illustrious captive, the colonel carried a late number
of the Edinburgh Review with him to Longwood, and laid it on the
table when he was about to take his leave. “Ha /* cried Bonaparte
—(the Reviewers themselves have remarked with what power this
monosyllable expresses the feeling of contempt, when uttered by those
imperial lips,)—“Ha! quoi done / encore plus de ces brochures, &
bleu et à jaune 8 Je croyois gue cette Turlupinade la Étoit tombée
tout-à-fait il-y-a longtemps.”—Then turning over the leaves, he came
upon something about himself—“Peste!” cried he, “Ce petit Jeffré
pourquoi fait-il toujours de telles sottises sur mon Sujet 3 Je hais-ce
Nain envieux—Il n'entend rien sur les grandes choses ni sur les
grands hommes, et voilà comme il parle!” A few minutes after-
wards, he asked Colonel Fehrszen why he had not rather brought a
number or two of Blackwood's Magazine with him 7 adding, that he
had seldom laughed so heartily as when Mr. Baxterf sent him the
Number containing the first part of Odoherty's Memoirs. Our mod-
esty prevents us from repeating all that he said in our praise, but we
may be pardoned for mentioning the last of the sentences he addressed
at this time to the colonel. “Je vous conjure, mon cher colonel,
d'écrire à votre ami M. le Conducteur, qu’il m'envoye ce journal
aussi régulierement qu'l soit possible. Pour l’Edinburgh Review—
ma foil—Ils sont culbutés—renversés—écrasés, abimés—Aw diable
avec ces viewa fripons lá / Ils ont perdu la tête /* **
After such a narration as this, we could not do less than propose a
bumper to the good health of General Bonapartef—a toast which
was accepted in high glee by the whole of this assemblage; even the
|Fttrick Shepherd felt all his old prejudices entirely thawed by the
sweet though distant rays of ex-imperial admiration, and chanted an
extempore parody on “Tho’ he’s back be at the wa’,” the sentiments
of which would not, on reflection, be thoroughly approved by his
legitimate understanding. On looking round for the next article,
* Said to be the favorite beverage of Napoleon Bonaparte and Timothy Tickler, Esq.-C. N.
f The present surgeon to Sir Hudson Lowe.—C. N.
† We may add, in excuse of this toast, that Bonaparte hinted to the Colonel his intention of
being, at no distant date, a contributor to our Miscellamy.—C. N.
*-
KANT AND COLERIDGE. 51
Wastle and Odoherty offered themselves at the same moment to our
notice, and we had some difficulty in deciding to which of the two the
first hearing should be given. The age and aristocratical dignity of
the Laird, on the one side, was met, on no unequal terms, by the
manly beauty and transcendant genius of the Adjutant, on the other.
Odoherty, indeed, conceded the pas (when he observed the Laird's
anxiety) with his accustomed Cortesia Castillana ; but this was only
a change of difficulties, for nothing could now prevail on that illus-
trious Tenant in capite to accept of the proffered precedence. To
put a stop to so much altercation, we were compelled to have
recourse once more to our old expedient of skyºng a copper, the
result of which terminated, as usual, in favor of the Standard-bearer.
That personage has indeed a wonderful degree of luck in such mat-
ters. Never was such an exemplification of the truth of that old text,
ForTUNA FAVET FORTIBUs. He made use of the silence with which
we now surrounded him, by reading, in his usual fine high Tipperary
key, a short continuation of that excellent series of his, the Boxiana.”
The face of Kempferhausen, during this sporting article, was most
Icellent. The practice of pugilism was evidently a mystery which
fine speculative understanding could not penetrate, and though
y men have more enthusiasm than our good friend Phillip, he could
go along with the profound disquisition and impassioned feeling
the Adjutant on such a theme. He contented himself, however,
with a short quotation out of Emmanuel Kant, who had, it would
* The No. read referred to the boxing match between Broughton and Slack, in 1759, which
ended in the triumph of the latter; who, after being Champion for ten years, was beaten by a
worthy rejoicing in the appellation of Bill Stevens the Nailor.—M.
t Mr. Coleridge has somewhere expressed himself to this eſſect—That, if Plato were to rise
again from the grave and appear in London, any performer of chemical tricks would be looked
on as much the greater mam; and further, that with respect to any discovery, he would have
more credit for it who should make it & posteriori, (accidentally perhaps, or by benefit of a fine
apparatus)—tham he who should demonstrate its mecessity & priori, (i.e. should deduce it from
the law which involved it). This remark is well illustrated in the following case : Twenty-
six years at least before Dr. Herschel discovered the planet which bears his name (otherwise
called the planet Uranus, and in Engländ the Georgian planet), it had been predicted—or, to
speak more truly, it had been demonstrated—by Kant, that a planet would be found in that
region of the heavens (i. e. a planet superior to Saturm). The difference between the discov-
eries is this : Herschel’s was made empirically, or & posteriori, by means of a fine telescope ;
Kant's scientifically, or à priori, as a deduction from certain laws which he had established in
his Celestial System (Himmel’s System). We have unfortunately not brought with us to
Braemar the volume which contains Kant's Himmel’s System ; but we will state from memory
the course of reasoning which led Kamt to this prediction. What is a comet? It is a planet
whose orbit is exceedingly eccentric. , Are them the planets not eccentric? Yes, but much less
so. How much less 2 Some in one degree—some in another: their eccentricity varies. Ac-
cording to what laws; or does it vary according to any law 7 . In general according to this law :
the eccentricity has a temdency to increase, as the distance from the sum increases; that is to
say, the planets become more eccentric in their orbits, i. e. more cometary—as they approach to
that region of the heavens from which the comets descend. Now from this gradual temdency
of the planetary motions to become cometary (which tendency, by the way, is itself a neces-
sary consequence from Kant's system, and mo accident), Kant suspected, that as mature does
not ordinarily proceed per salt win, the systern of planets must pass gradatim into the system
of ..º. so abruptly as it would do if Saturn were the last planet. Therefore, said
he, at some future period, there will be found at least one planet superior to Saturm—whose
orbit will be much more eccentric than that of Saturm, and will thus supply a link to commect
the motions of the planets and the comets into a more continuous chain. The comets will
perhaps vary as much in eccentricity as the planets, amd according to the same law : so that
52 CHRISTOI’HER IN THE TENT.
appear, considered pugilism as one of those anomalies in the history
of the human mind, inexplicable by the transcendental philosophy, -
and with hinting, that Randal the Nonpareil could have found no favor
in the eyes of the sage of Koningsberg. Odoherty avowed his utter
ignorance of all Cant, but was willing to pin his faith on the sleeve
of Plato, who, it was well known, was in his day a fighting man of
great skill, pluck, and bottom; and who, though desirous of exclud-
ing poetry from his republic, recommended an enlightened patronage
of pugilism. At the same time, he was very far from thinking, with
his quondam friend, Bill Parnell, knight of the shire for Wicklow
(whom he now indignantly disowned), that the Irish people, owing to
their ignorance of pugilism, “were base, cowardly, and savage.”
The man who could utter such a sentiment is unworthy of his pota-
toes. “His soul,” said the Adjutant, with much animation, “has not
the true Irish accent—it wants the brogue of his country. I agree
with my friend, Lord Norbury, f in thinking ‘we are a fine people;’
and if I heard Bill Parnell with his own lips say, that ‘it is only
backed by a mob of his friends that an Irishman will fight,” I would
not tell him, Mr. Editor, to remember the fine lines of my friend,
Tom Moore, •
When Malachi wore the collar of gold, *
That he won from the fierce invader—
but I would call upon him, in the words of a pardonable parody, to
think,
How Donelly wore the kerchief of blue,
That he won from the Deptford gardener.f
the last planet and first comet will stand pretty much in the same relation to each other as any
lanet to the next superior planet—or as any comet to the next more eccentric comet.
This was said in the year 1754 at the latest. With respect to the date of Herschel's discovery,
having mo Astronomy in our Tent later than that of David Gregory, the Savilian Professor,
(Astron. Phys. et Geomet. Elementa : Geneva, 1726), we cannot assign it precisely; but
according to our recollection, it was made in 1781; and certainly not earlier than 1780. Kant
then discovered the planet Uramus à priori, (that is, he discovered the necessity of such a
planet as a consequence of a law previously detected by his own sagacity at least six-and-
twenty years before Herschel made the same discovery & posteriori by—the excellence of his
telescope.—N. B. The reader will perhaps object the case of Mercury and of Mars—the first
as contradicting the supposed law, the second as imperfectly obeying it (his eccentricity being
indeed less than that of the next superior planet, but yet greater than according to his distan ce
from the sun); these exceptions, however, confirm, the system of Kamt—being explained out
of the same law which accounts for the defect in bulk of these two planets. It might have
been º that Sir Isaac Newton would have been led to the same anticipation as that
here ascribed to Kant, by the very terms in which he defines comets, viz. “genus planetarum
in orbibus valde eccentricis circa solem revolvemtibus ” (Princip. lib 3. Prop. 41) : but he was
manifestly led away from any such anticipation by the same reasoning which induced him to
conclude that no tenable theory could be devised which should assign a mechanical origin to
the heavenly system. Kant has framed such a theory, which we shall lay before our readers
in a month or two.—C. N.
* Maurice and Berghetta, or the Priest of Rahery; a tale; London, 1819. [Written by
Parnell.—M. ) *
t The Earl of Norbury, commonly called the The Hanging Judge, who jested with crimi-
mals, on whom he was pronouncing sentence of death. He was Chief justiče of the Common
Pleas im Ireland, from 1800 to 1827, and died in 1831.-In “Sheil's Sketches of the Irish Bar”
his career, character, and appearance are very fully described.—M.
* An allusion to the great fight between Sir Dān and Oliver.—C. N. [Daniel Donelly, an
THE SIIILELAH ! 53
: “What, sir! would any Irishman who ever sung ‘the sprig of
shilelah and shamrock so green,” accuse his countrymen of cowardice?
Let me not be misunderstood. I conceive that a duet in a ring at
Moulsy-IIurst is pleasanter music than a general chorus at Donny-
brook fair. But that is a cultivated, a scientific taste; and let no man
rashly assert, that the genius and intellect, and moral worth of a
people, may not exhibit themselves as strikingly in the shilelah as in
the fist, in a GENERAL Row, as in a LIMITED SET-To. Is it the part of
a coward, Mr. Editor, for one of the Tipperary lads to step forward
and ask the Kerry lads, “who will snaze 3’ and if Roderic Milesius
M“Gillicuddy replies, ‘ I am the boy to smaze in your face,’ is my
cousin a coward because the Tipperary shilelahs come twinkling
about his mob as thick as grass?” By the staff of St. Patrick, a
coward has no business there at all; and what though Mr. M'Gilli-
Cuddy be backed by a mob of friends, as the county says, has not
O'Donnahue his friends too ! and where them is the cowardice of
knocking down every Pat you can lay your twig upon, till you your-
self go the way of all flesh? and if “twenty men should basely fall
upon One,” why, to be sure, their turn will come next, and all odds
will be even.
At the close of the day, when the pot-house is full,
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,
When nought in the tap-room is heard but a bull,
And “arrah, be easy l’ comes soft from the grove.
“No, Mr. Editor, never may Morgan Odoherty live to see that
day when the shilelah shall no longer flourish and be flourished in the
Green Isle.” Here Mr. Tims softly interposed, and after compli-
menting the Standard-bearer on that liberal philosophy, which
discerns and knows how to appreciate the genius of a people in their
pastimes, without any invidious preference of one or another, volum-
teered (if agreeable to the Editor and the Contributors) a song,
entitled, “Ye Pugilists of England,” which he understood was written
Irishman, who beat Oliver, an English pugilist, in a prize fight, returned to Ireland declaring
that the Prince Regent had knighted him for his prowess, opened a public house in Dublin,
was one of his own most bibacious customers, and died soon after this from inflarnmation,
caused by drink.-M.] -
* This is a sweet pastoral image, which we ourselves once heard employed by a very delicate-
looking and modest young woman, in a cottage near Limerick, when speaking of the cudgels
of an affray. A broken head, is in Ireland, always spoken of in terms of endearinent, and
much of the same tender feeling is maturally transferred to the shilelah that in flicted it.
“God bless your honor,” said the same gentle creature to us, while casting a look of affection-
ate admiration on our walking-stick (at that time we had no rheumatism), “you would give
a swate blow with it.” It is in such expressions that we may trace the genius of a people, ar 1
they should serve to moderate that indignation with which moralists are wont to speak of the
'' brutality” of Irish quarrels. In the account of the battle between Ramdal, and "Martin the
baker. We observed with pleasure, an imitation of this Hibernian amenity. After stating that
Randal finished the fight by a knock-down facer, the historian (probably our good friend Mr.
Eagan), very prettily remarked, “Randal is like a bird on the boughs of a tree.” A fine
sylvan image –C. N. Pearce Egan, at this period. editor of the sporting paper called Bell 8
Life in London, and author of several works on pugilism and its ..º.
54 CEIRISTOPETER IN TELE TENT.
either by Mr. Gregson, Mr. Egan, or Mr. Thomas Campbell. This
handsome offer was received with thunders of applause, and notbing
could be grander than the trio. We remarked, that during the de
there was not an unclenched fist in the whole Tent.
YE PUGILISTS OF ENGLAND. * ,
As Sung by Messrs. Price, Tims, and Woods (Son of the Fighting Waterman).
on the 4th of September 1819, near the Linn of Dee.
1.
YE Pugilists of England,”
Who guard your native sod,
Whose pluck has braved a thousand years,
Cross-buttock, blow, and blood,
Your corky canvas sport again,
To mill another foe,
As you spring, round the ring,
While the betters noisy grow;
While the banging rages loud and long,
And the betters noisy grow.
2.
A Briton needs no poniards
No bravos 'long his street—
His trust is in a strong-roped ring,
A square of twenty feet.
With one-twos from his horny fists,
He floors the coves below,
As they crash, on the grass,
When the betters noisy grow ;
When the banging rages loud and long,
And the betters noisy grow.
3.
The spirits of prime pugilists
Shall rise at every round;
For the ring it was their field of fame,
To them ’tis holy-ground.
Where Slack and mighty Belcher fell,
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As you peel, true as steel,
While the betters noisy grow;
While the banging rages loud and long,
And the betters noisy grow.
4.
The Randal-rag of England
Must yet terrific burn,
Till Ireland's troublesome knight be beat,
And the star of Crib return
* Wide Campbell’s “Ye Mariners of England.”—M.
CARMEN TY1A13OLTCUM. 55
Then, then, ye glutton-pugilists,
The claret red shall flow,
To the fame, of your name,
When the noise of betts is low ;
When Sir Dan lies levelled loud and long,
And the noise of betts is low.
Mr. Price, whose voice reminded us of Incledon in his best days,
took the tenor; Mr. Tims' sweet and shrill pipe was a most exquisite
counter-tenor; and, with the sole exception of Bartleman, we never
heard any thing at all comparable to the bass of young Woods.”
The accompaniment, too, was exceedingly fine. Wastle blew his
bugle affletuoso; Tickler, who fingers with any man in England,
though we confess that his bow-hand is not so free, flowing, and
unfettered, as that of Yaniewicz, was powerful on his fiddle; and
John of Sky, on the bagpipe, at one moment, roused the soul to all
the triumph of victory, and at another sunk it into the despondency
of defeat. At that line, in particular, which the three voices dwelt
upon with mournful emphasis,
“When Sir Dan lies levelled loud and long,”—
we observed the tear start into Odoherty’s eyes, and he veiled them
with his foraging-cap, as if wishing to seal his sight from the vision
of the conquest of Crib and the downfall of Donelly.
We were apprehensive at one time, that the Standard-bearer and
Mr. Tims would have quarrelled; but on the latter assuring Odoherty
that he yielded to no man in his admiration of the pluck and prowess
of Sir Daniel Donelly, and that he could not be supposed answerable
for the prophetic intimations of the poet, the Adjutant extended his
hand towards him with his accustomed suavity, and by that pacific
overture quieted the incipient alarm of the Cockney. He at the
same time offered to back Sir Dan against all Britain, Crib not
excepted, for a cool hundreds—and against Jack Carter, £100 to £80.
The best Irish pugilists, continued the Adjutant, “have been Corco-
ran, Ryan, Odonnel, Doherty, (filius carnalis, we believe, of Morgan's
half-uncle, Father Doherty, an Irish priest, who dropt the O for rea-
sons best known to himself) and Donelly”—but here we felt it
absolutely necessary to interfere, and to request Mr. Wastle to read
his article, by way of diverting our thoughts into a different channel.
The Laird observed, that he did not feel as if his “Essay on the
Study of Physical Science” would sound well after the Boxiana, and
therefore would, for the present, content himself with reading a very
short paper, on the Scottish Proverbs of Allan Ramsay.
* This entertaining and accomplished young fellow is Mr. Tims' body servant. He is a
natural son of the brave Woods, who fought Richmond, the Black, but he is a far better man
than his father; and though he has, we believe, never exhibited publicly in the ring, his
rivate turm-ups have been numerous, and he has still been the winner, without a scratch.
e is the only man in England a match for Randal. Will the sporting Colonel back the
Nonpareil for £2007–C. N. -
56 CHRISTOl’HER IN THE TENT.
Just as Mr. Wastle was concluding his acute little article, John
Mackay, whom we had dispatched for Braemar to meet the walking
postman, returned with a packet of letters—and for half an hour the
Contributors were busily employed with their contents—all except
Odoherty, who with perfect sangfroid suffered his three to lie un-
opened on the table, or every now and then gave them, one after .
another, a chuck into the air with singular dexterity, that showed him
to be a perfect adept in legerdemain and slight of hand. On asking
our friends if any of their communications were articles for the Mag-
azine, the Adjutant replied, that as far as his letters were concerned
it was for ourselves to judge—one being a dum from Scaife and Wil-
lis”—another, a short account, he believed, from the keeper of a bil-
liard-table—and the third, he had some reason to think, was a bill for
fºã on the Commercial Bank, which he had sent to a friend to whom
he was indebted for that sum, but which, he dared to say, was now
returned to him with the well-known words “no effects.” All this
was said with that gay and careless manner that marks the true man
of the world, and the Standard-bearer remarked with a smile, that
Messrs. Scaife and Willis, though the best natured and most skilful tail-
ors in being, ought not to send accounts to gentlemen whose breeches
they had made without pockets capable of holding them, and that
therefore he was under the necessity of employing their well-inten-
tioned letter in lighting his pipe. Mordecai Mullion then handed .
over to us the following letter from his brother Hugh, and, with his
permission, we read it aloud.
MY DEAR MoRDECAI:—I found all our concerns in a much better
way at Glasgow than we could have expected after the late crash;
and I verily believe, that our good friend the Skipper will yet beat
to windward of the Gazette. Folks don’t look the least shy at our
bills, and our credit is good. The Skipper requested me not to press
him hard, which God knows never was our intention ; and he will
send us six barrels of the best Bunawe salmon, a hogshead of Jamai-
ca, 500 lbs. of double Gloucester, a choice assortment of best West-
phalias, and a tom of dried ling: he lets us have them all very low ;
and when I have seen them stowed away in our cellars, I shall feel
easy about the Skipper. M'Corquindale and M'Clure offered to
settle our account at once in cod and craw-fish ; but as we suffered
much from our cods last year, and craw-fish is a drug, I demanded
Loch-fine herring, and kiplings, and got what I believe will cover us.
I had most difficulty of all with that wasp M'Huffie, and had to
threaten a horning. My gentleman came to himself when he found
me serious; and I saw his reindeers boxed before I left the Gallow-
* Architects of male attire, in 12 dinburgh.--M.
+ JIorring, execution, sale under the law.—M.
THE RIRR o' SHOTTS. 57
gate; and finer tongues never pressed a palate. Poor Donald
M’Tavish is on his last legs, but I took his debt in branxy, and have
no doubt of inflicting it to advantage on our brethren of the Dilet-
tanti. That sumph, Rab Roger, offered me a bill on Cornelius
Giften ; I preferred taking him in good Mearns butter; and he sent
me ten croaks of thirty lbs. each, as yellow as a dandelion. In short,
our books will balance, which is more than some of our acquaintances
both here and in the west can say, who hold their heads higher than
the Mullions.—So much for business. And now, my dear Mordecai,
let me give you an account of a sort of adventure in which I was en-
gaged on my way back from Glasgow. I fear it will lose much in the
recital—as I have not the pen of a Tickler or an Odoherty; yet as
you requested me to give you the news, I will try to describe the
scene just as I saw it acted. -
I was jogging along on our “bit powney,” with my honest father's
Wallise behind me as usual, when just where the former road takes up
the hill to the auld Kirk o' Shotts,” I met a most extraordinary Ca-
valcade, which reminded me of Stothard's Picture of the “Procession
of Pilgrims to Canterbury,” so well engraved by our poor friend
Cromek et multis aliis. I really felt as if I had slid back many cen-
turies, and were coeval with Gower and Chaucer. My surprise was
not diminished, when the leading pilgrim gravely accosted me with,
“How do you do, Mr. Hugh Mullion ? When did you hear from
your brother Mordecai?” I pulled up old Runciman, and took a
leisurely and scrutinizing observation of the pilgrimage. Before I
had time to open my mouth, or rather to shut it again, for I believe it
was open—the leading pilgrim continued, “I am the Editor of Con-
stable and Company’s Magazine, and these are my Contributors. #
We are going to pitch our Tent near the Kirk o' Shotts, for you
must not think, Mr. Hugh, that we are not allowed a vacance as well
as Ebony’s people. If you are not obliged to be in Edinburgh to.
night, will you join us?—I dare say we shall find you useful.” I
declare to you, my dear Mordecai, that the very thought of this pro-
cession so convulses me with laughter, even at this hour, that I can
write no better a hand than a member of parliament. For, only
imagine, the good worthy editor, in half-clerical, half lay attire—
1-amely, black breeches, and D. D. boots, black silk waistcoat, pep-
* Between the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, about within sixteen miles of the latter
5lace (travelling by the mail-road, before railways were constructed), the country rises up very
}. On the summit of the most dreary ridge stands what is called the Kirk of Shotts (whence
the ridge is named), and the little dove-cot belfry rises with peculiar expressiveness, amidst a
land of so little promise. Descending the hill, with glimpses of the rich, well-wooded, and
well-watered valley of the Clyde, the road leads into Glasgow, at once, from its commerce and
manufactures, the Liverpool and Manchester of the West.—M.
f Blackwood's Magazine may be said to have fairly laughed Constable's rival Magazine out
of existence. Neither publisher, editor, mor contributors could stand the sarcasms perpetually
levelled at each and all, from the memorable time when the Chaldee Manuscript attacked
them personally.—M. -
58 CHRISTOPEIER IN THE TENT.
per and salt coat, and shovel hat most admirably constructed for scoop-
ing a draught out of a well, mounted on a remarkably fine jackass,
who, on being brought to a stand-still, let down his immense head be-
tween his fore legs, like the piston of a steam-engine, and then show-
ing his alligator-like jaws, gave a yawn in which was gaunted” out a
whole month's sleeplessness. It requires a very peculiar kind of a
seat, to look well on ass-back; long stirrups, and legs nearly if not
altogether meeting below; whereas the Editor sat too far forward
upon the shoulder, like Don Olivarez, the Spanish minister, in that
famous picture of Velasquez, in our last exhibition. Immediately.
behind him came our excellent friend, the old German doctor, in a
full suit of sables, with spurs on his pumps, according to the ancient
physical school; and elevated many feet above the editor, on that
well-known hack the Paviour, for many years the property of Mr.
Campbell, Stabler and Vintner, Canongate. The doctor perspired
extremely, and had a Monteith handkerchief hanging over his brows
from beneath his hat, which caused him to elevate his chim conside-
rably before he could bring his ogles to bear on any inferior object.
As he pulled up, a swarm of flies went off with a loud fuz from his
veil, and then all settled again upon it, as if the queen-bummer had
been inclosed in a crany of the Monteith. I never saw an elderly
gentleman seemingly more uncomfortable; and he could only ex-
claim, “Any thing's better than this; I wish I were in the Hartz
forest.” Scarcely could I believe mine eyes, when they seemed to
behold riding together cheek by jowl, and &s like as twins, no less
personages than the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, and ‘John
the brother of Francis.” The former marked my astonishment on
perceiving him in such company ; and to divert my ideas, exclaimed,
with his usual vivacity, (there is certainly something very pleasant
in Jeffrey’s smile.) “Ha! Mullion, my good fellow ! these were
very tasty hams you sent us out to Craigcrook; as my friend ‘Na-
pier would say, I made an essay on the scope and tendency of Bacon:
nothing like repeated experiments—induction is the most satisfactory
of all modes of reasoning. I am surprised the ancients never stum-
bled upon it; though, to tell you the truth, I believe it to be as old
as the days of Häm.” All this time a very peculiar expression
played round the greater Jeffrey’s lips, which it would not be fair to
call wicked; but which certainly had in it a good deal of malice of a
small playful kind. As he glanced his hawk eyes towards the Edi-
tor, whose back was turned, because his ass insisted it should be so,
he said, in an affectionate tone of voice, “En avant, en avant, my
dear coz : I hear the wheels of the mail-coach, give little sturdy a
** See Dr. Jamieson once more. There is really no doing without the Doctor's Dictionary;
but let no man, on any account whatever, buy the Abridgment.—C. N.
TEIE SCOTSMAN. 59
touch of Peter Bell.” The ass seemed instinctively afraid of Mr.
Jeffrey’s voice, and got under weigh,
“With the slow motion of a summer cloud,”
followed by the PAVIOUR, and the more alert mags of the brother-
reviewers, which they had obvious difficulty in reining in, so as to
prevent them from passing the Editor.
But now a much more formidable Contributor presented himself,
in the person of that perfect gentleman, the SCOTSMAN.” He was
mounted on that trying animal, a mule, which had planted his fore-
feet considerably in advance, strongly backed by his hind ones,
brought up as a corps de reserve to support the first line, so that he
was intrenched in a very strong position, from which the cudgel of
the infuriated Scotsman in vain banged to dislodge him. It was a fair
match between wrath and obstimacy; and it was impossible to say which
would win the day. There were moments in which the mule seemed
to lose heart, under the murderous blows of his rider; while at other
times, the stubbornness of the wretched creature he so inhumanly be-
strode so irritated the Scotsman, that he would frequently hit his own
shins with his own cudgel, and them betray his uneasiness by the most
dismal gestures. Beside him rode that thickset, vulgar-looking person,
somewhat like a Methodist preacher, agood deal marked with the small-
pox, and well known among the town council by the name of the
Scotsman's FLUNKyf (there is no need to enrich ye with his name)
who told him “to remember his infirmity, and not to allow his pas-
sion so to get the better of him as to bring on One of his fits.” I
thought, my dear Mordecai, that the Scotsman's fits had always come
on about the same hour on the Saturdays only, but I now found that
they are not so regular as to be depended upon, and that he is often
Overtaken quite unexpectedly, and without any previous intimation.
The fit by no means improved his natural beauty and elegance—but
caused such unaccountable contortion, both of face and person, that
the Flunky himself seemed alarmed—while Dugald Macalpine, the
Pimping Caddy of the Laigh Kirk, who accompanied the procession,
was heard to exclaim, “Pure fallow, is this him that wishes to mend
the constitution? I’m sure mae burrugh's half sae rotten as his aim
breast. Gude saf us, hear how he's flitting on the Lord Provost,
Wha's worth a dizen sic like Gallowa'stots as himsel.—Hush, hush—
he's now cursan on Mr. Blackwood.—Wha's he that Dr. Morris he's
* J. R. M’Culloch, afterwards Professor of Political Economy in London University, an
now Comptroller of the Government Stationery Office, in London, was editor of the Scotsma
newspaper, in 1819, and the constant object of Maga's contempt. He contributed largely
the Edinburgh Review. Although his salary is £1200 a year, a Whig government was
º: as tº give also him a pension of £300, and, having soft it, he was so greedy as t .
accept it.—ML.
f The most opprobrious name, in Scotland, for a body-menial,—C. N.
6() CEIRISTOPEIER IN TEIE TENT.
slavering about 7 I wush him and sum ither Doctor was but here
to gie him a dose of Pheesic. O, sirs luk at the red whites o' his
e'en, a rowan’ about in his heed Hech how the tae tail o' his
mouth gangs up wi' a swurl to his ee-bree! What a lang foul
tongue's hanging out o' his jaws | Ach! siccan a girn I doubt he'el
ne'er cum about again. It’s shurely an awfu' judgment on him, for
swearin, and cursan, and dammam on ither folk.-Hech, sers, but
he'll mak a grusome corp !” *
My attention was luckily diverted from this painful spectacle by
one of the most ludicrous exhibitions you can imagine—and one
which made me feel the genius of our immortal Shakspeare (I call
him ours, Mordecai, for, after our President’s famous speech on that
great day before the Dilletanti,” Shakspeare belongs exclusively to
our society), in bringing together on the same scene the extremes of
human wretchedness, and human absurdity. For I looked, and lo!
upon a white horse sat Dr. Search; and the Dominie! I knew the
horse well, Mordecai !—a fellow of most rare action—who had run
through many a summer's heat and winter's cold in the Dunbar dilly,
but who, having become not a little spavimed of late, has degraded
from his wonted diligence, though still it would appear a hack—
“And he now carries who e'er-While but drew.”
Dr Search occupied the seat nearest the mane—and the Dominje sat
with a grim and dissatisfied face on the haunches, which, being very
high, may be likened to the two-shilling gallery in reference to the
boxes. He held desperately with one hand by the crupper, while,
with the other, he was ever and amon snatching at the reins, which he
could not bear to see in Dr. Search's hand, who, to say the truth, is
not so good a horseman as Colonel Quintin by 360 degrees. The
T]octor had a spur, I observed, on his near heel, which, short and
blunt as it was, he contrived, by repeated kicks, to indent into the
gushets of the Dominie's black worsted stockings so as to fetch blood.
The poor pedagogue implored ride and tie, but to the prayer of this
equitable petition, such is the charm of precedence, his ear the prac-
titioner would not seriously incline—and the patient had nothing for
it but to submit his leg to the search. They were clothed, “first and
last,” in black apparel, but the Dunbar hack, who is the oldest horse
that ever wore white hairs, seemed to have been rubbed over with
* “Our President” of the Dilettamti Society of Edinburgh, in 1819, was John Wilsom,-the
Christopher North of the Noctes.—M.
f For farther particulars of this learned Theban, see a pamphlet lately published by 1.im, in
reply to the aspersions of Dr. Morris on the University of Edinburgh. By-the-by, Ritson tho
antiquary was exceedingly wroth with Dr. Percy for saying “See MSS.” when such MSS. were
in the sole possession of the Bishop of Dromore himself, and perhaps our readers, on attempting
to get a sight of this erudite writer, may feel some surprise at our sending on them a wild-goose
chase. . Nevertheless, there is such a pamphlet.-C. §
f Colonel Sir George Quintin was considered to be the best cavalry officer in the British
army at this time. His daughter, an excellent equestrian, instructed Queen Victoria, how to
“witch the world with noble horsemanship.”—M.
“THE SEYEN YOUNG MEN.” * 61
some depilatory preparation, and so freely shed “his longs and his
shorts” over the two unfortunate gentlemen, most unjustifiably seated
on his back, that they were both in a very hairy condition, and the
I)ominie indeed was absolutely gray. The spectacle was not lost on
two small boys, who were enjoying the summer vacation of the
High School in the country, one of whom, like a little Triton, blew a
cow’s horn in honor of those mounted deities, and the other clapping
an immense rush fool’s-cap on his head, spouted, as if reciting for a
school-medal, that fine line in Gray's Ode,
“Ruin seize thee, ruthless king,”
while a poor old laborer, who was knapping stones on the road-side,
kept his hammer in air, aimed towards the mark at his toe, and seemed
to congratulate himself on the appearance of two persons evidently
worse off than himself, and in a more hopeless condition. As the
“Arcades ambo” ambled by, they were succeeded by a knot of per-
sons evidently attached to the procession, whom I soon perceived to
be the “Seven Young Men” of the Chaldee MS.* They wore a sort
of uniform, of which lean and shrivelled nankeen pantaloons formed
the most distinguishing part. These pantaloons had been so fre-
quently washed, that they had almost shrunk up into breeches, and
indeed, I discovered them to be pantaloons chiefly from the want of
buttons below the knees. The seven seemed all to be Knights of the
Garter—some of them sporting red worsted, but most of them tape.
The Editor had obviously distributed to each young man a pair of
unbleached thread stockings for the festival, and eke a pair of new
shoes, in which, as usual, he showed more genius than judgment, for
Sorely seemed their feet to be blistered, so that Seven lamer Young
Men did not be seen in town or country on a summer's day.
Neither did they keep the step properly, but were perpetually
treading on each other's kibes, so that they might have been traced
along the dry dust of the beaten highway, by the drops of blood that
kept oozing from their heels. To keep up their courage, they were
all singing pretty much after the fashion of a Dutch concert—and I
distinctly heard the voice of one of them quavering a sort of profane
parody on a well known English glee,
e §
“We are Seven poor Contributors,
From garret just set free,” &c.,
while, unless I am much mistaken, another breathed out, in still more
Elegiac murmurs, an imitation of Wordsworth's well-known lyrical
ballad, “We are Seven,” at the pathetic close of which I could not
but feel very much affected—
* The unfortunate Seven Young Men, were unnamed contributors to Constable's rival
Magazine, and commemorated as such, in the Chaldee Manuscript.--M.
62. CHRISTOPELER IN THE TENT.
“But still the child would bave his will,
Nay, master, ‘we are Seven.’”
But I now recollected, that the Editor had requested me to join the
party; so, as Runciman was quite fresh, I helped up several of the
Seven Young Men upon his back, and cautioning the foremost and
hindermost to take a lesson by Dr. Search and Dominie, and hold
well by the mane and crupper, at the same time quieting the fears of
him in the middle by reiterated assurances of his safety, I turned
back pretty sharply on foot, and came up with the Editor and his
advanced guard, just as they had fixed upon a spot for their encamp-
ment. I was grievously disappointed, however, on missing both the
Greater and lesser Jeffrey, who had gone on, as I was told, to pay a
visit at Hamilton Palace, to their friend Lord Archibald"—and who
had, good-naturedly, lent the party their countenance as far as the
Kirk of Shotts, being resolved to play fair by the Editor. In less
than half an hour up came the Seven Young Men, who all in one
voice returned me thanks for the use of Runciman, without whom
they verily believed they could never have reached the camp. Run-
ciman looked at me in a very quisquis sort of a way, as much as to
say, “I think nothing of the wallise, but I never bargained for the
Contributors.” There was some difficulty in getting them all off—
but by dropping down one at a time behind, Runciman's decks
were at last cleared, and he instantly testified his satisfaction, by
throwing his heels up in the air, with an agility scarcely to have been
expected from a steed of his standing at the bar. Shortly after, the
ScotsMAN and his FLUNKY, and the PIMPING CADDY, arrived—the
first with those dull, heavy, leaden eyes, and that sallow, cadaverous
face, so fearful in one just recovered from the epilepsy of passion.f
The Caddy had wished to have carried him back to the Infirmary;
but this proposal roused every feeling in the Flunky's soul, who, you
will remember, made a most eloquent speech last year about foul
bandages, and stained sheets, and crowded water-closets, and indeed
raved beyond all rational Hope. The Scotsman was, therefore, seated
on a stone, where he looked like one of those master-pieces of ancient
art—not surely the Apollo Belvidere, nor yet the Antinous—but
some solitary Satyr, exhausted by a Morris-dance; and the Editor
could only look at him with a true Christian pity, without being able
to administer to him the smallest relief.
* Lord Archibald Hamilton, brother of the late Duke of Hamilton, whose principal mansion
was in Lamarkshire, in which the Kirk o' Shotts is also situated. When Queen Caroline
came to lº ngland, a few months after this, Lady Anne Hamilton (the Tuke's sister), was her
principal--indeed her only companion of rank. The family were them very liberal in politics,
which would account for Jeffrey and his brother having sufficient intimacy as to visit ut
1Iamilton Palace.—M.
f The Scotsman's fits are certainly of the mature of epilepsy, a disease thus defined: “a com-
vulsive motion of the whole bcdy, or some of its parts, with a loss of sense.”—C. N.
THE STOT's TENT. 63
I now found that the Tent had been sent by the heavy waggon, and
had lain all night on the road-side, so that it was in a sad rumpled
condition. An attempt was, however, made to put it into some
decent kind of order; but just as we were going to hoist it, a sour
Cameronian-looking sort of a farmer came up, and sternly declared,
that the Tent should not be pitched there to “fley the stirks,” calling
us, at the same time, a set of “idle stravaiging fallows,” and threat-
ening to send for A Constable,” at which I observed the Seven Young
Men faintly smiled. We accordingly shifted our quarters higher up
the hill, and were commencing operations a second time, when a band
of shearers, Irish and Highland, were attracted by curiosity to the
Tent, and their conversation became so extremely indecent, that no
respectable set of Contributors could stand it; so we broke ground
again, and attempted a lodgment close to the Kirk of Shotts. For
Some time we were greatly annoyed by numbers of black cattle, who
returned wheeling and wheeling around us, in the language of Milton,
“Sharpening their mooned horns,”
probably attracted by the “Galloway Stot;” but they soon grew
weary of looking at us, and finally gave up the Magazine.
At last the pole was hoisted, and the canvas displayed, with the
words, “ConstABLE AND COMPANY’s EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,” in large
letters above the door, surmounted by the whole posse and esse of
Beasts. It was, however, soon but too evident, that not one of the
party knew how to pitch a tent of the description; and there was no
getting the pole to stand perpendicular, so that the ropes on one side
were a great deal too long, and on the other by much too short.
There was no deficiency of wooden pegs, but they were blunt and
pointless, and could make no impression on the hard ground of the
hill of Shotts, parched and baked as it was by two months’ drought.
The Dominie exerted himself in vain with his great maul, but he
missed the mark much oftener than he hit it, and the pegs committed
to his charge seemed the bluntest of the whole set. “I think the
tent will stand now,” said the Editor, with a dubious face and hesi-
tating voice—and the Dominie replied, “It is perfectly glorious.”
Perfectly glorious ! thought I—why it is more like an empty haggis-
bag than anything else—and as the old Scotch proverb says, “an
empty bag winna stand.” The German doctor put his back to the
pole, like Sampson carrying the gates of Gaza—but as he had shaved
that morning, his strength had departed from him, and he was like
other Contributors, so he prudently retired from the championship.
* The Seven Young Men would smile at the feeble joke, inasmuch as A. Constable, was
proprietor of the Magazine to which they supplied contributions.—M.
f. In the Chaldee Manuscript, the two editors of Constable's Edinburgh Magazine, were
spoken of as Beasts, and the same term was applied to the contributors who assisted them.— M.
64 CEIRISTOPETER IN THIE TENT.
The pole creaked ominously, and there was a continued starting of
wooden pegs—but we sat down nevertheless to a sort of lunch, com-
sisting of kibbuck” bakes” and small beer—with a small allowance
of butter to each Contributor, which, I regret to say, was very ran-
cid, melted down into a sort of lamp-oil, and thickly interspersed
with flies. There was in a hamper a large store of eggs, which had
been previously boiled—but then they had come several months
before from the Isle of Arran, and though few of them were chick.
enny, all of them were a great deal worse—some black as ink, and
others of that yellow peculiar to the pus on a long-neglected wound.
“I never smelt anything half so noxious,” said the Flunky, “but an
ulcer last year on an old woman's knee, in the Infirmary, which had
not been allowed half its allowance of rag” but here the Editor
mildly stopped the Flunky, reminding him, that the yolk of the Arran
eggs was hard enough to bear of itself, without any unnecessary ex-
aggerations. Here I very fortunately went to the door—for, some
how or other, small beer never quite agrees with me—and no sooner
had I got “sub dio” than down came CoNSTABLE AND COMPANY’s
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE about the ears of the Contributors, while such
a noise arose .
“As if the whole inhabitation perished.”
Soon as the first wild din ceased, I heard the small plaintive voice of
Dr. Search exclaiming, as if he had been under the University of
IEdinburgh, “The whole edifice is in ruins !” The Scotsman was
heard growling like a bear with a sore head—and the Dominie cried
aloud, “The pole, the pole,” though certainly the last man in the
world likely to reach it. By-and-by the Flunky rose up with a load
of canvas on his back, like a week’s sheeting of the Infirmary; and
this gave the Contributors an opportunity of escaping from thei
thraldom, and of making their appearance through the northwest
passage. The Editor and senior Doctor were dug out of the ruins
with small symptoms of animation—but the Seven Young Men, who
had lain down to sleep, escaped with a few inconsiderable bruises.
The two Caddies, Pimping Donald and Drunken Dugald, waxed very
wroth, and the former burst out, “Tamn her, what caye this? The
Scots Magazeen'. She's na worth a single doit. The bits o' rapes
that should haud her up, are a' rotten—ae pluff o' wun 'll coup her.
We maunna expec’ her to staun by hersel’—faith, hoist her up as you
wull, she'll just aye play cloit again.”
It was now obvious to all, that the Editor had taken too high
ground, and that if the company’s Tent was to be pitched at all, it
must be in a situation where it would be less exposed to sudden
* See Dr. Jamieson.—C. N.
& ‘. .
THE STOT’s TENT. 65.
flaws of wind. It was accordingly carried by the Caddies, Editor,
and the Seven Young Men, down a gentle declivity, with slow and
cautious steps, till at last they reached a deep hollow, where it was
pitched with considerable ease, the soil being bare of all vegetation,
except a sort of whitish moss, and so soft and moist that the pole
slipt in at ouce, notwithstanding the awkward interference of the
Dominie, who, in spite of the Editor's mild remonstrances, made
much needless flustering, and kept running to and fro like a wasp
without a sting, very fierce and fudgy. The Magazine was not visible
from almost any part of the adjacent country, in this sheltered hol-
low—and when every thing was properly got up, a glass of Small
beer was handed round to each Contributor; but, for the reason.
already assigned, I civilly begged leave - - -

“To kiss the cup, and pass it to the rest.”
The scene now became a good deal more cheerful. The little
Kirk of Shotts, crowning the hill, made a decent appearance—here
and there were small scanty spots of Oats and barley, that had, how-
ever, got all the ripening they were ever to have—and small insig-
nificant cocks of rushy hay stood pertly enough in various directions.
Rather unluckily there was in the Tent a nest of humble bees—of
that brown irritable sort called “foggies”—which were far from
being agreeable contributors, and some of them took a violent antip-
athy to the Dominie, entangling themselves in his black sleek hair,
and thereby sorely aggravating the natural irritability of his temper.
A curlew (Scottice whawp) uttered its wild cry from a neighboring
marsh, and a lapwing (Scottice pease-weep), afraid that the Edi-
tor intended to rob her nest, kept wheeling round and round the
tent, and then trundled herself off, with seemingly broken legs and
wings, to the strong temptation of Dr. Search, who, getting nettled,
made one of his injudicious Sallies from the Magazine in chase of her,
but came down on his breech in a wet marshy spring, with a squash
that was heard in the interior of the Tent, and brought out the Do-
minie with a copy of Potter's Translation of Æschylus in his dexter
hand, to know what had resulted. Dr. Search did not recover his
Serenity during the whole afternoon, but kept
“Pacing about the moors continually,”—
with his hand on the part that was more sinned against than sinning
—extending the wet cloth a few inches from the skin, and with a
rueful face watching the progress of the drying, which, from the low
situation of the place affected, and of the Tent, was long and tedious.
The Contributors were beginning to bite their nails for want of
WOL. I.-7.
66 CEIRISTOI’ETER IN TELE TENT.
something to do or think, when the Flunky, who had gone down to
the high-road to see the mail-coach pass by, returned with a parcel
of letters, all addressed to the Editor, which, being on the public
business of Tent or Magazine, were read aloud by him in an agreea-
ble, but somewhat mouthing manner.
I.
DEAR SIR,--I am so busy with my discoveries in Asia, that I cannot come to
the Kirk of Shotts. Besides, I think there is going to be a change of weather—
and as I have slept in the Tent formerly, when it was in much better repair than
now, I really cannot bring my mind to think of risking my health in it, it being
said to have so many chinks. Pitch it in a lone place, and be sure you all sleep
together to windward. Yours, very sincerely, FI. M.3%
Eacise Office, August 28th.
II,
MY DEAR SIR,-My professional duties will prevent me from joining the Mag-
azine at present. Beside, you know I have all along been against this scheme of
the Tent. It is too obvious an imitation of our good friends in Princes' street,
and you really ought not, my worthy sir, to steal from Dr. Morris, and at the
same time abuse him, as I was truly sorry to see you doing in your last Number.
Depend upon it, that some confounded Chaldee MS. or other will be coming out
to put you all into hot water. I am, my dear sir, yours ever.
College Library.
sº III. -
SIR,--It won't pay. Yours, W. H.;
P. S.—Reynolds is off. -
Chapter Coffee-House, London, August 24th.
IV.
DEAR SIR,-Gude faith, I maun mind the shop, ma man. Yours, however,
The Corner. * D. B., Junior.f
* H. M. was intended for Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling, Man of the
World, Julia de Roubigné, &c. Mr. Pitt made him Comptroller of the Taxes in Scotland,
which he held until his death in 1831, at the advanced age of 85.-M.
i W. H. indicalled William Hazlitt, against whom—as a friend of Leigh Hunt's, a con-
tributor to the Ezaminer and Edinburgh Review, and an avowed liberal—Maga waged war
from 1817 until his death, in 1830. John Hamilton Reynolds was brother-in-law of Thomas
Hood. In 1819, he was a sprightly contributor to Taylor and Hessey's London Magazine. He
wrote a pretty poem, called The Garden of Florence, ſounded on a story from Boccaccio, and a
curious volume entitled Poetical Remains of Peter Corcoran,—the said Peter having been an
illiterate prize-fighter. , Mr. Reynolds followed the profession of the law, which occupied him
SO ºnal for years before his death, (which took place in 1852), he had not written for any
periodical.
l # D. B., Junior, was a certain David Bridges, who had a clothier's shop in the High-street,
Iödinburgh, and with great taste for the Fine Arts, and extensive acquaintance with artists, had
contrived to make a very curious and valuable collection of paintings, drawings, sketches,
engravings, and etchings, together with many fine casts from the antique. . As Secretary
of the Dilettamti, he was intimate with Wilson, Lockhart, and the rest of the Blackwood
writers, (most of whom were in membership), and himself and his collection are duly noticed
in Peter’s Letters.—M.
TEUE SHOOTING MATCH. 67
W.
MR, EDIroR.—Honored Sir-I have got a sore head, having been at a Mason
Lodge last night. But I will take care to send you the second canto of the Sil-
liad, when you come back. I return you many thanks for the guinea. I am,
honored sir, your grateful Contributor, WILLISON GLASS.*
Please show the following card to the gentlefolks.
Card to the public.
An ordinary every lawful day at 2 o'clock—cow-heel, tripe, liver, and lights,
(and a bottle of small beer between every two), for 5%d. Also, on sale a volume
of Poems, price 3 shillings; to which is now added, an appendix, containing the
Silliad, Canto I, published in the last Number of Constable and Company's Edin-
burgh Magazine. The succeeding Cantos, which I am fast writing for that cele-
brated work, will be delivered gratis to the 8 shilling subscribers. Performed
by me, - WILLISON GLASS.
These apologies threw a considerable damp over the Tent, but, in
imitation of Odoherty and his companions, it was now proposed
to have a shooting match. I had not previously observed any
arms or ammunition about the party, who indeed seemed inoffensive
and altogether defenceless—but drunken Dugald now handed out the
weapons, and the match was decided as follows. The Scotsman
pulled out of a dirty bag (in which he carried his spare shirt) a copy
of Peter's Letters—
“Aye me ! that e'er green Mona'sł skeely childe,
Should draw the breath impure of paynim dungeon wilde l’
and bellowed out, in a voice like that of an ox with a bull-dog hang-
ing by his lips, “Curse him, damn him, blast him;” but here the
Flunky stept up, and beseeched the “Mull of Galloway” to remem-
ber the state he was in only a few hours ago, and that two fits in one
day would infallibly carry him off. The three extended volumes of
Dr. Morris were accordingly put up at the distance of 20 yards,
forming a line of about 3% feet long and 1 broad. The Editors and
Contributors were drawn up en potence by drunken Dugald, who had
once served in the sea fencibles, Aberdeen, but a more awkward
squad I never clapped eyes upon; and when they came to the
“shoulder,” some of them threw up their pieces into the right hand,
and some into the left, so that there was great confusion, and the
Dominie and Dr. Search actually exchanged weapons for a few mo-
ments, like Hamlet and Laertes in the play.
* Willison Glass, as may be moticed, kept a small inn, the familiar name of which in Scot-
land is “a public.” IIe compounded better punch than poetry—the latter being doggerel.-M.
* This quotation from Spenser is very well in Hugh Mullion, for the family of Dr. Morris
came, originally, from Anglesea.—C. N. |
t The sobriquet of authorship under which “Peter's Letters to his Kimsfolk” appeared. The
name of the work was probably suggested by Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, published in 1815,
in which Scott described his visit to Belgium and France, immediately after the final downfall
of Napoleon.—M. * . . . *.
68 CTIRISTOPIIER IN TELE TENT.
Trial on the 25th, at 20 yards distance, all shooting with No. 4 (eaccept the Scots-
man, who used rusty nails, bits of glass, and broken types), at the ea.panded three
Volumes of Dr. Peter Morris, of Pensharpe Hall, Aberystwith. " . . . .
Wadding. Shot. IGrains Leaves
- - • - - | Oz. |put im, pierced.
Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....] Old Sermon. # - || 0 O
1. Trial, found not to be charged - -
2. Hung fire. . . . . . . . • - - - - - - - .
3. Flashed in the pan. . . . . . . . .
4. Went off accidentally. . . . . . .
5. Missed... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - -
German Doctor...... • * * * * * * ... Gardener's grass. # | Ditto. Ditto. .
Flunky.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . Foul linen. 2} | Ditto. Ditto.
Scotsman, gun recalled. . . . . . . . Ditto. 5. Ditto. Ditto.
Dr. Search... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Foolscap. # I Ditto.
Dominie, blunderbuss burst.....|Title-page of the 5 Ditto. Ditto.
- 1st edit. of Cona,
Seven Young Men, pop-gun... . . . None. # lb. pease. 130 || 0


It was a hopeless effort—and one of the Seven wise men (I beg his
pardon), one of the Seven Young Men proposed a trial at 10 yards;
but this was objected to by another of them, as the shot would be
like one ball. He then proposed to extend the distance to 30 yards,
when their pieces would scatter more widely—and accordingly
Peter's Letters were removed by them to a still higher elevation.
But just as Dr. Search was going to fire, his eye caught that of the
well-pleased, intelligent physician of Aberystwith, and suddenly shut-
ting his eyes very hard, as frightened as a volunteer on a field-day,
he let fly, and missed the whole concern by at least twenty yards.
Just as the Dominie was going to fire, the honest face of the Ettrick
Shepherd guffawed to him from the comely octavo, as if he was laugh-
ing to scorn the Tent, and all the helpless creatures about its gates,
and the pedagogue's gun, which he had borrowed from the Scotsman,
dropped from his hand, - -
Inutile telum.
The Editor's turn came next, but just as he was taking aim, the calm,
thoughtful, philosophical countenance of Mr. Alison beamed from
the book,” and at its
Et tu, Brute,
the Editor went to the right about, and walked undischarged into the
Tent. The Scotsman then took his station, but the recoil of his
piece, on the former trial, had swollen his right cheek to an enormous
size and ugliness, so that he was constrained to take aim from the
left side, and had nearly committed fratricide on one of the stirks
grazing in the minister's glebe. The Flunky and others gave up in
*The Portraits in Peter’s I,etters.--M.
TELE PILGIRIMAGE ENDED. . - '69
despair; and Dr. Morris, invulnerable to the banditti into whose
hands he had fallen, was recommitted a prisoner to the Scotsman's
dirty bag, from which I hope he will escape ultimately, without either
infection or vermin. . -
It was now beginning to get rather chill in this high situation, and
the Shott's shower came drifting by, so we sought shelter in our Tent.
But never was anything so uncomfortable. A sort of fire had been kin-
dled in it, and drunken Dugald had been at his pipe—so it was filled
with smoke, through whose darkness visible frowned at times the un-
comely face of the Scotsman. It was also very wet beneath foot; and
how, or on what, we were to pass the night, must have been a trying
thought to all of us. It soon began to rain in good earnest, a down-
right plumper, and the water came in as through a sieve. I said nothing,
but went out and found Runciman with his haunches pressed close to
the leeside of the Tent, imploring shelter. I clapped the saddle and wal-
lise on him, and mounted. Never was a horse happier. He set off at a
round trot, and I soon got to Mid-Calder, where I shifted, and made
myself comfortable over a jug of toddy with the landlord, who had
observed the pilgrimage pass by, and felt much for their helpless
condition when the storm should come on. I afterwards understood,
that a message had been sent from the Tent to the Manse imploring
a night's lodging; but the excellent minister and his lady were from
home, and the servant-lasses would not, on any account, admit any
but the “Seven Young Men,” who looked so cold and innocent that
they were taken to the kitchen fireside, and, after a bellyful of butter-
milk brose, were shown the door of the barn—but the rest passed a
plashy might in the Tent. I am frightened to look back at the length
of this enormous letter—crossed and re-crossed like a field in Spring
with the harrow. But you are a good decipherer—so, hoping you
will pardom all this nonsense, which is at least perfectly good-natured,
I am, dear Mordy, your affectionate brother,
HUGH MULLION,
Provision Warehouse, Grass-market, Sept. 1.
Most of us were greatly entertained with this odd letter of Hugh
Mullion, though perhaps all its allusions were not understood by
more than two or three of the party, of which number we frankly
confess that we ourselves were not. To Seward and Buller it
seemed wholly unintelligible, though they both continued listening
to the broad patois of Mordy with most laudable perseverance; the
first occasionally exclaiming, “Cursed witty, 'pon my soul, you
Scotch people, if a Christian could comprehend ye;” and the latter
as doggedly attentive as a man to a sermon in the incipient stage of
drowsiness; while Price and Tims, who seemed quite alarmed at the
mystery, took an opportunity of going out of the Tent, with the
'70 CEIRISTOPETER IN THE TENT. .
avowed design of bathing Randal and Flash in the Dee, these two
tykes for some time having sorely interrupted the letter-reader by
that desperate Smuzzling of mouth and mostril which accompanies an
unsuccessful flea-hunt. But though the Oxonians were not initiated
into these mysteries of the Cabiri, they were highly delighted with
the spirited sketch of the pilgrimage—and Buller, who, with all his
gravity and taciturnity, is evidently a wag in his way, put himself.
into an attitude, when sitting behind Seward on the head of the whis-
ky-cask, most ludicrously imitative of the Dominie, -
“Alike—but, ob how different.”
“Pray, Mordy,” said Dr. Morris, “have you in good faith a bro-
ther called Hugh, or is this letter all a quiz?” “It is exceedingly
good to hear you talk of quizzing,” replied Mordecai–“ but do you
know, Doctor, that many people in Edinburgh maintain that you—
even you yourself—are a fictitious character altogether, and that
John Watson's picture is not a copy of, but absolutely the original
and only Dr. Morris. You are a mere man of canvas, Doctor, and
that pawky face and skeely skull of yours, so like flesh, blood, and
bone, is, I am credibly informed, nothing but a mixture of oil-colors,
and that you were begotten, carried forward, born and bred, all in
about three sittings.” Dr. Morris, who is much given to laugh at
others, was somewhat disconcerted by this attack on his very exist-
ence, and Tickler recommended him to institute a prosecution against
those who absolutely were attempting to deprive him, not of the
means of subsistence, for that was a mere trifle, but of a body to be
subsisted.—“If,” continued Tickler, “you be indeed a fictitious cha-
racter, you are the most skilful imitation of a human being that I ever
met with in daylight. You think nothing of eating a brace of grouse
and a pound of branxy to your breakfast—indeed, always saving and
excepting our Editor, I will back you to eat against the whole Tent
—and as for the mountain dew, ye sip it like a second Ettrick Shep-
herd. Come, tell us frankly at once, are you, Or are you not, a ficti-
tious character 7” Hogg chuckled to hear his friend Morris roasted;
“for,” quoth he, “Pate is aye playing off his tricks on me and my
fiznomie; and though I’m as good-natured a chield as maist folks,
deil tak me gim I dinna turn about some day on him and some mair o'
you daft blades, and try gin I canna write a Chaldee MS. Gray was
doing a' he could to put me up to it a gay while syne, but gin I do't
at a' I’ll do’t o' mysell, and no for mane o’ his gab–for he's just gaen
a’ hyte thegither, 'cause Dr. Morris there didna clap him in amang
the leeterawti.”—Dr. Morris had by this time recovered himself, and
he observed, that on a question of this mature he could scarcely be
admitted as a witness, still less as a judge. Yet he must be allowed
to say, that the charge of nonentity brought against him was far from
SCRIBBLE's EPISTLE. - 71
being handsome in the Whigs of Edinburgh, to whose existence he
had not scrupled to bear the most honorable testimony. “Pray,”
added the Doctor, “is Mr. Jeffrey a fictitious character 2 Is Pro-
fessor Leslie a fictitious character 3 Nay, to come nearer home, is
Mr. Wastle here a fictitious character'? I am confident that every
candid person will at once reply in the negative. Why, therefore,
not admit me to the same privilege?
“Though fame I slight, nor for her favors call,
I come in person, if I come at all.”
The point being at last conceded to the eloquent physician, Mr.
Seward rose from the cask with his usual grace, and threw over to
us a letter, written in a large gnostic sprawling hand, on massy hot-
pressed paper, and enclosed in a franked envelope, with a splash of
wax as broad as a china saucer, which he said we were at liberty to
read, now that the Cockneys were hunting the Naiads, swearing us
at the same time to silence, as from the irascible temper of Tims,
who had lately been within an ace of swallowing the Standard-bearer,
he could not hope to return to his rooms in Peck-water,” were that
illustrious Luddite to discover the nature of his correspondence with
old Scribble.
To HARRY SEWARD, ESQ.
Bedford Coffee-House, Sept. 1, 1819.
I PITY you sincerely, my dear friend, amongst those Scottish sav-
ages. You are like Theseus amongst the Centaurs. Buller himself
seems to be undergoing a sort of metempsychosis, and his transform-
ation begins at the stomach. He is, probably, by this time, a wolf.
As to those two anomalous instances of humanity, those Weaklings
of the City, I really expect that—they will be devoured in the first
dearth of game, and that Tims, being found too meagre even for soup,
will be cast as “bones” to those lean and hungry quadrupeds who
follow the march of your frightful army. Everything with you
seems to wear the same face; from the “imber edax” to the camines
themselves.
Well, here I am, the victim of leisure and hot weather. I am
waiting my uncle's arrival from Paris, and my only consolation is,
that I am at least on duty. I struggle through the day in the most
pitiable perplexity, laboring from hour to hour to be amused and
amusing in vain. I even suspect that I shall infuse a portion of my
languor into this my epistle to you. I don’t know how the devil the
Women contrive to get on, but there is a spirit of perversity about
them now and then, which supplies the place of animal strength.
* Mr. Seward has since condescended to inform us that Peek-water is the mame of one of the
quadrangles (or, as he terms them, quads) of Christ-Church, Oxford.—C. N.
72 CEIRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
The male performers at the Lyceum have evidently been unable to
go through three pieces each night; so the women started (all fillies
as for the “Oaks”), and ran over the ground alone. This is a piece
of impudence on the part of the petticoats which deserves something
more than mere remonstrance. Miss Kelly, to be sure, stands out
as a fine concentration of the male species (she is the only approxi-
mation to the sex), and “serves you out” with a due portion of talk,
in order to do justice to her corporate capacity. Mrs. Chatterly,
too, is a pleasant evidence of loquacious frailty; and Miss Stevenson,
with only one character to support, has a sort of double-tongued
attainment, which she puts forth in a way prepossessingly earnest.
We feel convinced, at once, that Mr. Ashe is by no means the only
person who can perform a duet on one instrument.
I lament, sincerely, that you haven’t got your gloves with you ;
otherwise you might take the conceit out of Mister Price, and abolish
Tims altogether, the one for affecting the gentleman, and the other
for imitating man at all. - -
Tims —there is a monosyllabic thinness in the name that stands in
the place of the most elaborate comment. It has no weight upon the
tongue, and sounds like the essence of nothing. It scarcely amounts
to “thin air;” and when one strives to elevate it to the dignity of a
word, one feels a consciousness that the attempt is presumptuous and
vain. The letters seem scarcely the legitimate offspring of the alpha-
bet. They have, collectively, none of the softness of the vowel, and
none of the strength of the consonant: but seem to be at the halfway
house between meaning and absurdity. The name (pronounce it)
sounds like the passing buzz of a drome. It is like a small and ill-
favored number in the lottery, which seems predestined to be a blank
from the beginning. I see Tims “the shadow” before me; and when
ever, for the future, I shall quote the saying of the mighty Julius, I
will say, “Aut Caesar, aut Tims ſ” - -
And then you tell me of Mister Price. I admirc your ingenious
note about dandies, but the subject is stale, and I cannot revive it.
He seems of the same intellectual stature with his friend, but he has
more of the leaven of mortality about him. This seems to be the
sole distinction between them—one appears to be a vehicle for want
of meaning, and the other cannot claim to be even anything. The
utterance of the name of “Price” leaves the lips in a state of suspen-
sion, and as it were consideration, which alone gives him claim to
some attention. One says, almost mechanically, “Price ſ”—“What
Price º’—any Price —no Price. The fall is like that of the stocks
in stormy times, except that the name is scarcely worth a “specula-
tion.”
Talking of gloves, as Mr. Aircastle would say, puts me in mind
THE RING, - 73
of the real thing, of which gloves are but the representatives.* Cy
Davis has retrieved his fame. IIe has committed a sort of conquest
upon a gentleman from the “Emerald Isle,” whose genius was any-
thing but pugilistic. They met at Moulsey; the collision was striking
enough, but altogether in favor of Cº. Your friends are wrong about
Donelly. He did not “go immediately to Brighton.” I saw him
at Riddlesdown about three hours after his victory, as it has been
i.". called (he was within an ace of getting a drubbing), and I
heard Shelton invite him very civilly to a renewal of the sport in
two or three months' time. “Sir Daniel,” however, seemed to have
more than, enough of conquest, and sported forbearance. He is a
heavy, awkward fellow, and beat, by mere accident, Oliver, who is
much lighter than himself, and the slowest hitter in the ring. “Mr.
Daniel,” before the battle, affected to be sorry for poor “Oliver, on
account of his family—becase he should bate him so asily / /?” But
what is all this to you, who, it seems, put forth your Oxford fruit in
a foreign land, and reduce the Coliseum to couplets.
By-the-by, if Buller should go on blundering at the birds as in the
olden time, he will stand a good chance of getting a coup de grace
from one or other of your new friends. Perhaps Mr. Odoherty may
“do the honors,” or the task may be confided to the “shepherd's
dog,” in one of those snug dells which occur frequently among the
mountains. Mr. Odoherty is a pleasant exotic, who would run wild
in any soil. Give my compliments to him ; and say that, for Dr.
Morris, his visage, and his craniology, I profess to entertain the most
profound respect. *
I have scarcely room to say that I am, as usual, yours very sin-
cerely, - FREEMAN SCRIBBLE.
At the conclusion of this epistle, the Ettrick Shepherd asked Sew-
ard, with more asperity than we recollect ever before to have seen
him exhibit, “Wha that Scribble ane had in his ee when he tauked
o' Scottish savages?” Seward, who had long taken a strong liking
to the Shepherd, gave him the most reiterated assurances that there
was nothing personal in the remark, but that, on the contrary, it ap-
plied to the Editor and all the Contributors indiscriminately—with
which satisfactory explanation the Bard seemed quite contented.
Nothing could be more delightful than to witness the friendship of
those two great men. We had been informed in the morning, by
jº
* A promising plant of the Bristol Garden. He was beat by Turmer, and it was thought by
some, that he fought shy of the Welshman’s left-hand--but tºother day, he smashed Bushnel,
the little Irish Ajax, like so much crockery-ware. Cy. is a good hitter—but he is fond of
having things his own way, and is thought to pay a compliment better than he receives one.
But who is perfect 3–C. N. [Cy, or Cyril Davies, was a professional prize-fighter. So was
Shelton, and so was Donelly, commonly called “Sir Damiel,” on his own report that, after he
fought and beat Oliver, in July, 1819, he was invited to meet the Prince Regent, at Brighton,
where he received the honor of Kuighthood —M.] -
74 C[[IRISTOPHER IN THE TENT,
Tickler, that during our absence Hogg and Seward were insepa."
rable. The Shepherd recited to the Oxonian his wild lays of fairy
superstition, and his countless traditionary ballads of the olden time
—while the Christ-Church man, in return, spouted Eton and Oxford
Prize Poems, –some of them in ºatin, and, it was suspected, one or
two even in Greek, -greatly to the illumination, no doubt, of the
Pastoral Bard. Hogg, however, frankly informed his gay young
friend, “that he could na thole college poetry, it was a sae desperate
stupid. As for the Latin and Greek poems, he liked them week
enough, for it was na necessary for ony body to understand them ;
but for his ain part, he aye wished the English anes to hae just some
wee bit inkling o' meaning, and, on that account, he hated worse o'
a’ them that Seward called by the curious name o’ Sir Roger New-
digates.” Deel tak me,” quoth the Shepherd, “gin the Sir Rogers
binna lang supple idiots o' lines, no worthy being set up in teeps.”
“Similitude in Dissimilitude” is the principle of friendship as well
as, according to Mr. Wordsworth, of poetry—and certainly, while
Hogg and Seward resembled each other in frankness, joviality, good
humor, generosity, and genius, there is no denying that the shades
of difference in their appearance, dress, and manners, were very per-
ceptible. Seward was most importunate on the Shepherd to get him
to promise a visit to Oxford, where, with his light sky-blue jacket and
white hat, he would electrify the Proctors. Nay, the Englishman
went so far as to suggest the propriety of the Shepherd's entering
himself at one of the Halls, where gentlemen, by many years his
senior, sometimes come to revive the studies of their youth—and
“who knows,” said Seward, “my dear chum, if the Ettrick Shepherd
may not one day or other be the Principal of St. Mary’s Hall.”
The Shepherd replied with his usual naivete, that he “preferred re-
maining the Principal of St. Mary's Loch ;” at which piece of plea-
santry Buller himself, though a severe critic of jokes, condescended
to smile, somewhat after the manner of Dr. Hodgson.f -
We took up a little parcel, which had been forwarded to us from
Edinburgh, and found it to contain some very beautiful verses by
Mrs. Hemans, on a subject that could not but be profoundly inter-
esting to the soul of every Scotsman. Our readers will remember,
that about a year ago, a truly patriotic person signified his intention
of giving £1,000 towards the erection of a monument to Sir William
Wallace. At the same time, he proposed a prize of £50 to the best
Poem on the following subject—“ The meeting of Wal?ace and Bruce

* The prize contended for at Oxford, by under-graduates, for the best poem on a given
subject, was founded by Sir Roger Newdigate, whose name it bears. It happens that Heber
Wilson, and Milman, are about the only true poets who have obtained this prize within th
last half century.— M. .
t *:: was the Rev. Dr Frodsham Hodgson, them Principal of Brazenose College, Ox-
ord.—M. -
JBERZELIUS PENDRAGON. - 75
on the Banks of the Carron.” This prize was lately adjudged to
Mrs. Hemans, whose poetical genius has been for some years well
known to the public, by those very beautiful poems, “Greece,” and
“The Restoration of the Works of, Art to Italy.”—Our pages have
already been graced with some of her finest verses—witness that
most pathetic Elegy on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, which
first appeared in our Miscellamy. It was with much pleasure that
we lately observed, in that respectable journal, the Edinburgh
Monthly Review, a very elegant critique on a new volume of Mrs.
Hemans, entitled “Tales and Historic Scenes,” with copious ex-
tracts; and when we mentioned in the Tent, that Mrs. Hemans had
authorized the judges, who awarded to her the prize, to send her
poem to us, it is needless to say with what enthusiasm the proposal
of reading it aloud was received on all sides, and at its conclusion
what thunders of applause crowned the genius of the fair poet.
Scotland has her Baillie—Ireland her Tighe-England her Hemans.”
We now took up, with great satisfaction, a small packet, the su-
perscription of which was evidently in the hand-writing of our old
worthy friend, Dr. Berzelius Pendragon. The Doctor, though now
a shining star of the Episcopalian Church, had not been originally
destined for holy orders, and for some years bore the comm...ission of
surgeon in the 1st regiment of the West-York Militia. On its re-
duction he naturally enough turned his thoughts to divinity; and
having, at the age of fifty, got a curacy worth £80, at least, per
annum—he, being a bachelor, may be said to have been in easy, if
not affluent circumstances. Just on reaching his grand climacteric
he fell into matrimony, and the cares of an infant family, ensuing, he
very judiciously took boarders and wrote for reviews. The board-
ers, however, being all north-countrymen, and thence voracious,
over-eat the terms; and the reviews paid only £2 2s. per sheet of
Original matter, where extracts were of no avail. Having heard of
Our Magazine—as indeed who has not ?—he came down into Scot-
* Joanna Baillie, author of Plays on the Passions, and Felicia. Hemams, the lyric poet, are
too well known to require particular notice here. The name of Mrs. Tighe is less known.
She was the lovely and accomplished wife of an Irish gentleman, and was herself a daugh-
ter of Erin. She wrote a beautiful poem, in the Spenserian stanza, entitled “Psyche,” which
did not appear until after her death. The touching lyric on “The Grave of a Poetess,” was
written by Mrs. Hemans, in view of her last resting-place, and ome of Moore's Irish Melodies,
(“I saw thy Form in Youthful Prime,”) was suggested by her early death. There was as
much truth as poetry, if all that is related of Mrs. Tighe be true, in the concluding stanza,
If souls could always dwell above,
Thou me'er hadst left that sphere ;
Or could we keep the souls we love,
We ne'er had lost thee here, Mary
Though many a gifted mind we mièet,
Though fairest forms we see, -
To live with them is far less sweet,
Than to remember thee, Mary'
Moore admits that, in the closing lines, he endeavored to imitate that exquisite inscription
cf Shenstone's, “Heu ! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminesse !”—M.
76 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
land in 1818, and took up his abode with Ben Waters.” . No man over
so looked the Contributor as the Rev. Berzelius Pendragon (for at
that time he had no degree); and we accordingly put him into train-
ing in Constable's Magazine, to see as it were what he could do there
with the mufflers, before we ventured to back him in a real stand-up
fight. His first performances were promising; and his account of a
wonderful American animal, twenty feet high, and with soles three
yards in circumference (under the fictitious signature of Serjeant
Pollock, Blantyre), attracted considerable notice among the natural-
1sts of the united kingdoms. Unfortunately, in the farther prosecu-
tion of that animal, he committed himself by some allusion to Sir
Joseph Banks, who was then too ill to be taking that active interest
in the mastodonton (so the creature of Pendragon's imagination was
called) attributed to him ; and the suspicions of the sapient Editor
having been awakened, he very considerately wrote to Dr. Hodgson
of Blantyre for a certificate of Serjeant Pollock's existence. The
Serjeant of course turned out to be as completely a fictitious animal
as the mastodonton himself, and the soles of his feet precisely of the
same dimensions; and of course a very striking anatomical sketch of
the latter, which Berzelius had drawn for Constable, was committed
to the flames, and the very paper bones of the formidable monster
reduced to ashes. Pendragon, however, had acquired reputation by
this set-to, and he was matched against the Bagman (See Number
for August, 1818), whom he beat with apparent ease; though we
confess, that during the battle he attempted more than one blow of
dubious character, which the Bagman, who is a fine spirited lad,
agreed to overlook. - -
His fame getting wind, the Senatus Academicus of the University
of Glasgow, in the handsomest manner, conferred upon him the
unsolicited degree of D.D., and rarely has it been by them so judi-
ciously bestowed. From this time, our friend Pendragon, who had
been previously noted for a sort of dry humor, that in days of old
was wont to set the mess-table of the West-York Militia in a roar,
became somewhat grave and formal—nay, even pompous and aphor-
* TXen Waters kept a tavern in Edinburgh. much frequented by “young men about town.”
. Odoherty, who celebrated his praise and that of Bill Young, at whose hostelree the Dilettamti
used to meet, speaks of Waters, as
“charming Ben,
Simplest and stupidest of men.”
Young and Waters, with their laureate, have passed away and are among the things which
have been.—M :
t 'This was an amusing review of two works simultaneously published in London, in 1817.
One was “Letters, from the North Highlands.” by Elizabeth Isabella Spence; the other,
“Letters from Scotland, by an English Connmercial Traveller.” It is difficult to say which
was most amusing—from sheer absurdity. The lady intensely admired every thing Scottish
the gentleman turned up his mosé at every thing which was not from “I,um’um.” Blackwocò
seized the tit-bits of each book, and rnade a “righte merry and delichtful” article from them.
concluding with a suggestion, that the Travelling Spinster and the Literary Bagman should
1narry. The article excited much amusernent at the time, (by the way, it sold off two editions
of the books and is often referred to in Blackwood.—M.
* ...,
&
AT AMIBROSE'S. 77
istical——so that he reminded us very much of Dr. Sleath, the present
head-master of St. Paul's School, London, formerly of Rugby. He
is, however, a truly worthy man—“a man of morals and of manners
too;” and our readers will be happy to be informed, that what with
“the annual comings-in of a small benefice,” (such are some words
in The Excursion,) and what with our ten guineas per sheet, the
Doctor and Mrs. Pendragon contrive to make the ends meet very
comfortably, and likewise to support a family which bids fair to
emulate in numbers that of the greatest productive laborer of this
economical age—the President of the Board of Agriculture After
this slight and imperfect sketch of Berzelius Pendragon, D.D.—for
he was not known to the whole conclave—we did not fear to read
aloud the following article on
PYNE's IIISTORY OF THE ROYAL RESIDENCES.”
IT is quite possible to have too much of a good thing. This may
be considered as a somewhat trite and elderly remark, to proceed
from the pen of one of our (collectively speaking) original and erratic
divan. But fortunately for the existence and well-being of that at
present flourishing fratermity, there yet remains amongst them one
sober, staid, and quietly disposed gentleman—one true-bred and
thoro’-paced Reviewer of the old school—in short, that anonialy in
our little museum of natural history at Ambrose's, “a married man
between fifty and sixty.” By-the-by, that “obscure man,” the
Editor, seems, during our absence from the shooting party on the
twelfth of August, to have entirely forgotten us. But we do not
wonder at it—for the whole party frequently forget us even in our
very presence, when we are sitting in due state over our pint of
London porter, after supper at AIHºbrose's—listening to, or at least
hearing, their enormous jokes. And yet there is nothing very
strange in this, for, to disclose one of the “secrets of the prison-
house,” they sometimes, on these occasions, forget themselves.
But observe the effect of “evil communication " The perpetual
example of these flighty fellow-laborers of ours has actually betrayed
O g & - º tº t -
us, Berzelius Pendragon, D.D. f into the unpardonable indecorum of
departing from the straight road which we had prescribed to our
selves.
* Printed for A. Dry, London. 1819. 3 vols. 4to. 24 guineas.--C. N. . [This was what is called
“a skit,” in the manner, introduced in Maga, of throwing a great deal of personal allusions
into its critical articles. Mr. Pyne, actually did produce a work on the Royal Residences in
Great Britain.—M.]
f It may be well to state that one of our brethren (the reader will guess which), knowing no
better, interpreted this D.D. Doctor of Decorum ; alluding probably to our increasing, though
too frequently ineffectual, eſſorts to preserve that propriety of conduct at our meetings without
which a society of literati are little better than a society of other people. Ever since that
time, though there are several other doctors among us, we have been styled TIE DocToR, par
excellence, Perhaps they give us this title as a quiz, but we take it as a compliment.—B. P.
78 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
We were about to observe, that if it were not for a Contributor of
the kind we have described ourselves to be, capable and willing to
throw in a measure of salutary dulness now and them, by way of
ballast,--the vessel would very soon upset, or be blown clean out of
the water. With all our sober and constitutional views on politics,
properly so-called, yet we are fain to confess, that there is nothing like a
republican form of government in societies like ours. Or perhaps iſ
should rather be called an oligarchy. In short, let it be anything rather ,
than a monarchy; for in three months that would inevitably degenerate
into a flat despotism. Think, for a moment, of our Miscellany being
governed or conducted by any one among our numerous, and, in
their own departments and their own opinions, highly gifted frater-
nity why, instead of being, as it is now, a perpetual “Magazin de
Nouveautés,” a perfect “Theatre de Variétés,”—it would instantly
be recast in the mould of the self-love of him into whose hands it
might fall, and become, like the walls of Carlisle prison, all of a
color, and very hard to get through. -
For example:—If the conduct of our work were resigned to Dr.
Morris, does any one who knows that worthy Welshman doubt that,
notwithstanding his natural acuteness and love of variety, he would
be tempted to make it subserve to the aggrandizement of (whatever
he may say or swear to the contrary) his favorite study ? All its fea-
tures would be changed. The four sides of the cover, instead of exhi-
biting the philosophical and philanthropic physiognomy which has been
mistaken for that of Mr. Blackwood himself—and the interesting
and instructive advertisements of books published by “John Murray
and William Blackwood,” or “William Blackwood and John
Murray,” would be occupied by a front, a back, and two side views.
of the human skull divine, forming, together, a complete atlas of the
geography of the four different quarters of that (in his opinion)
celestial globe.” And the internal arrangements would undergo a
change no less calculated to “perplex the mations;” for the doctor
would certainly convert it into a kind of log-book, to record the dis-
coveries he has made, and intends to make, in his late and future
expeditions to examine the regions about the North Pole. -
Would the work be better off under the sole guidance of any other
among us? Alas! mo, Kempferhausen would inflate it into a huge
paper-balloon, to go up into the clouds monthly, and carry messages
between him and his lady, the moon. Wastle would make it all
whyme—which is bad enough ; and Lauerwinkle all reason—which is
worse. Nay, we shall candidly confess—(for candor is our foible)—
d
* The medallion portrait of George Buchanan, the Scottish historian and poet, actually had
been taken, in certain dark parts of Scotland, as a representation of Black wood or Kit North.
In “Peter's Letters,” the pseudo-Dr Morris affected to be an enthusiastic disciple of Phre.
mology, a science of recent discovery in 1819.-M.
T*.
THE TWELVE CAESARS. - 79
that if we ourselves had the management of it, it would probably be
very little better than Constable's,
Even if Odoherty—the inexhaustible and immortal Odoherty—(I
call him “immortal”—for it appears that he has hitherto escaped
unhurt from Waterloo, an Irish widow, and whisky punch,) even if
he were to undertake the care, it would certainly fail—for he would
make it anything, which is nothing. That is to say, he would “make
nothing of it.” Or if he did, it would be only fun —And if one
could conceive an ocean formed all of whisky toddy—(nothing but
the antique imagination of the Ettrick Shepherd, or the antic one of
Odoherty, could conceive such a thing)—it would probably be quite
as unpleasant and as unprofitable to be drowned in that as in one of
common salt-water.
No. If we regard the welfare of our little community, we must
none of us aspire to be Caesars. Unless, indeed, when a dozen of us
are met together at our little library in Gabriel’s Road, we can
fancy ourselves, for the time-being, THE TWELVE CAESARs, shut up in
a coin-collector's cabinet. The truth is, we form a very strong and
handsome bundle as it is; but if any accident should break the string
that holds us together, we shall be no better than so many sticks.
But we are astonished, and even scandalized, on looking over what
we have written | Why, we have been thinking and talking about our
flashy and frisky fraternity, till they have actually inveigled us into a fit
of momentary mirth ! To our contemplation the thing seems as little.
in keeping, as it would be to see Professor Leslie play at leap-frog,”
or Dugald Stewart dance a saraband. A fit of pleasantry —We
would as soon, if not sooner, have had a fit of the gout: For while
the former is sure to betray us into some idle and unseemly levity,
the latter, with its concomitants of easy-chair, foot-stool, flammel
and Maderia, gives an air of doctorial dignity to the whole man ;
and demands a degree of deference and respect oftener—(we grieve
to say it)—oftener expected than paid. Truly, we have most
strangely departed from the accustomed and required dignity of our
department. If we should hereafter learn that we have been so
unhappy as to call up a smile to the face of the reader, we shall
never forgive ourselves;–and shall never hear the last of it at
Ambrose's. But still the reader himself shall not suffer through our
misconduct: for, seeing that at the outset of our article we have been
more lively than became us, we shall take care, throughout the
• * In Peter's Iletters there is a description of a day passed with Jeffrey, at Craig-crook, (his
country-seat near ºldinburgh), in 1818, when Professors Playfair and Leslie were of the party.
A trial of strength in leaping was proposed, and, says Dr. Morris, “with the exception of
Leslie, they all jumped wonderfully ; and Jeffrey was quite miraculous, considering his
brevity of stride. But the greatest wonder of the whole was Mr. Playfair. He was, also, a
short man, and he cannot be less than seventy, yet he took his stand with the assurance of an
athlete, and positively beat every one of us, -the very best of us, at least half a heel's
breadth.”—M.
80 CHRISTOPIIER IN Til E TEN'ſ,
remainder of it, to indulge him with more than our usual and stipu
lated proportion of dullmess. But, before proceeding to the imme-
diate subject of our article, it may be well to state, for the satisfac.
tion of all parties, that the foregoing is our very first exhibition of
this kind; and is likely to be the very last. We might, to be sure,
expunge the objectionable part of what we have written, and re-write
the whole article. But, -to say nothing of our being rather behind
our time, we have considered that it will be, upon the whole, better,
to let it remain ; as a salutary warning, both to ourselves and others,
not to quit the path which nature, habit, and inclination have marked
out for them :-For, if we may judge of ourselves, we cut as strange
a figure at a frisk, as the Ettrick Shepherd would at a quadrille
party. For be it known to all whom it may concern, (and whom does
it not concern ?)—that we, Berzelius Pendragon, D.D., do hereby
disclaim all participation in the merits or demerits of the numerous
noisy and nonsensical articles that have from time to time appeared
in this Magazine. But as the Public seem to patronize them, well
and good. It is their concern, not ours. At the same time, though
no one has hitherto thought fit to mention our name—not even the
JEditor in his account of the late shooting party on the 12th of
August—we shall no longer be induced to forego the portion of
credit which really does belong to us; and which the Contributors
themselves were not very wise in so long withholding from the true
claimant, seeing that they would every one of them be sorely averse
from taking it upon themselves. All the grave articles, them,-(it is
quite needless to particularize them)—which have graced and are to
grace these pages—all which by general consent have been stamped
with the (in our opinion meritorious) character of dullness—were
contrived and constructed solely and exclusively by us, Berzelius
Pendragon,” D.D. We now return to “the even tenor of our
way,”—and proceed to “labor in our vocation.”
It has not been our practice to notice works whose chief attractions
consist in their pictorial embellishments; but we have been so much
pleased in looking over these volumes, that we are induced to make
them more extensively known than they are likely to be in this part
of the kingdom without our aid.—Among the many richly illustrated
works that have of late years evinced the enterprise and liberality of
British publishers, perhaps this is at once the most splendid and the
most interesting.—Undoubtedly the external character and appear-
ance of the English palaces have long been the theme of vulgar sur-
prise and contemptuous comparison, by foreignèrs visiting this coun.
* The reader will probably have anticipated, even if we had not in formed him, that when-
ever it is needful for any written communication to pass between us and our coadjutors, they
im variably 3. a hyphen between each syllable of our name—Pen-drag-on. Thus trans-
forming a distinguished patronymic into a despicable pun—or rather a trinity of puns. Tria.
juncta in uno.—B. P.
ROYAL PAI. ACTFS. 81
try; and also by those English travellers who visit the continent (that
is to say, Paris), for the notable purpose of discovering and making
known in what respects other countries are superior to their own.
If you tell these people that London boasts the finest religious temple
in the world, they answer, “But look at St. James's Palace, and com-
pare it with that of the Tuileries " If you point to our Charitable
Institutions, unapproached in munificence of endowment and extent
of utility by those of any other nation, they exclaim, “But then how
miserably inferior are Kew and Hampton Court to St. Cloud and
Versailles " If you prove to them that the Custom House, the
East India House, and the Bank, evince more wealth and public
spirit than could be found among the same class of persons in all the
nations of the continent united, they reply, “But then, what a paltry
private residence for a queen is the cottage at Frogmore, compared
with the two Trianons !” It is undoubtedly a reasonable subject of
surprise, that, during the last two centuries, so little has been added
to the external splendor of the English palaces; but, as it regards the
people, one should perhaps expect it to form a subject of congratula-
tion rather than regret. Certain it is, however, that the magnificent
work to which we now call the reader's attention, fully proves that,
in the internal arrangements of the royal residences, there is no lack
of splendor which should surround the court and person of the Eng-
lish sovereign'; no deficiency of subjects calculated to awaken and
renew many of those delightful associations which we are accustomed
to connect with times of romance and chivalry; and, above all, no
want of evidence of British sovereigns having felt that the walls of a
palace can in no other way be so splendidly and appropriately orna-
mented as by the unfading works of genius and taste : for it is a very
interesting feature of the illustrations of this work, that copies are
given of all the ancient pictures which enrich the walls of the differ-
ent apartments—each appearing in the relative situation which it ac-
tually occupies. Some of these copies, though necessarily on a very
minute scale, are so extremely well executed as immediately to recall to
the recollection of those who are acquainted with them, the admirable
originals. This is peculiarly the case with respect to the Cartoons,
which occupy the walls of one of the apartments at Hampton Court.
Mr. Pyne's work consists of four quarto volumes, containing to-
gether one hundred plates, which are all fac-similes of colored draw-
ings made for the purpose by artists of the very first celebrity ; each
drawing representing, in its present state, some one apartment in one
or other of the royal palaces. These drawings were executed by the
express permission, and of many We may say, under the actual
mspection of the royal inhabitants themselves—who not only patron-
ized, but really took a personal interest in the progress of the work:
and it may be not uninteresting to know, that the vignette, repre-
WOL. I.-8
82 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
senting the hermitage, in the garden at Frogmore, is copied from a
plate etched by the Princess Elizabeth herself.” We have been
informed of these particulars by the gentleman to whom we are
indebted for a sight of this work; for we confess its price has
rendered it quite inaccessible to ourselves. If we were to notice any
of the plates in particular, we should point to the exquisite and
elaborate workmanship of those representing the splendid architec.
tural decorations of the Royal Chapel and St. George's Chapel in
Windsor Castle; and the conservatory and gothic dining-room at
Carlton-house. For magnificence of modern embellishment, the
golden drawing-room and alcove, and the crimson drawing-room at
Carlton-house, are perhaps not surpassed in any palace in Europe.f
We shall not be expected to have much to say with respect to the
literary merits of a work like this; and if we admit that the arrange-
ment of the materials appears to be perspicuous, and the style
tolerably clear and correct, it is, perhaps, all that the ambition of the
author would demand. We shall, however, fairly confess, that we
are, for once, reviewing a book that we have not read through. But
though it will be easily admitted that this is a work in which pictorial
embellishment may not improperly form the principal feature, yet on
turning over its pages, and stopping to read here and there, (and this
is all we have had time to do,) we find it interspersed with a variety
of very amusing anecdotes and circumstances connected with the
successive occupiers of the palaces; and also with some interesting
historical and critical notices of some of the principal works of art,
copies of which pass in review before us; together with biographical
sketches of the distinguished persons whose portraits are among the
number.
It must not be imagined, by our gentle readers, that during this
enunciation we good people in the Tent were under any very severe
discipline. We are no Martinet, and are of opinion that, even on
actual service, it is better to command by love than by fear. Ac-
cordingly, it was understood among the Contributors from the very
first, that while mo man was to be allowed loud laughter except the
Shepherd, in respect to his genius and infirmity, an occasional titter
would be overlooked by the Editor; and that even a little whisper-
ing in a corner would not excite so much displeasure in his breast as
it has been observed to do in that of my Lady Piano F. during the
performance of a screeching solo at a musical party in her house. The
Contributors kept going out and coming in like bees, so that a low,
* The Princess Elizabeth, third daughter of George III., born 1770, and married to the
Langrave of Hesse Hornberg, 1818. She was very accomplished, and drew and etched, as well
as if she had been am artist.—M. *
, t Carlton-House, long the favorite residence of George IV., was pulled down in 1827, and
the pillars which formed the entrance colomnade, now are to be seen in the front facade of the
National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London.—M.
THE ARTICLES. - S3
pleasant, continuous murmur encircled the Tent. There was not
even an ordinance against sleep—except with a Snore; and it is a
singular enough fact in natural history, that those Contributors who
performed most powerfully during the night, when such indulgence
was freely permitted to us all, took snatches of slumber during an
article as silently as so many dormice. This is one of many proofs
of the power of the will over the functions of the bodily organs in
sleep. We must all remember how, during the course of our travels,
we used to awake, to a minute, at an hour fixed mentally with our-
selves before going to bed; and, on the present occasion, we could
not help smiling, to see with what supernatural accuracy Timothy
Tickler would awake at the conclusion of any article at which he had
taken an alarm, and avoided by a skilful and well-timed map. Was it
that he first conjectured its probable duration, and then, by an act of
the sleeping yet waking will, awoke just as it ceased ? Or may the
phenomenon be accounted for on a simpler theory, namely, that
Tickler awoke as the Editor or Buller, for example, ceased to speak,
just as we have heard of naval officers starting up in their hammocks,
awakened by the unusual silence, when the morning-gun did not fire ?
Owing to the relief given to the mind by little interruptions and
incidents of this kind, we suspect that the articles of our Contributors
seemed much better ones when we read aloud in the tent, than they
may do when perused in a brown study, or the Glasgow coffee-room;
but this is a disadvantage to which all viva-voce harangues are liable
in tent, in church, and in state. Even one of Dr. Chalmers' astrono-
mical discourses, which we heard him preach before the Commis-
sioner, seemed to us more sublime when volleyed by his thunderous
voice through those Gothic arches, than when looked at silently in
our own little blue parlor, with out feet on the fender, and our
worthy housekeeper (but that way madness lies) knitting a worsted
stocking for our rheumatic leg, sufficiently long to reach half way up
the thigh. In like manner, we remember reading, with scarce any
emotion but a slight one of contempt, a speech of Mr. Tierney” in a
newspaper, which we were told by Odoherty convulsed with laughter
the whole House. In like manner, a joke of Mr. Cockburn’s will, in
the General Assembly of our Church, Well migh shake the wigs from
the heads of hundreds, which, when confidentially communicated
afterwards by one of his admirers to some unfortunate gentleman
not present at its first delivery, would seem to have been still-born.
* George Tierney entered Parliament, in 1796, and became a strong opponent of Mr. Pitt,
with whom he fought a duel in 1798. The Addington Cabinet of 1S02, made him Treasure
of the Navy, and in 1803, he was President of the Board of Control, but went out the next
year, when the Grenville ministry resigned. He was one of the leaders of the Qpposition
until 1527, when he was made Master of the Mint, under Camming, remained in office under
Lord Goderich, with whom he retired in 1828, and died in 1830. He was a very heavy debater,
and was ridiculed as such, in . The New Whig Guide, published 1819, and written by
Palmerston, Peel, and J. W. Croker.-Al.
84 CHRISTOPLIER IN THE TENT.
The truth is, that as it was necessary to have been in the High
Church, the House of Commons, or the General Assembly, fully to
feel and admire the eloquence of Chalmers, the wit of Tierney, or the
humor of Cockburn—so was it necessary to have been in our Tent,
to enjoy, with perfect-enjoyment, the eloquence of a Kempferhausen,
the wit of a Tickler, or the humor of a Pendragon. - -
After the last gentleman’s article, we were not without hopes that
our dear friend Dr. Morris would have favored us with something
good; but Peter let us understand that we must not expect any
article from him for some months, as he was busy on his “Letters
from the Highlands of Scotland,” which he hoped to have out early
in spring.” Nobody who has not seen the Doctor write, can have
the slightest idea of the rapidity of his intellectual and manual opera-
tions; and he now lifted up and fluttered before our eyes at least a
hundred pages of closely-written MSS., exclaiming-‘‘Nearly half
of the first volume, you dog. When Scotland is finished, them “for
England, ho!” •
It was now wearing pretty far into the afternoon, and the Editor’s
travelling china punch-bowl, Hogg's jug, and the quechs of the other
Contributors, had, as our readers will readily suppose, been plenished
and replenished oftener, perhaps, than it is needful to avow. There
could have been no getting on without this ; for joy is every whit as
dry as sorrow, and the tongues of the Contributors would have
cloven to the roofs of their mouths without a judicious and well-
timed infusion of the true spirit. We were just in the act of propos-
ing a bumper to the health of that most entertaining of all human
beings, Mr. John Ballantyne, who had gone out to breathe the frag-
rance of the heather, and to hear John of Sky
“His Scottish tunes and warlike marches play,”
when that gentleman himself put his facetious face in at the Tent-
door; and with an expression of the most profound and solemn
respect strangely blended with its natural and invincible archness, he
exclaimed, in considerable agitation, “By the author of Waverley,
and every other great Known or Unknown, here is Dr. Mansel, the
bishop of Bristol. I have been with him for this half-hour—such
another famous bishop Saw I never at home or abroad. Put in a
jaup mair rum into the bit bowlie, for by his talk I warrant him a
dreigh sooker. That'll do—rise up, gentlemen, while I fetch in the
bishop.”
We were all thrown into some consternation by this unexpected
visit from so high a dignitary of the Episcopalian Church, and every
lidless eye was bent towards the Tent-door, when once more came
* Announced, but never published,—probably never written.—M.
SCOTT, THE ODONTIST, 85
bowing in, hat in hand, our small incomparable Bibliopole, ushering
forward, in full sail; and gorgeous array, not Dr. Mansel, bishop of
Bristol—but hear it, O Dee, and give ear, thou Clyde—DR. SCOTT,
THE CELEBRATED ODoNTIST OF GLASGow. One roar of unextinguished
laughter shook the Tent—while that wittiest of doctors looked
towards that wittiest of bibliopoles with a countenance of the most
solemn assurance, and pompously asked, “What sort of treatment
is this for a BISHOP 7” - -
John Ballantyne had never before seen Dr. Scott, and he now
kept his small gray piercing eyes suspiciously upon him, as the veil
of clerical mystery seemed to be falling off from the shoulders of the
self-appointed spiritual peer. “Me a Bishop,” cried the exulting Doc-
tor, “I was only gagging you, man! Ye nae sooner tald me your
name, than I said into myself—hooly, hooly, we hae gotten here the
wuttiest and gleggest wee chield in a' Edinburgh, and gin I can but
gagg Mr. John Ballantyne, what will Carnegie and Provan, and a'
the ither clever fallows in Glasgow, think o' me then º’’ The
Doctor's classical and theological imagination had, it seems, sug-
gested to him the idea of personating the Bishop of Bristol; and
during half an hour's conversation with Mr. Ballantyne, he had more
than half concluded a bargain for the copyright of a volume of
Sermons, in which the Socinian controversy was for ever to be laid
at rest on both sides of the Tweed.
But how came Dr. Scott to be hereabouts at all? Had he not
departed in the morning for Glasgow, or, to call that thriving city
by the more rural appellation bestowed on it by its poetical inhabit-
ants, “The West-Country " No such thing. The Doctor had been the
gay deceiver of us all. At the very moment when his soul seemed to
be breathing out sighs of scarcely articulate grief at the Parting Hour,
and had responded so passionately to the L’Envoy of the inspired
Shepherd, even then, had he meditated no farther journey than down
to Mar-Lodge to give some medical advice to the Thane,” of whose
arrival there he had been confidentially informed by an express the
night before; and it was on his return to the Tent that he had fallen
in with Mr. Ballantyne, whom curiosity had drawn towards a cottage
on the river's side, from the door of which the Doctor said a beautiful
Highland girl was “showering her delightful smiles.” Such were
the ipsissima verba of the Odontist. “Why, Doctor,” said the
Shepherd, “you are as bad as my freen, Lord Byron, himsel, and it
seems ye were just lauching in your sleeve a the time you were
sayin' gude day to me and the ither Contributors, just as he was
lauchin’ in his, when he said,
* The Earl of Fife claims to be a lineal descendant of the Thane of Fife mentioned in “Macbeth,”
but his pretonsions have been challenged by genealogists and antiquarians.-M.
86 CHRISTOPHER IN THIS TENT.
Fare thee well, and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.’
IFaith, Doctor, ye great poets, the Scotts and the Byrons, and sie
like, are a' thegither past my comprehension.” Mr. John Ballantyne
frankly confessed that he had, for the first time in his life, been fairly
gagged. “But,” said he, “I shall have my revenge. Henceforth,
gentlemen, let you and all the rest of the world combine to call Dr.
Scott THE BISHOP of BRISTOL.” This motion was immediately
carried by acclamation, and the Bibliopole and the Bishop shook
hands, and sat down on the whisky cask, Buller having vacated his
seat by accepting the chirper's hamper.
Order having been restored, and the Bishop having bestowed his
benediction on us, and a bumper on himself, we took the earliest
opportunity of requesting from him a small article; and as he had
nothing to offer in opposition to so equitable a request, he asked,
“Verse or prose 7" “Verse, to be sure.” “Long or short metre.”
“Oh! long, certainly—one would never think of getting short measure
from a Bishop.” The Peer accordingly cleared his pipes, and
chanted, with a tone and manner of gesticulation which at one time
strongly reminded us of Wordsworth, and at another of Rowland
Hill,” the following very beautiful Poem: -
LovE's PHANTOMs of wo.
1
DAY's gone down in the west; yet his last tinge of gold
Is not all from the chimneys of Anderstoun rolled—
And already, far eastward, the meek orb of Dian
With a pale struggling lustre the Calton is eyeing;
The Stockwell and the Gallowgate slumber between,
And the brown Molindinar is flowing unseen.
2
While the hour's holy stillness reigns sad in the soul,
Oh! 'tis sweet with slow steps up the Trongate to stroll,
For the long sleeping shadows of steeple and land
Sink deep in the spirit with harmony bland;
And well does my sensitive heart sympathize
With the hum of the air and the gloom of the skies.
3.
Man may sigh when earth laughs in the rays of the sun
O'er the dreams of ambition whose race hath been run ;
Man may weep when the morn in her glory comes forth
O'er the parted memorials of friendship and worth;
|But be mine in the dimness of twilight to rove,
When I charm up the long-faded Phantoms of Love.
* The Rev. Rowland Hill, minister of Surrey Chapel, Ilondon, ſor half a century, was in
high feather in 1819. He was moted for eccentricities, illustrating the triost solemn truths by
observations which savored more of the ludicrous than the pathetic, alore of the grotesquº;
than the serious. He was uncle to Lord Hiil, Commander-in-chief of the British army from
1828 to 1842. The Rev. Ro-A'land Hill was eighty-eight, at his death, in 1838,-M.
“THE PHANTOMS OF LOVE.” 87
4. –
Oh! vainly and wildly the world's eye would seek,
When the forehead is smooth and a smile's on the cheek,
The wide wildering waves of reflection to Sound,
Where the soul sleeps beneath in her darkness profound––
Where sorrow, like truth, is contented to dwell
Cold, clear, and unseen, in the spirit's deep well.
5. -
"Yet not false is the language that floats from my tongue,
When I joke with the joyous, and laugh with the young;
There is naught of deceit in this eye sparkling bright,
All cordial the chorus of festive delight— t
All sincere and substantial the raptures I show,
When Wit's rays bid the ether of merriment glow.
6.
Were it wise—were it well—to refuse to mankind
The light of the spirit—the sun of the mind?
Were it wise, wrapt for ever in garments of woe,
Through the world's busy paths like a spectre to go?
Üh, no l life has moments for more things than one,
Man's great Soul can find room both for sorrow and fun!
'7.
I have left the dim Trongate, and climbed the high stair,
Where the Horns are hung out as the Sign of the Fair;
I have entered the centre and shrine of delight,
Where around Peggy's bowl my friends' faces are bright,
And shall I be in dumps, and a damper? oh, no
Drown, ye bumpers of friendship, Love's Phantoms of Woe!
8.
Though the mystical musings that feed the lone mind,
Leave a gentle and mellowing softness behind ;
Though the eye that with joy should all radiant appear,
Still reveal thy faint trace—Sensibility's tear !
Oh, forget it, my friends, and reproach me not so,
For I'll drown in deep bumpers—Love's Phantoms of Woe!
The lay of the first Bishop was received with high applause, and
as the toils of the day were now near a close, the Editor with his
Contributors were about to leave the Tent for an evening walk
along the Dee and its “bonny banks of blooming heather,” to indulge
the most delightful of all feelings, such, mamely, as arise from the
consciousness of having passed our time in a way not only agreeable
to ourselves, but useful to the whole of the wide-spread family of
Iman, when John Mackay came bouncing in upon us like a grasshop-
per, “Gots my life here are twa unco landloupers cumin dirdin
down the hill—the tane o’ them a heech knock-kneed stravaiger
wi' the breeks on, and the tither ane o’ the women-folk, as
88 CEURISTOPIDER IN THE TENT.
roun’s she lang, in a green joseph, and a tappen o' feathers on her
22 , -
ow. -
At the word “women-folk,” each Contributor ---
“Sprang upwards like a pyramid of fire;”
and we had some difficulty in preventing a sally from the Tent.
“Remember, gentlemen,” quoth we, “that you are still under lite-
rary law—be seated.” We ourselves, as master of the ceremonies,
went out, and lo! we beheld two most extraordinary Itinerants.
The gentleman who was dressed in brown-once-black, had a sort of
medico-theological exterior—which we afterwards found to be repre
sentative of the inward man. He was very tall, and in-kneed”—in-
deed, somewhat like Richmond the blackf about the legs—the squint
of his albino eyes was far from prepossessing—and stray tufts of his
own white hair, here and there stole lankly down from beneath the
up-curled edge of a brown caxon that crowned the apex of his organi-
zation. He seemed to have lost the roof of his mouth, and when he
said to us, “You see before you Dr. Magnus Oglethorpe, itinerant
lecturer on poetry, politics, oratory, and the belles lettres,” at each
word, his tongue came away from the locum-temens of his palate,
with a bang, like a piece of wet leather from a stone (called, by our
Scottish children, “sookers,” we forget the English name), each syl-
lable, indeed, standing quite per se, and not without difficulty to be
drilled into companies or sentences. But we are forgetting the lady.
She was a short, fat, “dumpy woman”—quite a bundle of a body, as
one may say—with smooth red cheeks, and little twinking roguish
eyes;–and when she returned our greeting, we were sensible of a
slight accent of Erin, which, we confess, up in life as we are, falls on
the drum of our ear
“That's like a melody sweetly played in tune.”
She was, as John Mackay had at some distance discovered, in a
green riding-habit, not, perhaps, much the worse, but certainly much
the smoother for wear, and while her neat-turned ankles exhibited a
pair of yellow laced boots which nearly reached the calf of her leg,
on her head waved elegantly a plume of light-blue ostrich feathers.
The colors altogether, both those of nature and of art, were splendid
and harmonious, and the Shepherd, whose honest face we by chance
saw (contrary to orders) peeping through a little chink of the Tent,
whispered, “Losh a day, gin there binna the queen o’ the Fairies ºf .
We requested the matchless pair to walk in—but Dr. Magnus, who
* It was upon this gentleman that the celebrated punster of the West made that famous
pun, “the Battle of the Pyrenees—(the pair o' knees.)”—C. N.
f Richmond, the black, was a pugilist in those days.—M. .
# Wherever the belief in fairies exists, there also is the belief, that greem is their favorite
color. In some of the country districts of Scotland and Ireland, it is considered umlucky (of
uncannie) to have even a green lash to your riding-whip.–M.
ODOTHERTY AND THE WIDOW. 89
was rather dusty, first got John Mackay to switch him, behind and
before, with a bunch of long heather, and we ourselves performed the
same office, with the greatest delicacy to the lady. The improvement
on both was most striking and instantaneous. The Doctor looked
quite fresh and ready for a lecture, while the lady reminded us, so
sleek, smooth, and beautiful did she appear, of a hen after any little
ruffling incident in a barn-yard. We three entered the tent—“Con.
tributors' Dr. Magnus Oglethorpe and Lady on a lecturing tour
through the IHighlands.” In a moment twenty voices entreated the
lady to be seated—Dr. Morris offered her a seat on his bed, which,
being folded up, he now used as a chair or sofa–Wastle bowed to
the antique carved oak arm-chair that had been sent from Mar-Lodge
by the Thame—Tickler was lifting up from the ground an empty
hamper to reach it across the table for her accommodation—Buller
was ready with the top or bottom of the whisky cask, and we our-
selves insisted upon getting the honor of the fair burden to the Con-
tributor’s box. Seward kept looking at her through his quizzing
glass—“Deuced fine wumman, by St. Jericho ! demme if she b'nt a
fac-simile of Mary Ann Clarke,” only summat deeper in the fore-end
—one of old Anacreon's 80.00x0)\rol.” IIer curtsey was exceedingly
graceful—when, all of a sudden, casting her eyes on the Standard-
bearer, who, contrary to his usual amenity towards the sex, stood
sour and silent in a corner, she exclaimed, “By the powers, my own
syate Morgan Odoherty,” and jumping up upon the table, she nimbly
picked her steps among jugs, glasses, and quechs (upsetting alone
Kempferhausen's ink-horn over an ode to the moon), and in a mo-
ment was in the Adjutant's arms. Mrs. M'Whirter, the fair Irish
widow whom the Ensign had loved in Philadelphia, stood confessed.
There clung she, like a mole, with her little paws to the Standard-
bearer's sides—striving in vain to feach those beguiling lips, which
he kept somewhat haughtily elevated about six feet three inches from
the ground, leaving an unscalable height of at least a yard between
them and the mouth of the much flustered, deeply injured Mrs.
M’Whirter. The widow, whose elegant taste is well known to the
readers of this Magazine, exclaimed, in the words of Bettyf (so she
called him),
“Ah who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where love's proud temple shines afar!”
* Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke, once the mistless of the Duke of York. From this connexion
arose a parliamentary investigation, in 1809, on a charge that he allowed her to dispose of his
patromage for money, which showed him guilty of great carelessness, at least. On this he
resigned the command of the army, which he subsequently resumed.—M.
f To understand this it must be explaimed, that a former Blackwood, giving a memoir of
Odoherty, stated, that when a prisoner of war in Philadelphia, in 1815, he there had married, and
soon after deserted, an Irish widow named Mi’Whirter, who kept the “Goat in Armor” tavern,
in that city of brotherly-love.—M.
# Dr. James Beattie, author of several philosophical works, and the poem called Tho Min-
strol. He died in 1803.—M.
90 CHRISTOPÍIER IN THE TEN’T.
“Never mind the money—my dearest Morgan–Ochſ I have never
known such another man as your sweet self since we parted at Phil-
adelphia.” The Adjutant looked as if he had neither lost nor won—
still gently but determinedly repelling the advances of the warm-
hearted widow, whose face he thus kept, as it were, at arm's length.
At last, with a countenance of imperturbable solemnity, worthy of a
native of Ireland and a Contributor to this Magazine, he coolly said,
“Why, Mr. Editor, the trick is a devilish good one, very well played,
and knowingly kept up—but now that you, gentlemen, have all had
your laugh against Odoherty, pray, Mrs. Roundabout Fat-ribs, may
I ask when you were last bateing hemp, and in what house of correc-
tion P’ “Och—you vile sadducee.”—“I suspect,” sa'd Tickler,
“that you yourself, my fair Mrs. M'Whirter, were the seducee, and
the ensign the seducer.” “Why look ye,” continued Odoherty, “if
you are Molly M*Whirter, formerly of Philadelphia, you have the
mark of a murphy (Hibernicé potato) on your right side, just below
the fifth rib-and of a shamrock, or, as these English gentlemen
would call it, a trefoil, between your shoulders behind, about half
way down,”........ ......Here Mrs. M'Whirter lost all temper—and ap-
pealed to Dr. Magnus Oglethorpe, if Odoherty was not casting foul
aspersions on her character. The doctor commenced an oration, with
that extraordinary sort of utterance already hinted at, which quite
upset the Adjutant's gravity—and the lady now seizing the “tempora
mollia fandi,” said, with a bewitching smile, “Come now, my dearest
Morgan, confess, confess!” The Standard-bearer was overcome—
and, kissing his old friend's cheek in the most respectful manner, he
said, “I presume Mrs. M'Whirter is no more, and that I see before
me the lady of Dr. Magnus Oglethorpe—in other words, Mrs. Dr.
Oglethorpe.” “Yes, Morgan, he is indeed my husband—come
hither, Magnus, and shake hands with the Adjutant—this is the Mr.
Odoherty, of whom you have heard me so often spake.” Nothing
could be more delightful than this reconciliation. We again all took
our seats—Dr. Magnus on our own left hand, and Mrs. Dr. Magnus
on our right, close to whom sat and smiled, like another Mars, the
invincible Standard-bearer. It was a high gratification to us now to
find that Odoherty and Mrs. M'Whirter had never been united in
matrimony. It was true that in America they had been tenderly at-
tached to each other, but peculiar circumstances, some of which are
alluded to in a memoir of the Adjutant’s life in a former number of
this Magazine,” had prevented their union, and soon after his return
* The article in question somewhat libelled the Hibernian widow, for it distinctly averred
that Odoherty had married ber, and made her, in her auger at his desertion, perpetrate sundry
wrathful verses to him, which end thus :— -
“When you've drunk my gin, and robbed my till, and stolem all my pelf, ye
Sail away, and think no more on your wiſe at Philadelphy.”
But this belongs rather to the Life of Odcherty, in Dr. Magimm's Works, than to THE TENT.
and the sayings and doings therein.-M,
DR. MAGNUs OGLETHORPE. 91
to Europe, the M'Whirter had bestowed her hand on a faithful suitor,
whom she had formerly rejected, Dr. Magnus Oglethorpe, lecturer
on poetry, politics, Oratory, &c., a gentleman famous for removing im-
pediments in the organs of speech, and who, after having instructed
in public speaking some of the most distinguished orators in the
House of Representatives, United States, had lately come over to
Britain, to retard, by his precepts and his practice, the decline and
fall of eloquence in our Island. As we complimented the doctor on
the magnificent object of his pedestrian tour, he volunteered a lecture
on the spot, and in an instant—and springing up as minibly upon thr
table as Sir Francis Burdett or Mr. John Hobhouse” could have
done, the American Demosthenes (who seemed still to have pebbles
in his mouth, though far inland), thus opened it,f and spake a
LECTURE ON WEHIGGISM.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-Fear is “Whiggism”—hatred is “Whiggism”—con-
tempt, jealousy, remorse, wonder, despair, or madness, are all “Whiggism.”
The miser when he hugs his gold—the savage who paints his idol with blood—
the slave who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant who fancies himself a god—the
vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man—the coward, the beggar, all are
“Whigs.”
“The “Whig,' the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold—
The madman.”
“Whiggism” is strictly the language of imagination ; and the imagination is
that faculty which represents objects, not as they are in themselves, but as they
are moulded, by other thoughts and feelings, into an infinite variety of shapes and
combinations of power. This language is not the less true to nature, because it is
false in point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys the
impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind.
ſet an object, for instance, be presented º state of agitation or fear, and the
imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness
of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear.
Tragic “Whiggism,” which is the most empassioned species of it, strives to
carry on the feeling to the utmost point, by all the force of comparison or contrast
—loses the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggerations of it—ex-
hausts the terror of an unlimited indulgence of it—grapples with impossibilities
in its desperate impatience of restraint. - • ,
When Lear says of Edgar, nothing but the unkind “ministry” could have
brought him to this—what a bewildered amazement, what a wrench of the imagi-
nation, that cannot be brought to conceive of any other cause of misery than that
which has bowed it down, and absorbs all other sorrow in its own l His sorrow,
like a flood, supplies the sources of all other sorrow.
In regard to a certain Whig, of the unicorn species, we may say—How his
* Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse were ultra-liberals in 1819. Burdett lapsed into
ultra-toryism in 1836, in which he remained until his death, in 1844. Hobhouse succeeded
to a baronetcy on his father's death, successively took office under Grey, Melbourne, and Rus-
sell, and was made a Peer in 1851, by the title of Lord Broughton.—M.
't The expression, “Thus opened his mouth,” is incorrect, for without a plate it would be
impossible to show the mammar in which Dr. Magnus opened his mouth.-C. N. -
92 cIIRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
passion lashes itself up, and swells and rages like a tide in its sounding course,
when, in answer to the doubts expressed of his returning “temper,” he says—
“Never Iago. Like to the Pontic Sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont ;
Even so my “frantic’ thoughts, with violent pace
Shall ne'er look back, ne’er ebb to humble sense,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
f Swallow them up.” -
The pleasure, however, derived from tragic “Whiggism,” is not any thing
peculiar to it as Whiggism, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is not an anomaly
of the imagination. It has its source and ground-work in the common love of
“power” and strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, people flock to “Whig
meetings;” but if there were a public execution in the next street, the “house”
would very soon be empty. It is not the difference between fiction and reality
that solves the difficulty. Children are satisfied with stories of ghosts and witches.
The grave politician drives a thriving trade of abuse and calumnies, poured out
against those whom he makes his enemies for no other end than that he may live
by them. The popular preacher makes less frequent mention of heaven than of
hell. Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar sort of “Whiggism.” We
are as fond of indulging our violent passions as of reading a description of those
of others. We are as prone to make a torment of our fears as to luxuriate in our
hopes of “mischief.” The love of power is as strong a principle in the mind as
the love of pleasure. It is as natural to hate as to love, to despise as to admire,
to express our hatred or contempt as our love of admiration.
“Masterless passion sways us to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes.”
Not that we like what we loathe, but we like to indulge our hatred and scorn
of it (viz. Toryism)—to dwell upon it—to exasperate our idea of it by every
refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration—to make it a bugbear
to ourselves—to point it out to others in all the splendor of deformity—to em-
body it to the senses—to stigmatize it in words—to grapple with it in thought,
in action—to sharpen our intellect—to arm our will against it—to know the
worst we have to contend with, and to contend with it to the utmost.
Let who will strip nature of the colors and the shapes of “Whiggism,” the
“Whig” is not bound to do so; the impressions of common sense and strong ima-
gination, that is, of passion and “temperance,” cannot be the same, and they must
have a separate language to do justice to either. Objects must strike differently
upon the mind, independently of what they are in themselves, so long as we have
a different interest in them—as we see them in a different point of view, nearer
or at a greater distance (morally or physically speaking), from novelty—from old
acquaintance—from our ignorance of them—from our fear of their consequences
— from contrast—from unexpected likeness; hence nothing but Whiggism can be
agreeable to nature and truth.
This lecture gave universal satisfaction—but Dr. Magnus is a man
of too much genius not to acknowledge unreservedly his obligations
to other great men—and after our plaudits had expired, he informed
us, that he claimed little other merit than that of having delivered
the lecture according to the best rules and principles of oratory, for
that the words were by his friend Mr. Hazlitt. “In the original,”
said he, “Mr. Hazlitt employs the word “Poetry,’ which I have
slightly changed into the word “Whiggism,’ and thus an excellent
THE TEA-I’ARTY. . . • 93
lecture on politics is procured, without the ingenious essayist having
been at all aware of the ultimate meaning of his production.* “As
the lecture was but short, will you have another ?”
“No—no–enough is as good as a feast,” quoth Odoherty—“per-
haps, Mr. Editor, if you request it, Mrs. Magnus will have the
goodness to make tea.”
There was not only much true politeness in this suggestion of the
Adjutant, but a profound knowledge of the female character—and,
accordingly, the tea things were not long of making their appearance,
for in our Tent it was just sufficient to hint a wish, and that wish,
whatever it might be, that moment was gratified. Mr. Magnus, we
observed, put in upwards of thirty spoonfuls—being at the rate of
two and a half for each Contributor—and the lymph came out of the
..arge silver tea-pot “a perfect tincture;” into his third and last cup
of which each Contributor emptied a decent glass of whisky; nor did
the Lady of the Tent, any more than the Lady of the Lake, show any
symptoms of distaste to the mountain dew. The conversation was
indeed divine—and it was wonderful with what ease Mrs. Magnus
conducted herself in so difficult a situation. She had a word or a
Smile for every one, and the Shepherd whispered to Tickler, just loud
enough to be heard by those near the Contributors' Box, “Sic a nice
leddy wad just sute you or me to a hair, Mr. Tickler. Faith, thae
blue ostrich plumbs wad astonish Davy Bryden, were he to see them
hanging o'er the tea-pat at Eltrive-Lake, wi' a swurl.”
Alas! there is always something imperfect in sublunary happiness.
Baillie Jarvie seemed very unwell and out of spirits. “What ails
you, my dear Baillie,” said we, in the most affectionate tone, but still
Jarvie sat with a long, dull, dissatisfied aspect, which looked most
excessively absurd, close to the smaſ insignificant happy face of Tims,
who had some how or other got into an extraordinary high flow of
spirits (we suspect he had sipped too much of that stout tea) and was
coaxing and cockering up the Baillie with “how now, Mr. Jarvie, I
'ope you are more better now ; will you try one of my pills, my
good sir, Mamar 'as given me the box; see, it has a picture of Hescu-
lapius on the top. Hopen it, Mr. Bailiff, and take out as many as
you choose; but three is a doze.”
“I am for none o' your masty pills, Mr. Tims, swallow them all
yourself before you lie down.”
“Mr. Bailiff, Mr. Bailiff, three is a doze; was I to do that, Tommy
Tims might lie down, but Tommy Tims would never rise hup no
more;” and as he ceased speaking, we could not help thinking of that
passage in Milton, where it is said of Raphael, that when he came to
a house, Adam could not help thinking that the angel had not finished
his speech. -
* On examination of the commencement of one of Hazlitt's lectures on Poetry, the inge-
nuily of the alteration will be seen.
94. CEIRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.
“Come, come,” said wé, “give us a song, Baillie.” -
“I don’t believe you wish me to sing or to do any thing else,” was
the reply; and in an instant we saw into the very seat of the Baillie's
distemper. He manifestly had been offended because we had not
asked him for an Article, which, Heaven knows, proceeded from no
distrust in his literary talents, but from a notion that he would prefer
making his sagacious remarks on the articles of other men, to any
exhibition of his own. We were now undeceived, and on reiterating
our request, honest Jarvie said, that he would recite a song, not sing
it, but that first of all, he must say a word or two by way of pre-
face : .
“Though I was,” said he, “in my youth, a little addicted to poeti-
cal phantasies, yet have I, for a long while, been justly considered, in
the Salt-market, as a mere proser. Some years ago, in my first
wife's time, when that good woman was sorely afflicted with an ‘in-
come,” I was advised by Dr. Ninian Hill of Glasgow, to carry her
to the country for a change of air, as he called it, or as I have been
informed, it is termed by Dr. Gregory, mutatio coeli. With this
view, I took a lease for a summer, at £27 of rent, from the late Mr.
Robert Robison, of the villa and garden of Leddrie Green, in the
parish of Strablane, a sweet spot, and of which parish the present
learned and worthy minister of St. Andrew’s church in Glasgow,
also now professor of Hebrew in our university, was then pastor. I
accordingly went thither with my spouse for the time being, and my
little niece Nicky, that is to say, Nicolina Jarvie, at that time a little
skelpy, but now Mrs. Mecklehose, and who paid the most assiduous
attention to her aunt in her last illness, reading to her at night Mrs.
McIver’s Cookery, and the Rev. Ralph Erskine's Sermons. It was
on a Saturday evening after tea, as I recollect, and when a little
fatigued by my ride from Glasgow in a very warm day, and my wife
rather worse, that, in order to recreate myself, I sat down in a little
arbor in the garden—the church and manse, and a jug of whisky
toddy, full in my view—and composed a trifling ballad, which, with
the permission of this company (and if Captain Odoherty would be
pleased to give over swearing), I shall now read (though, as I find I
have lost my spectacles this morning in the hill in chasing Mr. Con-
stable's bitch, who was worrying a lamb, I wish I may be able),
but—”
Here the Baillie was interrupted rather improperly by Mr. Tick-
Jer, who briskly offered to read the ballad without Spectacles.
“Deil tak me,” quoth Mr. Hogg, “if I think you’re able.”
Instantly Mr. Wastle, to put an end to all contention, proposed to
read it himself, and this being agreed to by acclamation, Buller of
* Income—Issue.
LEDDRIE GREEN. - 95
Brazenno, e insisted, with rather an undue vehemence, on a liminary
bumper; and this also being instantly agreed to, and instantly swal-
lowed, Mr. Wastle rose, and in his usual graceful and impressive
manner, read with much pathos, -
LEDDRIE GREEN,
An eaccellent new Song,
Written by BAiLLIE JARVIE, a good many Years ago.
“If that be not a bull,” cried Odoherty.—“Silence, Mr. Odoherty.”
and Mr. Wastle proceeded.
1.
YE who, on rural pleasures bent,
Roam idly round in summer sheen,
From John o'Groat’s to southern Kent,
No spot you'll find like Leddrje Green.
': - 2. '
Talk not to me of Brighton's joys,
Its gay parade and glittering steyne;
I'd leave its crowds and endless noise,
For the sweet woods of Leddrie Green.
3.
At Tunbridge ye who sip the springs,
Or at the Sussex Pad’ are seen ;
Ah l if you heard the rill that rings,
Perennial close to Leddrie Green,
4.
And ye at Harrowgate impure,
Who shudder o'er your diſafts unclean,
"Twould be a shorter ride, I'm sure,
And sweeter far, to Leddlie Green.
5
Saltmarket Muse ! now deftly tell
How rocks basaltic rise and screen
The windings of the upland fell,
That skirts the strath at Leddrie Green.
6.
Bold crags romantic thence ye view,
Loch Lomond and its woods I ween ;
And Morven's summits tinged with blue,
Break the far sky at Leddrie Green.
7.
'Thy spout, Ballagan, thundering down
Like Niagara foams between
The darksome pines and shrubs, that own
The neighborhood of Leddrie Green.
{ {} - CHRISTOPIIER IN THE TENT.
8. -
And ye who, vex'd with city noise,
Retire to breathe the air so keen ;
Ah think of eating Nicky's pies,
And turkey pouts at Leddrie Green.
9.
Or you who lonely wish to sigh,
O'er life's short course and winter's e'en,
Go view the mausoleum nigh,
The parish-kirk at Leddie Green.
10.
A gentle swain here rests inurn'd,
The only spot where rest is given;
Between two wives, each duly mourn'd,
And married still 'tis hoped in heaven.
This poem was applauded to “the very echo” by all but Mrs.
Magnus, who was too polite to say anything derogatory to Bailie
Jarvie's genius. Indeed, she no doubt admired that genius, but the
subject did not seem to interest her. “My dear Mr. Odoherty (for
they treated each other with infinite respect), will you give us some-
thing amatory "-" I gives my vice, too, for something hamatory,”
pertly enough whiffled Mr. Tims;–when the Standard-bearer, after
humming a few notes, and taking the altitude from the pitch-key of
Tickler (which he carries about with him as certainly as a parson
carries a corkscrew), went off in noble style with the following song,
his eyes all the while turned towards Mrs. Magnus Oglethorpe,
whose twinklers emanated still but eloquent responses not to be
misunderstood. -
INCONSTANGY; A SONG TO MRS. M'WHIRTER.
By MR. ODoHERTY.
1.
“YE fleeces of gold amidst crimson enroll'd
That sleep in the calm western sky,
Lovely relics of day float—ah float not away !
Are ye gone : then, ye beauties, good bye l’
It was thus the fair maid I had loved would have staid
The last glearnings of passion in me;
But the orb's fiery glow in the soft wave below
Had been cooled—and the thing could not be.
O
While thro’ deserts you rove, if you find a green grove
Where the dark branches overhead meet,
There repose you a while from the heat and the toil,
And be thankful the shade is so sweet;
But if long you remain, it is odds but the rain
Or the wind 'mong the leaves may be stirring;
They will strip the boughs bare—you're a fool to stay there—
Change the scene without further demurring.
MRS. OGLETHORPE. . . 97
8,
If a rich-laden tree in your wanderings you see,
With the ripe fruit all glowing and swelling,
Take your fill as you pass—if you don't you're an ass,
But I daresay you . need my telling,
'Twould be just as great fooling to come back for more pulling,
When a week or two more shall have gone,
These firm plums very rapidly, they will taste very vapidly,
—By good luck we'll have pears coming on
4. *
All around Nature's range is from changes to changes,
And in change all her charming is centered—
When you step from the stream where you've bathed, 'twere a dream
To suppose’t the same stream that you entered;
Each clear crystal wave just a passing kiss gave,
And kept rolling away to the sea—
So the love-stricken slave for a moment may rave,
But ere long, oh how distant he'll be
- 5.
Why—’tis only in name, you, e'en you, are the same
With the SHE that inspired my devotion,
Jºvery bit of the lip that I lov’d so to sip
Has been changed in the general commotion—
Even these soft gleaming eyes, that awaked my young sighs,
Have been altered a thousand times over ;
Why? Oh! why then complain that so short was your reign :
Must all Nature go round but your lover?
The tears flowed in torrents, from the blue eyes of Mrs. Magnus,
during the whole of this song; and when Mr. Tims, who was now ex-
tremely inebriated (he has since apologized to us for his behavior,
and assured us, that when tipsy on tea he is always quite beyond
himself), vehemently cried, “Hangcore! hangcore!” the gross impro-
priety of such unfeeling conduct was felt by Mr. Seward, who offered,
if agreeable to us, to turn him out of the Tent; but Tims became
more reasonable upon this, and asked permission to go to bed; which
being granted, his friend Price assisted the small cit to lay down, and
in a few minutes, we think, unless we were deceived, that we faintly
heard something like his own thin tiny little snore.
Mrs. Magnus soon recovered her cheerfulness; for being, with all her
vivacity, subject to frequent but short fits of absence, she every now
and them, no doubt without knowing what she was about, filled up her
tea-cup, not from the silver tea-pot, but from a magisterial-looking
bottle of whisky, which then, and indeed at all times, stood on our table.
She now volunteered a song of her own composition; and after finger-
ing away in the most rapid style of manipulation on the edge of the
table, as if upon her own spinnet in Philadelphia, she too took the
key from Tickler's ready instrument, and chanted in recitativo what
follows—an anomalous kind of poetry. * ~,
WOL. I.-9
98 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT,
CHAUNT.—BY MRS. M'w HIRTER.
TUNE.—The Powldoodies of Burran.*
1.
I wonDER what the mischief was in me when a bit of my music I proffered yeſ
How could any woman sing a good song when she's just parting with Morgau .
Odoherty ?
A poor body, I think, would have more occasion for a comfortable quiet can,
To keep up her spirits in taking lave of so nate a young man—
Besides, as for me, I'm not an orator like Bushe, Plunket, Grattan, or Curran,
So I can only hum a few words to the old chaunt of the Powldoodies of Burran:
Chorus.--Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran,
The green, green Powldoodies of Burran,
The green Powldoodies, the clean Powldoodies,
The gaping Powldoodies of Burran l
2,
I remember a saying of my Lord Norbury, that excellent Judge,
Says he, never believe what a man says to ye, Molly, for believe me ’tis all fudge
He said it sitting on the Bench before the whole Grand Jury of Tipperary,
If I had minded it, I had been the better on't, as sure as my name's Mary;
I would have paid not the smallest attention, ye good-for-nothing elf ye,
To the fine speeches that took me off my feet in the swate city of Philadelphy.
Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran, &c, &c,
3.
By the same rule, says my dear Mr. Bushe, one night when I was sitting beside
Mausey,
“Molly, º says he, “if you go on at this rate, you've no idea what bad luck it
will cause ye; -
You may go on very merrily for a while, but you'll see what will come on't,
When to answer for all your misdeeds, at the last you are summoned;
Do you fancy a young woman can proceed in this sad lightheaded way,
And not suffer in the long run, tho' manetime she may merrily say,
Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
4.
But I'm sure there's plenty of other people that's very near as bad's me.
Yes, and I will make bould to affirm it in the very tiptopsomest degree;
Only they’re rather more cunning concealing on’t, tho’ they meet with their fops
Every now and then by the mass, about four o'clock in their Milliners shops;
In our own pretty Dame-street; I’ve seen it—the fine Lady comes commonly
first, º:
And then comes her beau on pretence of a watch-ribbon, or the like I purtest.
Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
* The PowlpooDIEs of BURRAN are oysters, of which more will be said and sung in future
Numbers of this Work.-C. N. .
f Bushe, afterwards Chief Justice of Ireland ; , Plunket, Lord Chancellor ; Grattam, who
truly said of Irish independence, “I sat by its cradle, 1 followed its hears2 ;” Curran, the orator
and patriot, honest in the worst of times," over whose ashes,” to use his own words, “the most
precious tears of Ireland have been shed.”—M.
# Malahide, near Dublin, supplies the oysters, called the Powldoodies of Burran.—M.
| Of “Lord Norbury, that excellent Judge,” there is a very particular, though not flattering,
account, in Sheil's Sketches of the Irish Bar. It could not be said of him that he tempered
justice with mercy. In his vocabulary neither word could be found.—M.
§ Dublin.—M. .
“THE POWLDOODLES OF BURRAN.”
5.
But as for rºle, I could not withstand him, 'tis the beautiful dear Ensign I mea
When he came into the Shining Daisy” with his milkwhite smallclothes so cle tº:
With his epaulette shining on his shoulder, and his golden gorget at his breast, *.
And his long silken sash so genteelly twisted many times round about his neat
waist; - .
His black gaiters that were so tight, and reached up to a little below his knee
And showed so well the prettiest calfe'er an Irish lass had the good luck to see.
Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &o
6.
Pſis eyes were like a flaming coal-fire, all so black and yet so bright,
Or like a star shining clearly in the middle of the dark heaven at night,
And the white of them was not white, but a charming sort of hue,
Like a morning sky, or skimmed milk, of a delicate sweet blue ;
But when he whispered sweetly, then his eyes were so soft and dim,
That it would have been a heart of brass not to have pity upon him.
, * Oh the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
7
And yet now you see he's left me like a pair of old boots or shoes,
And makes love to all the handsome ladies, for ne'er a one of them can refuse;
Through America and sweet Ireland, and Bath and London City,
For he must always be running after something that's new and pretty,
Playing the devil's own delights in Holland, Spain, Portugal, and France,
And here too in the cold Scotch mountains, where I've met with him by very
chance. Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
8
When he first ran off and deserted me, I thought my heart was plucked away,
Such a tugging in my breast, I did not sleep a wink till peep of day—
May I be a sinner if I ever bowed but for a moment my eye-lid,
Tossing round about from side to side in the middle of my bid.
One minute kicking off all the three blankets, the sheets, and the counterpane,
And then stuffing them up over my head like a body beside myself again.
Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
9. . *
Says I to myself, I'll repeat over the whole of the Pater Noster, Ave-Maria, and
creed,
If I don't fall over into a doze e'er I'm done with them 'twill be avery uncommon
thing indeed;
But, would you believe it? I was quite lively when I came down to the Amen,
And it was always just as bad tho' I repeated them twenty times over and over
again ; -
I also tried counting of a thousand, but still found myself broad awake,
With a cursed pain in the fore part of my head, all for my dear sweet Ensign
Odoherty's sake, Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
10.
But, to cut a long story short, I was in a high fever when I woke in the morning,
Whereby all women in my situation should take profit and warning;
* The Shining Daisy was the sigm of Mrs. M'Whirter's chop-house at Philadelphia. Sir
Daniel Donelly hoisted the same sign over his booth the other day at Dommybrook Fair —C. N.
*


100 CHRISTOPEIER IN THE TENT.
And Doctor Oglethorpe he was sent for, and he ordered me on no account to rise,
But to lie still and have the whole of my back covered over with Spanish flies;
He also gave me leeches and salts, castor oil and the balsam capivi,
Till I was brought down to a mare shadow, and so pale that the sight would have
grieved ye. Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
11.
But in the course of a few days more I began to stump a little about,
And by the blessing of air and exercise, I grew every day more and more stout;
And in a week or two I recovered my twist, and could play a capital knife and
fork, e -
Being not in the least particular whether it was beef, veal, lamb, mutton, or pork;
But of all the things in the world, for I was always my father's own true daughter,
I liked best to dine on fried tripes, and wash it down with a little hot brandy and
Water. Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
12.
If I had the least bit of genius for poems, I could make some very nice songs
Qn the cruelties of some people's sweethearts, and some people's sufferings and
Wrongs; x,
IFor he was master, I’m sure, of my house, and there was nothing at all at all
In the whole of the Shining Daisy for which he could not just ring the bell and
call;
We kept always a good larder of pidgeon pyes, hung beef, ham, and cowheel,
And we would have got any thing to please him that we could either beg, borrow,
or steal. Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
13.
And at night when we might be taking our noggin in the little back room,
I thought myself as sure of my charmer as if he had gone to church my bride-
groom ;
But I need not keep harping on that string and ripping up of the same old sore,
He went off in the twinkling of a bed-post, and I never heard tell of him no more,
So I married the great Doctor Oglethorpe, who had been my admirer all along,
And we had some scolloped Powldoodies for supper; and every crature joined in
* the old song. Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. &c.
14. -
Some people eats their Powldoodies quite neat just as they came out of the sea,
But with a little black pepper and vinegar some other people's stomachs better
agree; ... -
Young ladies are very fond of oyster paties, and young gentlemen of oyster broth:
But I think I know a bit of pasture that is far better than them both :
For whenever we want to be comfortable, says I to the Doctor—my dear man,
Let's have a few scolloped Powldoodies, and a bit of tripe fried in the pan.
Chorus.-Oh! the Powldoodies of Burran,
The green, green Powldoodies of Burran,
The green Powldoodies, the clean Powldoodies,
The gaping Powldoodies of Burran.
After Mrs. Magnus had received those plaudits from the Tent due
to this exhibition of native genius, the learned Doctor somewhat
anxiously asked us what sort of accommodation we had for him and
his lady during the night? We told him that the Tent slept twenty
easily, and that a few more could be stowed away between the inter.
TIFE SHIANTDRY DAN. ... • 101
stices. “But give yourself no uneasiness, Dr. Magnus, on that score!
we are aware of the awkwardness of a lady passing the night with so
many Contributors, and of the censoriousness of the world, many
people in which seem determined, Doctor, to put an unfavorable
construction on every thing we do or say. Besides, your oxcellent
lady might find our Tent like the Black Bull Inn of Edinburgh, as it
was twenty years ago, when Dr. Morris first visited it, ‘crowded,
noisy, shabby, and uncomfortable.' Now the inn at Braemar is a
lmost capital one, where the young ladies of the family will pay every
attention to Mrs. Magnus. We have already dispatched a special
messenger for Dr. Morris' shandrydan, and as it is a fine moonlight
might, you can trundle yourselves down to bed in a jiffey.”
The sound of the shandrydan confirmed our words, and we all at-
tended Mrs. Magnus and her husband to the road, to see them safely
mounted. Our readers have all seen Peter’s shandrydan”—a smart,
Smug, safe, Smooth, roomy, easy-going concern, that carries you over
the stones as if you were on turf; and where, may we ask, will you
See a more compact mimble little horse than Peter's horse Scrub—
with feet as steady as clock-work, and a mouth that carries his bit
with a singular union of force and tenderness 2
“I fear that I cannot guide this vehicle along Highland roads,” said
Dr. Magnus; “and I suspect that steed is given to starting, from the
manner in which he keeps rearing his head about, and pawing the
ground like a mad bull. My dear, it would be flying in the face of
Providence to ascend the steps of that shandrydan.”
While the orator was thus expressing his trepidation, the Standard
bearer handed Mrs. Magnus forward, who, with her nodding plumes,
leapt lightly up beneath the giant strength of his warlike arm, and
took her seat with an air of perfect composure and dignity; while
Odoherty, adjusting the reins with the skill of a Lade or Buxton, and
elevating his dexter hand that held them and the whip in its gnostic
grasp, caught hold of the rail of the shandrydan with his left, and
flung himself, as it were, to the fair side of her who had once been
the mistress of his youthful heart, but for whom he now retained only
the most respectful affection.
“Mount up behind, Dr. Magnus,” cried the Adjutant, somewhat
impatiently; “your feet will not be more than six inches from the
ground, so that in case of any disaster, you can drop off like a ripe
pease-cod—mount, I say, Doctor, mount.”
The Doctor did so; and the Standard-bearer, giving a blast on
Wastle's bugle, and cutting the thin air with his thong several yards
beyond Scrub's nose, away went the shandrydan; while the moun-
tains of the Dee echoed again to the rattling of its wheels.
* In Peter's Letters there was a good deal of quizzing respocting Dr. Morris's shandrydan,
of which a sketch was given, showing it to be a one-horse gig, on two high wheels, running
lightly, and capable of joiding two persons.—M.
102 CHRISTOPETER IN THE TENT.
The Tent had lost its chief charm—so “the dull and dowie ’’ Con-
tributors prepared for repose. In the uncertain light of Luna, we
saw the tall, white, ghostlike shirt of Tickler towering over the lower/
statures; but in a few minutes, the principal Contributors to this
Magazine were, like Mr. Constable's authors, sound asleep, all but the
Editor. What with the rheumatism, which always gets worse in the
warmth of bed; and what with the cares of our profession, our mind
was absolutely like a sea full of waves, we will not say running
mountains high, far from it, but a vast multitude of active smallish
rippling waves, like those that keep chasing each other to the shore,
for several hours at a time, till it is high water at Leith. As we lay
in this condition, in the midst of the snore of the Tent, a footstep
came to our bed-side, and a soft voice whispered, “Maister, Maister |
are you wauken?” We sat up and saw the face of our incomparable
caddy, John M'Kay. “Here's a ketter frae Lord Fife, as braid's a
bannock. Black Hamish, that procht it, says there's an awful steer
doon at the ludge.” We went into the moonlight, where, by-the-by,
we saw Kempferhausen very absurdly sitting on a stone, staring at
the sky, as if he had just then seen it for the first time in his life, and
read the Thane’s letter. We then returned to bed to revolve its
contents in our mind, and to make fitting arrangements for the morn-
ing. The letter was short, for his Lordship uses but few words, and
these always the very best,-
My DEAR SIR-To-MoRRow PRINCE LEOPoLD WILL VISIT THE TENT
—Yours truly, - FIFE.
&the #ast ſºap of the gºt itt.
HAVING been thus kindly prepared by the letter of our friend the
Thane, we ordered a reveillé to be blown about six o'clock in the
morning, and hinted to the more active members of our assembly,
that it would be proper for them to start in order to replenish our
larder with a quantity of game sufficient for the entertainment of
these most honored guests. Nor did our suggestion require to be
enforced by many words: Morris, Wastle, Tickler, Odoherty, Bal-
lantyne, Hogg, &c., &c., had all started from their couches long
before we (fatigued as we had been with our manifold exertions)
, thought proper to be awake—and when at last we aroused ourselves,
the interior of the tabernacle was quite deserted around us. Wrap.
ping ourselves in a blanket, we were stepping forth with the view of
bathing (as had been our wont) in the sweet waters of the Dee—but
on emerging from the Tent, a very unexpected phenomenon met our
€WeS.
"within a few yards of our Pavilion, a very remarkable, and cer.
tainly a very reverend-looking old gentleman, bearing no resem-
blance whatever either in outline or habiliments to any of the present
members of our fraternity, was seated in a large chair, with a long
clay pipe of the genuine Dutch fashion in his mouth. He was
arrayed in a full suit of dignified black, with the black silk apron,
now worn by few except the Bishops and Deans of the English
church, suspended in ample folds from his capacious middle. On
his head was a large shovel hat, garnished with a black rose in #ont,
and so low and loosely did this hat sit upon the cranium, that it was
evident there was no wig below.
On the right of this surprising personage the Ettrick Shepherd sat
squat on the earth—his nether parts protected from the cold soil, yet
wet with the morning dew, only by the intervention of his gray maud.
He also had a pipe in his mouth—not a long white pipe like the
dignitary—but a short little stump of some two inches in length, and
all over japamned as darkly and as brightly as if it had been dipt in
a pot of Day and Martin's imperial blacking.
Slow, solemn, and voluminous were the puffs that issued from the
lengthier tube—quick, vehement and lusty were those of the Shep-
herd——never did a piece of hogg's flesh seem to be in a fairer way
104. CHT1STOPIIICR IN TIII. TEN'T,
of being cured, in the true Suabian method, than his nose, were the
process to be continued much longer. Opposite to these stood Se-
ward and Buller, each with his gun in his hand—the whole group.
had the appearance of being earnestly occupied in some conversation,
and for a moment we almost scrupled to interrupt them.
Seward was the first who observed us, and he immediately beck-
oned us to join the party. “Here,” cried he, “comes the illustrious
Editor of the first and last of Magazines; and here, “pointing to the
stranger, “is the most illustrious of all the visitors that have yet
intruded upon the encampment of Braemar—here, Mr. Editor, is the
great Dr. Parr l’ But for the want of his wig, we could have been
in no need of this information; but it was really with some difficulty
that, after the fact was announced to us, we could bring our eyes to
recognize in the features before us those of the FACILE PRINCEPs of
ENGLISH SCHOLARs; and yet it was wonderful, surely, that it should
have been so, for many a pipe had we smoked together in the days
of old at Charles Burney’s. But nothing, the fact is certain, produces
so great a change on a man's aspect as the addition or subtraction
of a periwig. Who could recognize in the cropped and whiskered
Lord of Session as he jostles his way down the High-street, or in
the spencered and gaitered Lord of Session as he ambles on a shelty
along Leith Sands, the same being, whose physiognomy had but a
few minutes before appeared to him amidst all the imposing amplifi-
cations of curl and frizz, lowering in more than marble abstraction
over the whole living farrago of the side-bar'. A pretty woman also
becomes very dissimilis sibi when any whiff of the wind, or the dance,
or the chandelier, snatches from her the luxurious masterpiece of
Urquhart or Giametti, and exposes to the gaze of her admirers nothing
but a pair of red ears projecting from a little tight cap of yellow
flannel, or a bare cranium, with here and there a few short ragged
hairs, red or gray, in form and disposition resembling the scanty
covering of some discarded tooth-brush. These are both sad meta-
morfhoses in their way. But neither of them so complete as those
of the Bellendenian Parr.* The change had scarcely been more
* Dr. Samuel Parr, who died in 1825, was one of the last of the truly learned men of
the Johnsonian era. He was not the very last, because there is now [1854] as President of
Magdalen College, Oxford—he was elected in 1791—Dr. M. J. Routh, “a scholar and a ripe
ome,” who is mearly a century old, and whose intellect burns as brightly in the lamp of life
now, with a flame as clear and steady as ever it did in youth, Parr, whose highest church
dignity was a prebend's stall in St. Paul's Cathedral, Ilondon, always considered himself badly
used in not having been made a bishop, during the short time (1806-7), that the whig leaders,
his personal friends, were in power. . No doubt the ultra-liberality of his politics was ope
barrier. IHis own assertion was, “Had my friends continued in power one #. Jonger,
Dr. Hungerford was to have been translated to Hereford, and I was to have had Gloucester.
My family arrangements were made.” With all his scholarship, which was large, he did not
accomplish any individual literary work of any great merit. He wasted his talents and
learning on pamphlets, with the exception of his character of the late Charles James Fox, in
two volumes, which fell far short of public expectation, and his Latin preface (in which he
s'retched the characters of Burke, Lord North, and Fox) to a new edition of the third book-of
Bellendemus. This has been considered the most successful moderm imitation of the style of
SCRIBBLE's EPISTLE. - 105
appalling, though Circe herself had been there to change the Man into
a Hogg. - * -
“All hail!” said we, “and right welcome ! This is indeed a most
unexpected honor—what can have been the means of bringing Dr.
Parr to the valley of the Dee º’’ “Mr. Editor,” returned the Doctor,
bowing apagºcorarog (for no English word can do justice to the placid
courtesy of that classical reverence)—“You do injustice to your own
fame when you meet your visitors with such an interrogation as this.
Why did I come to the valley of the Dee',
"Q RAelvotármy aifféptov otictoraç cró%tv,
Oük ol; 6’ 60my Tiptºv wap’ &vöpówoug pépet,
"Ooeg tº epaçõg Tàgé tric Xàpac &etc.
Why should you think it so wonderful that one man should have
some curiosity in regard to things for which all men have so great
admiration ? Of a surety, you are the most modest of Editors.
And then consider, man,” added he, in a light tone, and turning the
bowl of his pipe towards the Ettrick Shepherd, “you have many
loadstones. Here am I that would not have grudged an inch of my
journey although its sole recompense had been this Sicilian vision.”
The allusion was, no doubt, it chief, at least, to him whom Dr.
Morris has called “the Bucolie Jamie”—but surely that vision must
have been rendered a thousandfold more interesting to the illustrious
Grecian, by finding with what affectionate admiration it was already
regarded by the youthful but still kindred spirits of Seward of Christ
Church, and Buller of Brazennose. ... Seldom, we speak for ourselves,
have we been more unaffectedly delighted than by the contemplation
of this hearty homage paid by these pure àEſt classical spirits of the
South to the wild and romantic genius of the Nomadic North. But
Hogg was made to unite all men. In him Cam and Isis are found to
worship the inspiration of the haunted Yarrow.
We were very happy at this moment; and accepting Seward's offer
of a segar, sat down to enjoy more at leisure the society of this
interesting group. But Sad was the surprise, and sudden the shock,
when looking round, we beheld, stiff and gory upon the sod beside us,
Hector—even the faithful Hector—the peerless colley of the Shep-
herd —“Ah! Editor,” sobbed the Bard, “weel may your look be
owercast, when ye see that Waefu' sight—waes me! that Hector
should have deed; and waesomest of a”, that he should have deed by
mine aim hand.” “Truly ’tis a most unfortunate accident that has
occurred,” said Seward; “our friend here was up with the earliest,
and had got so far as those black firs yonder, on his way to the
Cicero. He has been called “the Brummagen Johnsom,” for his imitation of the Doctor's
manner and conversation. He talked a great deal, with a curious “lisp, and was pedantic,
dictatorial, and egotistical. He wore what was called a buzzwig, because Bentley and Johnson
had been so covered, and he was, in his time, the most inveterate smoker in England.—M.
106 TELE LAST DAY OF TEEE TENT.
ground; but his piece went off as he was leaping a cut in the heath—
and you see the consequences.” “You’re very good to put that face
on't, Maister Sieward,” murmured the poet; “but I’m no heedin
aboot thae trifles the moo-it was na in lowping a flow, nor naething
o' that kind—I ken na hoo it fell out, but I had taen just as good an
aim, as I thought, as could be, and a' wheen bonny birds were just.
whirring afore mine een, but somegait my haund shook—I’ll never
lippen til’t mae mair an’ beena with a pen or a keelavine—and I ludgit
the hail of my barrel in honest Hector—Puir man little did ye
think when ye stood there, with your tail like a ramrod—puir fallow !
—oh I’ll never see the like o' you.” Here the Shepherd's agitation
increased to such a height, that he ceased to be intelligible. “Cheer
up, my dear fellow,” quoth Dr. Parr, “cheer up—humanum est
errare—Geov to oſovro x&ropógv. It is of no use to indulge in these
regrets, now the unfortunate occurrence has happened ; it cannot be
undone—8 Xpovog á wavrov wormp. Resign yourself—do not prolong
your suffering by keeping your departed favorite in your view ; let
us bury Hector, and then your feelings may be more gentle, under,
aſoºrgive wropoſov—It is done—it is done—let us dig the grave.”
“Most willingly,” cried Buller and Seward both together; and in a
few minutes the corpse of the lamented colley was hid from the eyes
of his master, by the replaced sod of the wilderness.
“And now,” says Parr, “must Hector lie there without an epitaph?
such ingratitude would be abominable, doſovºrugov 'ri—I for one would
willingly furnish a modest inscription in Greek—the only language
which admits a perfect propriety of epitaphs in verse; but Juniores
ad labores, I shall leave that to my friend Buller. For vernacular
£oſito.ptc., we may certainly trust the muse of Mr. Hogg himself.
when he comes a little more to his recollection.” “I can mak nae
epitaphs the noo,” said the Shepherd, in a low trembling key, “I’se
saying he resumed his pipe, and retired to some distance from our
company. “Let him go,” said the doctor, “let him go in silence—
as Plato remarks, solitude is ever the best soother of affliction, in its
first birth; it is best, says he, to walk apart aſočov x&T&oſe-poºl, and so
indeed has the poet represented Achilles, after the slaughter of his
friend—but to your epitaph.” -
Having furnished them with tablets and black lead pencils, we left
the three Greeks to themselves; and returning in about half an hour,
to announce that breakfast would soon be in readiness, we found Mr.
Buller putting the last touches to the elegant composition, which we
now insert. We wish the reader had been there, to see Dr. Parr's face
when the modest Bachelor of Brazennose put the paper into his hands.”
* What follows is a clever parody on Parr's mammer of editing a work, or smothering the
text beneath an emormous quantity of Latin notes. This travesty, by the way, shows great
ability in the manner in which the Latim language is familiarly treated.—MI.
h
HECTOR's EPITAPH. 107
Hogg returned just as the doctor was preparing to read,and resuming
his old posture, apparently a good deal more composed, listened to
the -
IN HECTORA,
PASTORIs ETTRICENSIS SIVE CHALDAEI CANEM,
FATO PRAEPROPERo (DUM 0x07, Tošov oux 8"rexel’ DOMINUs) ABREPTUM,
* CARMINA ETITO.Q10.
'Qg o' ' appletov Tapov "Ectopog—
- Hom. Il. Ó. 804.
quantum mutatus ab illo
Hectore, qui, dºc. Virg. Æn. ii. 275.
- I.
‘Ektopoch epit kovic, Tov Óm katereºvev, amón
‘OTWa Aagov 6 Náuevg, a ſpe?' & plmö' et' emu'
Ovče tº plot Apatopumo'ev, avovtatogi (ov ye, Neſtmpov
Bakav ov yap eyo otm{}eolv apºp' eſpopovv.
& II.
Q £etv', ayyethov Kažeó-(av)-ovuouc, Ött Tºde
Keipiat, rov Kreuvev Trnktovoplevg} avoplog.
NOTAE.
I.
Cum mos dudum apud omnes hujuscemodi in rebus versatos invaluerit, poematiis
—sive Buis, sive aliorum—notas versibus, plus nimio longiores attexendi, mihi
quoque eorum exemplis obsecuto aliquantinum in commentando excurrere visum
est. Versus nempe ipsi, utpote minoris pretii, ceu paxilli tantüm deinceps sunt
reputandi, quibus annotationes (livoris nonnunquam, Saepius eruditionis Ostentandae
gratiã) omni scibili refertae appendantur.
* Pind, Ol. ii. 160. Accuratius scilicet Pastor ille, et cantare et respondere
paratus,
—ttva 3a//et
Ek plaž6akaç avte ºpe——
voc evicAcag ośgovg
telç.
Sclopporum quippe glande et pulveve nitrato (ut cum lexicographis loquar)
Oneratorum imperitus sinistram libri, ad quem collineabatur, paginam ne vel
unico plumbi grano penetravit. Videsis non semel laudaud. Blackw. Magaz.
xxix. 600. Dextra ejusdem libri pagina ne ab ullo jaculantium laederetur, in
causã fuit Neperi Dissertatio, de quá infra copiosius. De Nepero ipso, quicquid
Contra oblattent cynici, sermone proverbiali tutó est pronunciandum, “he has saved
his Bacon.” -
t Haec appellatio quam probè cani Scotico conveniat, documento sit Swiftii S.
T. P. et S. P. D. apud Hibernos perjucunda illa de Vocabulis Veterum Disquisitio;
in quâ, Hectoris conjugem Andromachen Caledonii cujusdam nobilis, Andrew
|Mackay, certo certiás filian, fuisse contendit. Quidui ergo et viri nomen ejusdem
Quoque patriae sit Gaudent quippe Scotigenae Trojanorum nominibus. Wixit
haud ita pridem Hector Monro : vivit hodie, ut ex Actis Diurnis conjicere licet,
Leopoldi Principis Illustrissimi hospes, Æneas Mackintosh; synonymique plures
108 TELE LAST DAY OF THIE TENT.
avtópott in Scotiá reperiri possunt. Pace vero tanti viri dixerim, non nihil me in
etymo, hack'd and tore, ubi copula and intepov/affog redundet, solitie ejus subti-
litatis desiderare. Meliùs forsan, quia ad lingua Scotica genium accommodatius,
“JHeck 1 tore P’ lacerum quippe herois corpus contemplantis cujusdam exclamatio,
rationem nominis redderet. Exemplis item (ut hoc obiter moneam) a Swiftio
allatis, plurima quivis citó addiderit: e. g. CHARON, qu, carry-on; CERBERUs,
“Sir, bear (i.e. endure) us,” AEmeå sic monstrum illud Tplkapmyov inter transeundum
blandits compellante, &c. &c.
2vvekôoxikoç quoque, cum Hectora saepius Maeonides vocaverit Toqueva Żaov,
pastoris canis praeclaro illo nomine ornari posset. -
† Neperi de Bacone tºp &vatarp dissertationem cum ipse, quae mea est infelici-
tas' non perlegerim, valde dubito utrum non vulneratum (vulcaniis quippe armis
contectum) an mon penetratum interpretari debeam. Lucem forsan voci affundet
quod de eo Christophorus Noster, in Blackw. Mag. ib., posteris prodidit; such im-
penetrable stuff it proved to be. Quicquid veró de eo sit statuendum, mali pro-
pulsatorem Baconem non adfuisse jure miretur aliquis, cum inter ejus Pastorisque
Ettricensis nomen (Hogg) necessitudo arctior intercedet; quod tamen clarissimum
illud philosophiae decus pernegässe, Hoggio quodam per collum mox suspendendo
ad miserationem movemdam strenuè affirmante, cel. Josephus Millerus lepidā sane
(ut sape) narratiunculā scriptis consignavit: “A Hog, till it is hung, is not
Bacon.”
Verbosiorem esse de quá agitur dissertationem, nec tutó vigilare cupientibus
sub noctem in manus sumendam queruntur multi; quod profect vel nominis ejus
praenominisque syllabæ primae fatali quádam conspiratione praenotare videntur,
cum MAC a plakoç Dor. pro pumkog derivetur, et NAP Anglicë somnum souet, ne Ma-
Zeppae quidem ipsius (utpote longioris) auditoribus, si poetae testi credamus, evi-
tandum. The king had been an hour asleep. -
Lectorem non fugerit, quibus verbis Hectora ab Ajace percussum Homerus, fl.
$ 417, &c., designaverit, quercui illum iTal 6ttmg tatpog Avog cadenti assimilans,
Vernaculāque planè (quod nulli non suboluerit) figurá addens, Öetvm de Seetov
Ytveral odum.
II.
| Olim legebaiºr,
'Q ºstv’, ayſetàov Aalcedalpuovuotg, Ött Thée
Kelple?a, toug Kelvaju Tetêoplevot vogtp.org.
Hoc, quoad ductum literarun, caeteraque in conjecturis criticis observari sueta, .
quam prope quod in textu dedimus Fpigramma contingit ! -
En artem, quâ ad doloris acrius urgentis vim plenë exprimendam timesi factâ,
atgue plorantis syllabä. AI in medio vocabulo insertà, poeta tantúm non in fletum
secum legentes abripiat 1 Decantatum istud de Matildá Pottinger poema, in quo,
nullo ad affectum respectu habito, ogovote? evta (Anglicë Rhyme) efficiendi causä
verba quaedam intercisa sunt: e. g. &
Thou wast the daughter of my Tu-
tor, Law Professor at the U-
niversity, &c. (Roviºrs.) sº
quanto hoc nostrum exsuperat I Wehementioris Scilicët est luctas voculam quâm
sententiam discindere; ideoque, me judice, AI istud patheticum omnibus voterum
Tragicorum ejulatibus, e, e, e, otorotot, otorotot, &c. narrationis cursum impedi-
entibus meritó est anteponendum.
Primae vocum partes, Aake et Kaže facillimë inter sº permutari posse quis mon
videt : neu mihi vitio verterit quisquam (Buchanano, Junioque auctoribus fretus,
quorum hic Ka270ovic # Waptegoa, ille Nympha Caledonias, &c. scriptum reliquit)
me non per m secundam syllabam in Kažeóovuot, extulisse. Nulius enim dubitat
NorBS ON IIECTOR's EPITAPH. 109
quin id metri necessitati, eodem quo in ačavaroc caeterisque ejusdem farinae wer-
bis modo prima syllaba producitur, acceptum referri debeat. Id si non satis
placeat, legat, per me licet, ayſet\ov on Kaźmöoytowg, Veneresque omnes in voculá
illä simplice AI delitescentes uno quasi ictu Caligula alter sustailerit.
§ Vocem Tºktovoplevc non aliás occurrere si quis objeceit, is velim secum repu-
tet, quot veterun, libri in quibus forsan erat reperienda omnino perierint ; nec
fistuſā canentem pastorem verbo ad sensum aptiori describi potuisse. Inktvöa
quippe musicorum instrumentum pecten esse vel tyronibus notum est.
Cüm verö pastoribus septentionalibus oves non solūm pasgere sed etiam ton-
dere moris sit, legant fortassis alii (vulgatae lectioni, ut mihi quidem videtur, nimis
areté insistentes) Tetkovouevº, -
Haec dum avtooxediaCovrog more effunderem distichon, quoddam mihi in men-
tem venit, pace tuá, lector, leviter emendandum :
Mmóev agapretv egt 0°ow, kal Tavra katopéovv
Ev 8torm, potpav Ó' ovt. ºvyetv etopev.
Haccita correxeris:
Mmöe Mapatrov eart fleovtov Tavra katop&ovy
Euðateau. Motpavy' ovt. ºvyetv etopeu.
Quis hic poetam de rebus nuperrimè in India gestis vaticinantem non depre-
henderit? nomen ipsum habes Marchionis illius, quem ducem Scotia nostra pau-
cos abhinc annos suspexit, equitatüs jam nunc Mahrattici hãc illāc discurrentis
victorem Britannia omnis suaque ipsius Iérne demiratur.
Aliud item, ne diutit's te teneam, poetae é longinquo quid esset futurum pros-
picientis exemplum accipe ; Drydeni nempe versus binos, in quibus homunculos.
Yulgö dictos SPA-FIELDS REFORMERs, ductoremdue eorum famosum, quasi nomina-
tim designat: Ç
Better to hunt in fields for health wnbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous drawght.
ubi Tº corruption opponitur vox health, eodem planè sensu quo salus populi su-
prema lex esse dicitur; to whbought venum exposita suffragia tangit; the doctor
procerem quemdam, ut ita dicam, with cunning (Qu? Canning) finger indigitat;
To draught denique (sono quidem atque Metaphorá juxtà neglectis) res aerarii
forsan subobscure respicit, nisi—quod vix tamen crediderim—Huntii cerevisiam
fallacibus olim veneni herbis concoctam vates innuat. Videant Angli annon eun-
dem quem antea potum plebi propinandum 6 wavv offerat.*
Neque si etymis nonnunquam primo viso tantúm non ridendis usus esse videar
succensebunt mihi qui Bryantii Tov palcaputov, aliorumque é sectatoribus ejus.
tomos pervolverint; qualia sunt, e.g., quae sequuntur.
* If Mr. Buller had passed from the Brewer to the Sportsman, he would have found Henry
Hunt, in one of his late letters, complaining of his Lancaster treatment—expressing himself
thus, “a week's shooting at Middleton cottage will set all to rights.” In the meantime, we
find him about to pass through London on his way, prepared, we suppose, in illustration of this
expression, like another Xerxes with his myriads—tmvöe Tºv Tožºv 6mpagat (AEschyl. Pels.
%3), not, however, it may be feared, with the view of rendering it Baat?et tarmicoog, (Ibid.)
The word 8mpaoal, besides its obvious allusion, furnishes one of those deep and hidden senses
which escape the vulgar eye. We may take its meaning from Herodotus oayavevgot tag
Cyßpow8ç 78Top Tov Tpowjov. avmp avópog aipapuevog T/Q 2.8lpoſ (could there be a more
distinct emumciation of what took place on the advent of THE GREAT KNowN at Manchester?)
* Giaong tºg vngs Öve?6&ot exflºpewovr&g tag &vôpatrovg (vi. 31.) But we are becoul-
tug quite a Buller.--C. N. .
110 TELE LAST DAY OF TEIE TENT.
Idem Valere adagia, etrº tov Čvoxepeat kat 3%aćepot, eſtixelpovvrov dicta,
. Ată TV plaſtalpav,
. Kopov'm Tov okop"Tuov,
. Avayupov Kuvetv,
. Ignes suppositi cineri doloso,
. Teppm trup into 9aWTropuevov) et
. Aeolyta vuoroetv,
apud Paroemiographum quemdam olim legisse me memini. Hoc ita esse, vide,
lector, quomodo ipse paucis levitër immutatis, viá (ni multúm fallor) haud anté
trità probatum iverin.
1. Lege itaque, ſeni in asperum verso, ‘Alſt timu playalpaw (HAY Bc, J. P.) et habes
nuperum, de in Com. Lancastr. tumultum luce ipsā claritis descriptum, Nimis
forsan esset verbum premere, si in Tø Maxaipav Manc. Iron delitescere me suspi-
cari affirmarem; semi-grascisset licet lingua anglicana, et vox étrixelpovvtov sic
tandem propriá Buä significatione gavisura esse videatur—Militum quippe Man-
cuniensium enses, qui quâm fuerint dvoxepetſ cat (3%aôepot omnibus ferè, à quá-
cunque demüm parte stent, in ore versatur,
2. Kopavn toy okoptiow quid sibi velit, jure quis dubitare possit. Addito p
solilm omnis statim difficultas & medio tollitur. Kopovmp (Batty, the Coromer) Tov
okoptuov, quem noxium quoddam animal esse (Qu? Angl, a Harmer) quis non
videt :
3. Avayupov Kuvetv, quod in Aristophane occurrit, vix ipse, a nigmatum hujusmodi
apud recentiores dedipus, Erasmus expediverit; cum anagyrum genium quoddam
fuisse harioletur, qui propter violatum ejus sacellum vicinos omnes funditàs ever-
titl apage: non placet. Ego Tavnyvptv lego, sc, to disperse a Manchester mob—
utrum ev keptevow (i. e. well-disposed) anon, penes alios judicium est futurum.
4. Vice Cinteri substituas “fineri,” pro Finerty (hoc enim, quod aiunt nostrates,
fits to a 7';) et planum fit omne, in quo anteå ob tenebras circumfusas offendebatur.
5. Teppm interpreteris, penè ad literam, The Free.
6. Denique Aeovta vuggetv quid propriè sit, non satis liquet: nisi per aphaere-
sin pro Natrożeovta fuerit dictum, quem inter prospera quidem pupugisse non
temerè quivis ausus esset. Hujus ceram quâ, dum fortuna fuit, inimici damnaban-
tur, verè notavit Ovidius; utpote quam -
de longae collectam flore cicuta,
Melle sub infami Corsica misit apis.”
Nonne jam vides, ut hac omnia inter se concinant }
SED MANUM QUOD AIUNT DE TABULA,
$ # $ * Sé #
:
These lucubrations seemed to produce the happiest effect in the
wounded spirit of the Shepherd. The grand solemn note in which
the Doctor recited the beautiful Greek lines themselves riveted his
attention, and delighted (how could it be otherwise?) his ear. But
whether it was the physiognomy of the T)octor, or his voice, or his
gesture, or all together, we know not. This much is certain, that the
Shepherd seemed to be amused, at least, as much as any of us with
the Notae. The two or three vernacular vocables introduced afforded,
perhaps, some little clue of the purport of the annotations—at all
events, he laughed considerably every time that Greek proper name
Neºmpog was repeated in any of its cases. At the end he withdrew
* Anne hic ad Apin, Deum, so Bgyptiorum, qualem se Dux iste Gallorum impie professus
est, alluditur !—S. P.
TIMS SHOOTS DR. PARR's WIG. 111
arm in arm with Seward, probably in hopes of obtaining from him a
more accurate account of what had been said by Mr. Buller about
himself—his dog—and the transactions of the Royal Society. We
overheard him saying, after a few minutes of colloquy with his oracle,
and after three or four portentous cackles of returning merriment,
“Od, man, the warst o’t is, that the creature would never understand
a line o’t, even it was put intill the Magazine-–Lord safe yel he
kens nae mair about Greek than mysel. There's some o’ thae kind
o' literary chiels about Edinburgh, that writes themselves esquires,
and editors, and a' the lave o’t, and yet kens very little mair, to ca’
kenning really—than a puir herd like what I was mysel—they’re
blathering skytes a wheen o’ them ; neither genius nor learning—it's
nae meikle wonder they mak but a puir hand O't.” “Pooh [" said
Seward, “he’ll get somebody to translate it for him.”—“Oo' aye,”
quoth Hogg, “gie Gray or Dunbar a dictionary, and a day or twa
to consider o’t, and I daur say they’ll be able to gie him some ink-
ling—but I was clean forgetting mysel, he has naething to do, but to
gang oureby and speer at Professor Christisin—that Professor, they
say, is a real scholar;* he’ll interpret it as glegg as ye like.—But
Losh keep us a', there's Tims cominghame aw by his lain, and what's
that he has gotten on the end o' his gun ?”
Looking round in the direction indicated by Theocritus, we descried
the Cockney at the distance of about 100 yards, advancing in a slow
and dignified pace; his piece carried high over his shoulders, and on
the summit thereof a something, the genius and species of which were
at this distance alike mysterious. “What the deel's that ye’ve got-
ten, callan P’ cried the Shepherd (who, by-the-way, had all along
treated Tims and Price with unsufferable indélicacy). “My man,
ye’ve had a fine morning's sport—Is that a dead cat or a dirty sark
ye're bringing haim wi' ye?” “God knows what it is,” said the
Iondoner, “ or rather whose it is, for I believe, upon my honor, 'tis a
parson's wig–but I thought it was a ptarmigan, sitting on the bough
of that there tree by the river side, and I brought it down ; but
demme if it be’nt a wig.”—“You good-for-nothing little pert jacka-
napes,” vociferated Parr—“You believe it to be a wig and you
took it to be a ptarmigan.” . . . . “Come, come now, Doctor,” inter-
rupted the Shepherd, “ye mauna be owre hard on an inexperienced
Callant—Preserve us a’ſ that beats all the wigs that ever I saw
Lord! what a gruzzle !” . . . . Here the burst of laughter was such,
that Dr. Parr found himself compelled to join in the roar; and after
the first peal was over, he begged pardon of the Cockney for the
harsh terms he had employed in the most good-tempered style
in the world. He of Ludgate Hill was sorely crest-fallen, but he
% º Christison, one of the Professors in the Faculty of Medicine in Edinburgh Univer
sity, -M, ... •
112 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT.
harbored no resentment, and all was soon peace and harmony.
“This beats old Routh's quite to nothing, Buller,” said Seward—
“Egad, Seward,” cries Buller, “there might be a blackbird's nest in
every curl, and a rookery in the top frizzle. Burton's is but a baga-
telle to this.”—“Enough, enough, my young friends,” quoth the
Doctor; “my wig was pilloried long ago in the Edinburgh Review
by Sidney Smith : it has now been shot through, and that by Mr.
Tims, on the banks of the Dee; surely it is high time to give up its
persecution.—Leave it, leave it, to repose.” “But hoo, in the name
of wonder,” cried Hogg, “ did ye come to leave your wig in the
bough o' a fir-tree—what in a daft like doing was that?”—“Why,
Mr. Hogg,” answered the Bellendenian, with wonderful suavity,
“when you're as old a man as I am, your faculties will not perhaps
be quite so alert on all occasions; you will perhaps learn to make
blunders then as well as your neighbors. Be merciful, most illus-
trious Shepherd; I stripped myself, about two hours ago, to bathe in
this beautiful river of yours, and hung my wig on the tree that was
nearest me; I forgot to take it down when my bath was over, and
you see the consequence. Let's say no more about the matter, x0xov
gú Xsugyov Mr. Seward.”—“Yes, yes,” cried Buller, “ºn xivel—um
xive.” Dr. Morris's servant was at hand; at our suggestion the
periwig was intrusted to his care, and in a few minutes it made its
appearance on the sinister hand of that accomplished valet, in full
puff and fuzz, apparently blooming only the more vigorously from
the loppings it had sustained. -
Eifteen years ago, when James Hogg was tending sheep on the
hills of Ettrick, what would a judicious person have thought of the
man, who should have predicted, that the Shepherd was destined, in
the book of fate, or some future day, to replace “the U.8%. 80.wu.o. of
the literary world” on the head of the eulogist of the “Tria lumina
Anglorum ?” Yet, with our own eyes have we beheld this thing.
Dr. Parr “stooped his anointed head” to the author of the Queen's
Wake, and that genuine bucolic, taking the wig from the hand of
Tims, placed it with all the native dexterity of a man of genius, on
the brows of Philopatris Varvicensis.; “Mo Ala,” cries the Pre-
bendary, “the old reproach, ºutpu)\xºrov illud; the Boioriog ig has
been nobly wiped away by this unlearned Theban. To speak with
the immortal Casaubon, “Talia quis mon amisisse vellet, per te deni-
que, vir egregi recuperaturus.” This weighty matter having been
* So Burke, Lord North, and Charles James Fox were designated, in Parr's Preface to Bellem-
demus, who—and this is mentioned for the special benefit of “ the country gentleman,” was Wil-
liam Bellenden, a native of Scotland, who was educated at Paris, where he was Professor of
Belles-Lettres in 1602. He wrote a work called Cicero Princeps, which was published in
}} º afterwards included in his Bellendenus de Statu, which Parr partly edited in
7S7.—N -
fl’arr's residence, at Hatton, in Warwickshire, was about eighteen miles from Birmingham,
and he published his Character of Fox under the nom-de-plume of Philopatris Warvicensis, –M.
IBIREAIKFAST. - 113
adjusted, we bowed the illustrious scholar into our Tent, and sat
down at the head of the breakfast-table, with Dr. Parr on our right,
and James Hogg on our left hand. Buller supported the preacher
of the Spittal sermon,” and Seward was still the “fidus Achates” of
the bard of Yarrow. At some distance sat Tims eyeing the rein-
stated wig, and mentally calculating the number of grains of shot
which it now contained; for, unlike a certain paper in the transac-
tions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, it was not made of impene-
trable stuff. We are rusty in our Greek now-a-days, and could not
help wishing that Dr. Search, that truly attic wit, had been present
to whisper into our willing ear a little of his profound erudition. But
we soon found, that at breakfast a great scholar, like aſappog, rightly
deemed that he had something else before him than Greek roots,
and that the pleasantest of all tongues is that of the rein-deer. The
Doctor is evidently not a man to pick a quarrel with his bread and
butter; and though we, Buller, and Hogg, ran him hard, he at last
gained the plate. A Highland breakfast is sometimes too heavy a
meal; and the board is inelegantly crowded. But on the present oc-
casion, we took for our guidance the old adage, .
Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines,
and ordered John Mackay on no account whatever to put on the
table anything more than a couple of dozen of eggs, a mutton ham, a
tongue, a cut of cold salmon, a small venison pasty, some fresh her-
rings, a few Finnan haddies, a quartern loaf oatmeal cakes, pease
scones, barley bannocks, honey, jelly, jam, and marmalade; so that
one's attention was not likely to be distracted by a multiplicity of
objects, and we all knew at once where to lay our hand on something
comfortable. “Hah! Buller, you dog,” said the Doctor, between
two enormous mouthfuls of broiled herring, superbly seasoned, under
the guidance of our master Celt, with Harvey sauce and Cayenne,
“jentaculum mehercule ipsi Montamo ipsi Cripso invidendum.”
“What say you, you dog?
‘Such food is fit for disembodied spirits.'
Good eating is not confined, as of old, intra centesimum lapidem ſ”
A long and animated discussion ensued concerning the comparative
merits of Rutupian and Kentish, or Gauran Mullets—a favorite
breakfast dish it seems with the Emperor Vitellius. When this was
beginning to wax a little less vehement, and Parr had at last put his
* There has long existed an endowment for having a sermon annually preached in Christ-
Church, Newgate-street, London. This, which is called the Spittal Sermon, from the name of
the person who bequeathed the annount, from which payment is made to the preacher, was de-
livered by Dr. Parr in 1800, and published by him soon after, with voluminous notes. Parr,
who was desultory in his writings, contrived to drag in Godwin’s Political Justice, which then
had recently been published; and having attacked it, brought down upon himself a pamphlet,
by Mr. Godwin, in which the divine was treated with less ceremony than he conceived him.
ſelf entitled to.—M. “ c - +
WOL. I.—10 - -
114 TEIE LAST DAY OF THE TENT.
tea-spoon into his seventh cup, to show that he had given in ; a loud
noise was heard of shouting voices, and echoing bugles; so, running
hastily into the open air, we beheld a sight worthy of the mountains.
The Thane, with his usual fine taste, had, by sunrise, escorted PRINCE
LEoPolp” to the forest, that he might partake of the
Wild mirth of the desert, fit pastime for kings.
And now many a hill-side was gleaming with his Celtic tenantry
“All plaided and plumed in their tartan array,”
when a magnificent stag came bounding along, close by the Tent,
pressed hard by those enormous hounds whose race is not yet extinct
in the Highlands, and whose fierce and savage career in the chase
carries back the mind to remote ages,
“When the hunter of deer and the warrior trod
O'er his hills that encircle the sea.”
As the “desert-boom” went by,
“Wafting up his own mountains that far-beaming head,”
the heather was stained with his blood, for had he not been wounded
he would soon have distanced his pursuers. It was delightful to
observe the enthusiasm of the fine old man, when all the wild pomp
of this mountain-chase hurried tumultuously by—and to hear with
what energy, he repeated some of those majestic lines of Virgil,
descriptive of that hunt where Dido and Æneas shone.
The feelings of Seward found quite a different form of expression.
A fine animal by Diana—“demme, Buller, if the scoundrel has not
the horns of an Alderman.” Tims startled at this simile, but said
nothing, and probably relapsed into a dream of the Epping-Hunt, at
which the stag is very conveniently made to jump out of the hinder
parts of a wagon. Price joined the rout in his Surrey cap, and gave
the whoop-holla with the lungs of a stentor, while Seward continued:
“The Duke of Beaufort's hounds used to run down old Reynard,
* Prince Leopold, of Saxe-Coburg, now King of the Belgians, really was in Scotland in
September, 1819, . He visited Sir Walter Scott, at Abbotsford. There is an amusing account,
in one of Scott’s letters to Lord Montagu, of the domestic anxiety which this visit caused at
Abbotsford. The Prince, it seems, had come from Edinburgh to see “fair Melrose,” which is
close by the town of Selkirk. Scott, who was Sheriff of the county, attended at Selkirk to do
the homors. “The Prince very civilly told me,” said he, “ that, though he could not see Mel-
rose on this occasion, he wished to come to Abbotsford for an hour.” There was no declimim
the visit, but “a domiciliary search for cold meat, through the whole city of Selkirk, j
one shoulder of cold lamb.” . However, with broiled salmon, and black cock, and partridges, a
lunch was made out, and Scott adds: “I chanced to have some very fine old hock, which was
mighty germane to the matter.”. In 1819 much sympathy was felt for Prince Leopold. In
May, 1816, he had married the Princess Charlotte, daughter of George IV., who had fallen in
love with him at a time when his worldly property was only £300 a year. They lived most
happily until November, 1817, when the Princess Charlotte unexpectedly died, after her ac-
couchement. The national grief for her loss was deep beyond parallel, and great was the sym-
}. for Leopold in his bereavement. The marriage of the late Duke of Kent with Prince
aeopold's sister (of which Queen Victoria is the sole surviving issue) would probably not have
taken place (in 1818), if there had not been the previous family connexiom created, by the
Princess Charlotte's union with Leopold.—
PRINCE LEOPOLD's VISIT. - 115
breast-high all the time, in twenty minutes—and Parson Simmons'
pack were not so much amiss, though the field indeed was rather
raffish—but the Grand Signor yonder would leave them all behind
—poor devil, he is never again to revisit his seraglio.”
All the world has read the Lady of the Lake, and he who has for.
gotten the description of the Stag-chase in that poem, may be assured,
that had he been born when mankind were in the hunter-state, he
must have died of hunger. It may be just as well not to do over
again any thing that it has pleased Walter Scott to do; and there-
fore, should any of our readers be tired of us, let them turn to Fitz-
James and his gallant Grey. Now, as of old, A PRINCE was on the
mountain-side, and while the wild cries of the Highlanders echoed far
and wide, from rock to rock over that sublime solitude, as every glen
sent pouring down its torrents of shouting hunters, LEOPOLD must
have felt the free spirit of ancient days brooding over the desert, and
what true glory it is to be loved and honored by the unconquered
people of the mountains of Caledonia.
The tumult at length faded away far up among the blue mists
that hung over the solitary glen of the Linn of Dee. We found our-
selves deserted in our Tent. Even Dr. Parr had strayed away
among the rocks in search of some watch-tower, from which he might
yet catch a glimpse of the skirts of the vanished array. But the
noble Thane had not been neglectful of us. A strong band of the
finest Highlanders that could be selected from the population of his
immense estates, with many too of the Grants and Gordons, came,
bonnets waving, plaids flying, and pipes sounding; to the Tent, to
form a guard of honor to receive THE PRINCE, not unworthy the
flower of the House of Saxony. They immediately disposed them-
selves in the most picturesque positions among the wild scenery
round the Tent—one band cresting a rocky eminence with a gorgeous
diºdem ºf scarf and plume—another seen indistinctly lying as in
ambush among the high bloom of the heather—and a third, drawn up
as in order of battle, to salute LEOPOLD on his arrival with a dis-
charge of musketry. Meanwhile pipes challenged pipes, and pibrochs
and gatherings resounded like subterraneous music from a hundred
echoing hills. -
By the munificence of the THANE our table had been furnished up
with a splendor fit for the reception of a PRINCE—and just as all the
arrangements were finished, we saw the noble party descending a
steep, and advancing straightway to the Tent. To our delight and
astonishment a bevy of fair ladies joined the train ere it reached the
banks of the Dee; and, as if suddenly built by magic, a little plea-
sure-boat, beautifully painted, rose floating on that transparent river,
into which Prince, Lord, and Lady, lightly stepped, and in a few
minutes they stood on the greensward before our Tent. -
116 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT.
John of Sky—Lord Fife's own piper—and several others, blew up
that well-known pibroahd (Phailt Phrase), or Prince's welcome, that
made the well-in ring, while two hundred Highlanders, in the garb of
old Gaul, with bonnets waving in the air, gave -
“That thrice-repeated cry,
In which old Alpin's heart and tongue unite,
Whene'er her soul is up, and pulse beats high,
Whether it hail the wine-cup or the fight,
And bid each arm be strong, or bid each heart be light.”
A discharge of musketry from the guard of honor followed well those
proud huzzas, and when the din ceased, nothing was heard but the
wild cry of the eagle wheeling in disturbed circles far up in the sky.
The Standard-bearer” advanced to receive PRINCE LEoPold, who,
in the most gracious manner declared what “high satisfaction it gave
him thus to visit our Tent, and that he would have the pleasure of
staying dinner.” Nothing could exceed the graceful affability of the
Marchioness of Huntly? and her fair friends, who, after expressing.
their delight with our characteristic reception of the Prince, and their
admiration of our Tent and all its arrangements, withdrew under the
protection of the Thame, who soon, however, returned again to the
scene of festivity. Every moment stragglers kept coming in, till the
whole party was complete, and we sat down in the Tent to a feast
which it would be endless to describe, consisting of every delicacy
from air, flood and field, and enriched with all generous and mighty
wines in cup and goblet, from the ancient catacombs of Mar-Lodge.;
The presence of our ILLUSTRIOUS GUEST, so justly dear to the
“soul of this wide land,” shed a calm and dignified tranquillity
throughout the Tent—and the feelings then awakened in the hearts of
us all will cease only when those hearts shall beat no more. During
dinner PRINCE LEoPold sat on our right hand, and Lord Huntly on
our left, while Wastle, who acted as croupier, had the honor of
being supported by Baron Addenbroke and the Thane. The Prince,
the moment he recognized Dr. Parr, requested him, with the most
affectionate respect, to sit by him ; and Lord Huntly, remarking
that the highest of all rank was that conferred by genius, took the
* Odoherty.—M. f. Now Duchess of Gordom, residing at Huntly Lodge, Aberdeenshire.—M.
vi 'The Bº: of Fife's Shooting Lodge. It is close to Balmoral, the Scottish residence of Queen
ictoria.-M. *
| Afterwards Duke of Gordom. On his death, in 1837, without legitimate male issue, the
Dukedom and most of the estates went to his next-of-kim, the present Duke of Richmond, and the
Farl of Aboyne, another relative, succeeding to his second title, became Marquis of Huntly.
This last was a character, and died in June 1853, at the advanced age of minety-two, actually
continuing to the last, to act as aide-de-camp to the Queen. His affectation of youth, almost to
his dying day, was curious. The faded beau, described in Gil Blas, who daily rose an old man,
and was made up, after a three hours' toilette, into the semblance of a young Lothario, was
somewhat like the Marquis of Huntly,–who, however, even went to the extremity of wearing
cork plumpers in his mouth, to swell out his cheeks, which had fallen in from age . At the
age of 87, I saw him dance a polka, and his aſſectation of juvenility would have been amusing,
if, by contrast, it were not almost painful.--M. . .
RIT NORTH's SPEECH. - 117
Ettrick Shepherd by the hand, and kindly seated him between him-
self and Mr. Seward. Every one, in short, being proud and happy,
was placed to his mind—and time flew so swiftly by, that the cloth
was removed before we had found leisure to revolve in our mind a
few words of address on rising to propose the
*** FIEALTH of THE PRINCE REGENT.”
“Little would it coincide with our ideas of propriety to enlarge at
any considerable length upon topics not immediately suggested by
the proper object of our meeting, far less upon any, concerning which
it might be possible that any difference of opinion, or of sentiment,
should be found among those who have this day the honor of being
assembled in this distinguished presence. It is not possible, however,
that we should proceed, in these circumstances, to propose the health
of the actual sovereign of these islands—the Prince Regent of Eng-
land—without prefacing a few words concerning those rumors of
disturbance and disaffection,f of mad and rancorous outrage against
the peace of this great empire, and of elaborate insult against all.
those institutions by which the prosperity of that empire has hitherto
been maintained and balanced—rumors which reach our ears with an
effect of so much strange and portentous mystery here among these
regions of lonely magnificence, where the primitive loyalty of the
Scottish mountaineer is still as pure as the air which he inhales.
Throughout by far the greater part of these rich and mighty realms
we nothing question the loyal affection and reverence of our fellow-
subjects are as deep and as secure—but the tidings of these things
cannot fail to be heard with emotions of new wonder and new disgust,
amidst scenes, where the happiness and repose of a virtuous, high-
* In 1811, when insanity had disqualified George III. from governing Great Britain, his
eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was appointed Regent, in which capacity he continued until
January, 1820, when he succeeded to the throne, as George IV.-M. -
f Something more than simple “ rumor of disturbance” existed in the autumn of 1819.
Public discontent largely existed, in consequence of the popular desire of Parliamentary
Reform. Public meetings, largely attended, took place in various parts of England and Scot.
land. One, held at St. Peter's Place, Manchester, on the 16th August, 1819, had a tragical
termination. Henry Hunt, one of the popular leaders, attended, to harangue the multitude,
which included men, women, and even children. The magistrates determined to arrest Hunt
and his fellow-leaders, and called in a body of armed Yeomanry cavalry to aid the police. An
aſſray took place. The Yeomanry attacked the unarmed and peaceable multitude, killing and
wounding many with their sabres. , Hunt and his friends were made prisoners, on a charge of
high-treason, which was abandoned ; but they were tried and convicted of sedition. Angry
debates on what has since been called The Manchester Massacre, and The Peterloo Butchery,
took place in Parliament, in which ministers (who had sent a formal letter of thanks to the
magistrates and Yeomanry of Manchester, for their “prompt and spirited conduct,”) defended
what was dome, and the result was that Parliament finally passed an Act of Indemnity, to
protect the doers of this massacre, and also placed on the statute-book six restrictive acts, to
prevent seditious mectings, to prohibit training and arming, to check blasphemous and
seditious writings, and to tax cheap periodical publications. Cobbett, at that time, was
selling his celebrated and influential Political Register at two-pence,—the new act imposed a
stamp-duty of four-pence upon each number. At the time that this article was written, mot
later than the middle of August, 1819, the fatal affray at Manchester could scarcely have been
known in Edinburgh. If it had, no doubt Christopher North would have been delighted to
praise the Manchester Yeomanry.—M. - -
118 THE LAST DAY OF TEIE TENT.
spirited, and noble race, have never yet been disturbed, even by the
thought or the suspicion of any of those wild and vicious theories,
which, in most of the other districts of the empire, have now, we fear,
some profligate advocates and some miserable dupes. My Lords
and Gentlemen, It is indeed high time that these things should cease
to be spoken of, with any difference of language, by any conscientious
adherents of either of those great political parties, whose existence as
such is perhaps a necessary consequence of the nature of our constitu-
tion, and a necessary mean of its preservation. It is high time that
they whose education enables them to look at the troubles of the
present, through the clear, steady, and impartial medium of the past,
should see the necessity of combining, with head, heart, and hands,
to repress, with a decision in which there must be at least as much
of compassion as of justice, the encroachments of this frenzied spirit,
which has its only existence and support in the desperate depravity
of a few pestilent demagogues—men alike bankrupts in fortune,
principle, and character—and in the rashness with which the ignorant
and the weak listem to the audacious brutality of their treason and
their blasphemy.
“Ours, gentlemen, is not the only country wherein ages of happi-
mess and loyalty have been suddenly disturbed by the plebeian
preachers of anarchy and confusion. The Woolers, the Watsons, the
Harrisons, the Wolseleys, the Burdetts, the Hobhouses”—all have
had their prototypes, both in ancient and in modern times—and the
characters of all of them have been described, even to their minutest
shadings, by writers, with whom some of themselves must be not
imperfectly acquainted. Of all these, however, the importance seems
now to be on the wane—and the shout of vulgar acclamation waits
only, in its utmost violence, upon one, whom, but a few short months
ago, the greater part even of these would have regarded with any
feelings rather than those of serious jealousy and anxious emulation.
Yet it is well that the choice of the rabble has at last fallen upon one
for whom even the rabble cannot long remain without contempt.
In their present demi-god these misnamed patriots have found a
leader, who answers, in all things, to the prophetic minuteness of the
Roman historian's description,-Summa audacia—egens—factiosus :
* Radical leaders in 1819. Wooler was editor and publisher of a weekly paper called the
Yellow Dwarf, one peculiarity of which was, that, being himself a compositor, he set it up
without “copy,” his inimd and his composing-stick being at work together. Watson had been
tried for high-treason, and acquitted; but, on a subsequent charge being made, found safety
in flight to the United States. About Harrison I know mothing. Sir Charles Wolseley was
a baronet, with large landed estates in Staffordshire, who so strongly advocated Parliamentary
Reform, that he allowed himself to be returned, by a radical meeting at Birmingham (which
was not directly represented until 1832), as Legislative Attorney for that town, but actually
attempting to take his seat in Parliament in that capacity, was arrested, indicted, tried, con-
victed, fined, and imprisoned—all of which moderated his future political conduct. Sir Fram-
cis Burdett closed his liberal career by joining the Tory party. Hobhouse, who came into
Hºnº from Westinimster as an extreme radical, settled down into a placemsm, and is mow
8, peor.— *
HENRY ITUNT. - 110
çuem ad perturbandam Rempublican Inopia simul atque Mali Mores
stimulaverunt. There wants not one iota to complete the resem-
blance, except only some tincture of that noble blood which was
never so debased and degraded as in the person of the Roman Cata-
line—the total absence of which, however, and of all that it implies,
lends even a more odious air of abomination to the rough and unvar-
snished ferocity of his English rival.%
“When the poor are in distress, God forbid that they should not
share the pity, and feel the helping hand of their superiors. When
the poor and the ignorant are led astray, God forbid that compas-
sion should not be the first and last feeling on the minds of men who
have enjoyed opportunities for reflection very different from those
which can be afforded to their weak and untrained spirits, amidst
their only leisure, the idleness of calamity. But God forbid, also,
and the prayer we would fear is more a necessary than a frequent
One—that we should suffer ourselves, from any mistaken or misdi.
rected sympathies, to learn the lesson of regarding, without a just and
unswerving feeling of abhorrence, the characters of those who make
their sport of the poverty, and their prey of the ignorance of the
vulgar. The worst of all the bad symptoms which meet our eyes,
in the narratives of the late melancholy transactions, is the daily in-
creasing urbanity of the terms in which the authors of all this evil
are spoken of by the compilers of these narratives. It is a sad thing
indeed, when the souls of those that are or ought to be enlightened,
betray, on such momentous crises as these, any stains of that dark-
mess which it is of right their vocation to dispel, and of which, above
all things, it behoved them to have rejected and scorned the contam-
ination. Let there be no foolish gentleness toward those who fight
against all that is good—no mad courtesy for those who would de-
stroy all that is noble. Let all that have any claim to the name of
gentleman be anxious to keep their spirits pure from the very vestige
of this degradation. In this hour of darkness let all stand together.
In this hour of battle—for the word is not too strong in itself, nor
the less applicable, because the contest to which it refers is more one
* Henry Hunt, the person here alluded to, was a very popular demagogue for several years;
but having sat in parliament in 1830–31, was such a mere nobody in that assembly, that his
constituents did not re-elect him. It is recorded that he made one hit in the House of Com-
rnons. He was a man of considerable landed property, inherited from his ancestors, when he
entered public life, but “the broad aeres” had gradually slipped through his fingers, and he
entered into business for a livelihood, first as a brewer, and afterwards as a vender of burnt
corm (or an untaxed substitute for coffee, and called “Hunt's Breakfast Powder, and them as
a manufacturer of Blacking. William Peel brother-in-law to Sir Robert, was in Parliament
When Hunt sat there. The Peel family, although possessing innmense wealth, made as man-
ufacturers, had sprung from nothing—as far as “birth” was concerned. Peel alluded, some-
what rudely, to Hunt's blacking, insinuating that Hunt was not a gentleman. The reply
was brief and sufficient. Hunt rose, and fixing his eyes on Peel, said, “The homorable mem-
ber has alluded to my business, and spoke of the difference of our respective stations. Let me
tell him what that difference is. I am the first of my family who ever was engaged in trade.
He is one of the first of his who could afford to lay claim. from wealth only, to the rank of
ºleº ” Hunt sat down, applauded on all sides, an William Peel did not again provoke
him.—M.
120 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT.
of principles than of men—in this hour of battle let us all rally
around those old banners, which have for so many ages been our
guides to victory, and our ornaments in repose. - /
{
THE PRINCE REGENT.”
We ought perhaps to beg our readers’ pardon for the seeming
vanity of recording this little address; but we feel assured that no
such apology will be necessary for inserting the words of a song,
with which our friend Mr. Wastle was good enough to preface the
next toast on our list. It is needless to add, that this was the health
and prosperity of our Royal Guest.
SONG, BY MR. WASTLE,
On Proposing the Health of H. R. H. PRINCE LEOPolp.
I.
Look, oh! look from the Bower—'tis the beautiful hour
When the sunbeams are broad ere they sink in the sea;
Look, oh! look from the Bower—for an amethyst shower
Of grandeur and glory is gemming the Dee ;
While the mountains arise more sublime in the skies,
'Mid that lustre of mildness, majestic and clear,
And the face of the land seems in smiles to expand—
Surely Nature proclaims that a Festival's here.
II.
Let your goblets be crowned like the sky and the ground,
With a light that is bright as their purple may be;
Let your goblets be crowned, like all Nature around,
To welcome our Prince in the vale of the Dee.
Fill, fill ye with wine, fill your goblets like mine,
Till the rich foam be ready to gush o'er the brim,
And let thoughts, sad and high, 'mid your raptures be by,
While the stream of devotion flows radiant for Him.
III.
What though rarely the sod of Green Albyn be trod
By the feet of a Prince—Nay, though ages have sped
Since the eye of a King has adventured to fling
One beam on these hills where his fathers were bred;”
Like the flower of the North, which, when winter comes forth,
Blooms secure and unseen, 'neath her garment of snow—
So our Faith, undefiled, is still fresh in the wild,
Amidst chillness to bud, and in darkness to blow.
IV.
Oh! glad was the day when her snow fell away,
And the softness of spring again mantled her sky;
And her beauty shone out with the old Scottish shout,
That proclaimed to our mountains the Saxon was nigh.
* In August, 1822, Scotland was visited by George IV., who had gone to Ireland and Hano.
ver in the preceding autumn.-M.
HOGG's SONG. 121.
Not the less we adore the Red Lion of yore,
That alone on the Scutcheon of Albyn was seen,
Because England and Erin are mixed in the bearing,
And the shield where the dark bend is wreathed with the green.
V.
With our loyalty's gladness, some breathings of sadness
Have been heard—and our smiles have been mixed with a tear;
But perhaps the warm heart but ennobles its part,
When in Sympathy's guise it bids Homage appear.
Take our hearts as they are 'mid the heaths of Braemar,
And remember, when deep flows the dark purple wine,
That the Hill and the Glen would be proud once again,
To pour for their Princes the blood of their line.
We must not repeat the handsome terms in which thanks were re-
turned for our own speech and the song of our friend—suffice it to say,
that, after a most animated conversation of a political cast had been
sustained for some time by several ingenious and ardent interlocu-
tors, the Thane of Fife rose (the occasion was on his own health
being proposed from the chair), and hinted, in his usual elegance of
style and manner, that the illustrious Prince who had condescended
to become our visitor, would be fully more gratified should we
thenceforth dismiss these topics—which, however treated, could not
fail to have something of a formal air and effect—and resume in full
and entire freedom our own usual strain of amusement. In short,
his Lordship as well as the Prince wished to see the doings of the
Tent in their own simple and unsophisticated essence.
We lost no time in obeying this hint—and by Wey of breaking the
ice for a descent into the regions of perfect mirth and jollity, we
called on the Ettrick Shepherd to sing, with the accompaniment of
the bag-pipe, one of those wild and pathetic ballads of which his
genius has been so creative. Those who have had the pleasure of
being in company with the Shepherd, know full well what deep and
gentle pathos, and, at the same time, what light and playful graceful-
ness, are to be found in the notes of his unrivalled voice, and will not
need to be told what effect he produced upon the whole company, by
the following exquisite strain
I PITY YOU, YE STARS SO BRIGHT, &c.
I PITy you, ye stars so bright
That shine so sweetly all the night,
Beaming ever coldly down
On rock and river, tower and town,
Shining so lonely.
I pity you, ye stars so bright,
That shine so sweetly all the night,
With your rays of endless glee,
On the wide and silent sea,
- Shiuing so lonely.
I22 TEIE LAST DAY OF THE TENT.
I pity you, ye stars so bright—
While I’m with Anna all the night,
Thro' the cold blue sky ye rove,
Strangers to repose and love,
Shining so lonely.
I pity you, ye stars so bright,
And Anna pities you to-night,
What a weary way you've been
Since yon first balmy kiss yestreen,
Shining so lonely 1
This song was succeeded by a round of toasts, of which our memory
has preserved only the following, viz:—
1. The Author of Waverley—by Prince Leopold,
2. Mr. Alison—by Mr. Wastle. -
3. The Bishop of St. Davids, the unwearied and enlightened friend of Wales—
by Dr. Morris.
4. Professor John Young, of Glasgow, the great Grecian of Scotland—by Dr
Parr,
5. The Right Hon. Robert Peel, the Member for Oxford—by Mr. Seward.
6. Charley Bushe, the most admirable Judge, the most eloquent speaker—and
the most delightful companion in Ireland—by Mr. Odoherty.
7. Mr. Davison, of Oriel, the star of Isis—by Mr. Buller.
8. The Rev. Francis Wrangham, the star of Cam.—by the Editor.
9. The young Duke of Buccleugh—and may he live to be as great a blessing to
Ettrick as his father—by the Shepherd. -
10. Counsellor Ellis—by Mr. Tickler.
11. Lord Byron—by Dr. Scott.
12. Dr. Chalmers—by Baillie Jarvie.
13. Mr. John Kemble—by Mr. John Ballantyne. -
14. The Earl of Fife (to whose turn the toast, by some accident, was long of
coming round) paid us the elegant and classical compliment of proposing the
health of our excellent Publishers, Messrs. Blackwood, Cadell, and Davies*—three
times three—to which (need we add 8) the whole of the company gladly assented.
Dr. Parr was the first to hint his wish for another song—and
called loudly upon Buller of Brazennose, who, after a little hesita-
tion, took courage, and told the Doctor if he had no objection he
would give him an old "Oxford strain. “By all means, you dog,”
quoth the Bellendenian—“I remember the day when I could sing
half the Sausagef myself.”
THE FRIAR’s FAREWELL To oxForD.
To the Tune of “Green Sleeves.”
1.
T’ other night, as I passed by old Anthony-wood,
I saw Father Green in a sorrowful mood—
Astride on a stone, beside Magdalene gate,
He lamented o'er Oxford's degenerate state:
* Cadell and Davies were the London agents for the sale of Blackwood.—M.
t A collection of songs, chants, and other college versicles, entitled “The Oxford Sau-
sage. A like collection, elsewhere, is “The Cambridge Tart.”—M.
THE FRIAR's FAREWELL. 123
The beer he had swallowed had opened his heart,
And’twas thus to the winds he his woes did impart.
With a heigh ho! &c.
Q
* e
“Oh, Oxford I leave thee—and can it be true :
I accept of a living 3 I bid thee adieu:
Thou scene of my rapture, in life's early morn,
Ere one pile of soft lambskin my back did adorn—
When Sorrows came rarely, and pleasures came thick,
And my utmost distress was a long-standing tick.
With a heigh hol &c.
3.
“Oh the joys of the moderns are empty and vain,
When compared with our mornings in Logical-lane;
There seated securely, no Dun did we fear,
Tommy Horseman hopped round with his flagons of beer
With cow-heel and tripe we our bellies did cram,
And for Proctors and Beadles we cared not a damn.
With a heigh hol &c.
4.
“In the alehouse at evening these joys we renewed—
When our pockets were empty our credit was good;
Tho' scrawlings of chalk spread each smokified wall,
Not a fear for the future our souls could appal.
What tho' Sanctified Hall at our doctrines may scoff?
Yet enough for the day is the evil thereof.
With a heigh ho! &c.
5.
“All encircled with fumes of the mild curling shag,
We derided the toils of the book-plodding fag :
For careless was then every puff we did suck in,
And unknown in the schools were the terrors of plucking.
*No Examiners, then, thought of working us harm,
A beef-steak and a bottle their wrath could disarm.
With a heigh hol &c.
6.
“Good beer is discarded for claret and port,
Logic-lane is no longer the Muse's resort—
The cold hand of Chronos has reft Dinah’s bloom,
And tobacco is banished from each common-room,
And the days I have seen they shall ne'er come again—
So adieu to old Oxford”—I answered, amen
With a heigh hol &c.
The pleasure we all testified on hearing this genuine academical
strain, which, as Dr. Parr observed, was “enough to transport one
to the very pinnacle of Maudlin” (we suppose he meant one of the
Oxford Colleges which goes by the name of Magdalen College, orally
corrupted as above), encouraged Mr. Seward to comply with Buller's
request, who tossed the ball to his friend on this occasion with a
124 TELE LAST DAY OF TEIE TENT.
plain insinuation, that the former story of his not being able to sing
was all mere fudge. The Christ-Church man, whose proper designa-
tion we understand (for he has not yet taken his bachelor’s degree),
is that of a sophista generalis, said, that he was the more inclined fo
sing a particular set of verses, because the present company would
be able at once to appreciate their merit, they being a parody on one
of the songs in the Lady of the Lake, composed by an eminent umi-
versity wit, in honor of a late occurrence, which he declined ex-
plaining at greater length.
SONG—Sung by GENERAL SOPHIST SEWARD of Christ-Church.
To the Tune of “Rhoderick Dhu.”
HAIL to the maiden that graceful advances
'Tis the Helen of Isis if right I divine.
Eros I thou classical god of soft glauces,
Teach me to ogle and make the nymph mine.
Look on a tutor true,
Ellen I for love of you
Just metamorphosed from blacksmith to beau.
Hair combed, and breeches new,
Grace your trim Roderick Dhu–
While every gownsman cries, wondering, “Ho! hoſ”
In Greek I believe I must utter my passion,
For Greek's more familiar than English to me;
Besides, Byron of late has brought Greek into fashion—
There's some in his “ Fair Maid of Athens,”—Let's see—
Pshal this vile modern Greek
Won't do for me to speak—.
Let me try—Zom, pusoaç ayaaſa,
Zooks l I don’t like its tone :
Now let me try my own—
KAYOI MEY, EAENH, XOY TAP EPS, I
But, haſ there's a young Christ-church prig that I plucked once 1
I fear he'll make love to her out of mere spite;
Hal twirl thy cap, and look proud of thy luck, dunce,
But Greek will prevail over grims, if I’m right.
By Disl the infernal God
See, see 1 they grin they nod!
$2 plot Övçnvo! Q Tažaç eyo!
Zounds ! should my faithless flame
Love this young Malcom Graeme,
‘Oratot totatou I few I wowot I Q |
But come 1, there's one rival I don't see about her,
I mean the spruce tutor, her townsman Fitzjames;
For though of the two I believe I'm the stouter,
His legs are much neater, much older his claims.
Yet every Christ-church blade
Swears I have won the maid;
Every one, Dean and Don, swears it is so.
Honest Lloyd blunt and bluff,
Levett, and Goodenough—
All clap my back and cry, “Rhoderick's her beau!”
ODOIIERTY's SONG. - 125
Come, then, your influence propitious be shedding,
Gnomes of Greek metre since crowned are my hopes;
Waltz in Trochaic time, waltz at my wedding,
Nymphs who preside over accents and tropes |
Scourge of false quantities,
Ghost of Hephæstion rise,
Haply to thee my success I may owe.
Sound then the Doric string,
All, all in chorus sing,
Joy to Hephæstion, black Rhoderick & Co.
By this time the Shepherd began to get very weary of the claret,
and insisted upon being allowed to make a little whisky toddy in a
noggin for himself. We always humor, as far as prudence will per-
mit, the whims of our Contributors, however they may be at variance
with our own private taste and judgment, so we at once granted our
permission to Mr. Hogg, and a proud man was he, when, after his
toddy was fairly made, the Prince and the Thane both requested a
tasting of it. “Od,” cried he, “I wad gie your Royal IIighness
and Lordship every drap o’t, an’ it were melted diamonds—but l’m
sure you’ll no like it—we maun hae a sang frae the Captain, and that
will gar ony thing gang down.” Odoherty could not withstand this
flattery, and at once favored us with the following, w which both
Words and music are his own. f -
song—“ That I love thee, charming Maid,” to its own Tune.
By MoRGAN ODoHERTY, Esq.
THAT I love thee, charming maid, I a thousand times have said,
And a thousand times more I have sworn it,
But 'tis easy to be seen in the coldness of your mien
That you doubt my affection—or scorn it.
Ah me !
Wot a single pile of sense is in the whole of these pretenses
For rejecting your lover's petitions;
Had I windows in my bosom, Oh I how gladly I’d expose 'em
To undo your phantastic suspicions.
- Ah me !
You repeat I’ve known you long, and you hint I do you wrong
In beginning so late to pursue ye,
But 'tis folly to look glum because people did not come
Up the stairs of your nursery to woo ye. .
Ah me !
In a grapery one walks without looking at the stalks,
While the bunches are green that they’re bearing—
All the pretty little leaves that are dangling at the eaves
Scarce attract even a moment of staring. - -
Ah me !
126 - TILE I/AST DAY OF TEIE TENT.
But when time has swell'd the grapes to a richer style of shapes,
And the Sun has lent warmth to their blushes,
Then to cheer us and to gladden, to enchant us and to madden, .
Is the ripe ruddy glory that rushes. -
. Ah me !
Oh 'tis then that mortals pant, while they gaze on Bacchus' plant—
Oh I 'tis then—will my simile serve ye?
Should a damsel fair repine, tho’ neglected like a vine !
Both ere long shall turn heads topsy-turvy.
Ab me !
We had scarcely finished the speech, in which we proposed the
health of the Standard-bearer, when our eye dropt upon the phy-
siognomy of the Bishop of Bristol, evidently in a fit of deep abstrac.
tion. His broad forehead was drawn down into his face with a com-
plexity of deep indented furrows; his under lip was lifted close to his
nostrils; and his eyes were dilated like those of Parasina in the
Judgment Hall, resting with the gaze of a Newton upon some invisi-
ple point in the vacant air around him. From what delightful or
dreadful dream our laugh (for we could not repress it), withdrew
the wondering phantasy of the illustrious Bishop, we cannot pretend
to offer any conjecture. “I’m not absent, mae mair nor yoursel, Mr.
Chairman,” wºre the first words he uttered. “I was only just casting
about for a verse or two that I cannot remember, of a sang that I was
thinking to offer you—I canno bring them up, however—but no
matter, there's a gay twa-three as it is.” The Bishop's volunteer
was greeted with tremendous acclamation; and—having hummed the
air for about a minute, and ordered us all to join the chorus—in a
low plaintive voice, broken, without doubt, by the intensity of many
painful recollections, he thus began,
CAPTAIN PATON'S LAMENT.”
By JAMES Scott, Esq.
1.
Touch once more a sober measure, and let punch and tears be shed,
For a prince of good old fellows, that, alack a-day I is dead;
For a prince of worthy fellows, and a pretty man also,
That has left the Saltmarket in sorrow, grief, and woe.
Oh we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo!
2.
His waistcoat, coat, and breeches, were all cut off the same web,
Of a beautiful snuff-color, or a modest genty drab ;
The blue stripe in his stocking round his neat slim leg did go,
And his ruffles of the Cambric fine they were whiter than the Snow.
Oh I we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo!
* Captain Paton's Lament, which has been a popular song in Scotland since it first was
chanted in the Tent, was written by Mr. Lockhart.—M.
THE BISITOP's CHANT. - 127
3.
His hair was curled in order, at the rising of the sun,
In comely rows and buckles smart | that about his ears did run;
And before there was a toupeé that some inches up did grow,
And behind there was a long queue that did o'er his shoulders flow.
Oh! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mol
4,
And whenever we foregathered, he took off his wee three-cockit,
And he proffered you his snuff-box, which he drew from his side pocket,
And on Burdett or Bonaparte, he would make a remark or so,
And then along the plainstones like a provost he would go.
Oh l we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo!
- 5.
In dirty days he picked well his footsteps with his rattan,
Oh you ne'er could see the least speck | on the shoes of Captain Paton;
And on entering the Coffee-room about two, all men did know,
They would see him with his Courier in the middle of the row.
Oh! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo!
6.
Now and then upon a Sunday he invited me to dine,
On a herring and a mutton-chop which his maid dressed very fine:
There was also a little Malmsey, and a bottle of Bourdeaux,
Which between me and the Captain passed nimbly to and fro.
Oh I I ne'er shall take pot-luck with Captain Paton no mo!
7.
Or if a bowl was mentioned, the Captain he would ring,
And bid Nelly run to the West-port, and a stoup of water bring;
Then would he mix the genuine stuff, as they made it long-ago,
With limes that on his property in Trinidad did grow.
Oh! we ne'er shall taste the like of Captain Paton's punch no mo!
8.
And then all the time he would discourse so sensible and courteous,
Perhaps talking of the last sermon he had heard from Dr. Porteous,
Or some little bit of scandal about Mrs so and so,
Which he scarce could credit, having heard the con but not the pro.
Oh I we ne'er shall hear the like of Captain Paton no mo
9.
Or when the candles were brought forth, and the night was fairly setting in,
He would tell some fine old stories about Minden-field or Dettingen—
How he fought with a French major, and despatched him at a blow,
While his blood ran out like water on the soft grass below.
Oh! we ne'er shall hear the like of Captain Paton no mo!
10.
But at last the Captain sickened and grew worse from day to day,
And all missed him in the Coffee-room | from which now he stayed away;
On Sabbaths, too, the Wee Kirk made a melancholy show,
All for wanting of the presence of our venerable beau.
Oh I we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo!
128 TEIE LAST DAY OF THE TENT.
11.
And in spite of all that Cleghorn and Corkindale could do,
It was plain, from twenty symptoms that death was in his view;
So the Captain made his test’ment, and submitted to his foe,
And we layed him by the Rams-horn-kirk—'tis the way we all must go,
Oh! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo!
12.
Join all in chorus, jolly boys, and let punch and tears be shed,
For this prince of good old fellows, that alack a-day ! is dead;
For this prince of worthy fellows, and a pretty man also,
That has left the Saltmarket in sorrow, grief, and woe I
For it ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mol
At the conclusion of this song, which, to those who know the
voice, taste, and execution of the gentleman who sung it, we need not
say gave general delight, Prince Leopold, who had attentively
listened to it with the most gracious smile, arose, and saying, “that
it was wise for friends to part in a mirthful moment,” with the
utmost benignity bade us all farewell. At this very moment, Mr.
Tims (who was long ere now as bowsy as a fly in a plate of
“quassia,”) jumped upon his chair in order to attract our notice, and
insisted upon singing “Scots wha HAE wi' WALLACE BLED ;” but the
Shepherd frowned with such a deadly darkness at the suggestion, that
the Cockney lost not a moment in resuming his former posture.
“Aye, aye, that's richt,” said the Shepherd, “saufus only to think o'
ROBERT THE BRUCE acted by TIMS ſ” e
As our Illustrious Visitor and his Noble Friends withdrew, the
pipes slowly and solemnly played “Farewell to Lochaber;” and our
Tent seemed, at their departure, quite melancholy and forlorn. We
soon retired to repose, but not to sleep; for all night long the High-
land host kept playing their martial or mournful tunes, and the voices
of distant ages seemed, in the solitary silence of the midnight desert,
restored to the world of life. We felt, that with such a glorious day
our reign in the Highlands nobly terminated, and we gave orders by
sunrise to strike the Tent, exclaiming, in the words of Milton,
“To-MORRow FOR FRESH FIELDS AND PASTURES NEw.”
j}, ottes 3 titüpoğiattàe.
NO. I.-MARCH, 1822.
CHRISTOPHER NoFTH, Esquire, Solus.
Enter Ensign MoRGAN ODOHERTY.
Editor. I am glad to see you, Odoherty. I am heartily glad of
the interruption. I won’t write any more to-night.—I’ll be shot if I
write a word more. Ebony may jaw as he pleases. The Number
will do well enough as it is. If there is not enough, let him send his
devil into the Balaam-box.”
Odoherty. I have just arrived from London.
Editor. From London 3–The Fleet, I suppose. How long have
you lain there
Odoherty. I have been out these three weeks. I suppose, for any
thing you would have advanced, I might have lain there till Kingdom-
CO]]]{2. ->
Editor. I can’t advance money for ever, Adjutant. You have not
sent me one article these four months.
Odoherty. What sort of an article do you want 2—A poem
Editor. Poems | There's poetry enough without paying you for
it. Have you seen Milman's new tragedy ??
Odoherly. No ; but I saw the proofs of a puff upon it for the next
* The Balaam-box, which is repeatedly referred to in The Noctes, was supposed to contain a
variety of articles, from voluntary contributors, as well as from the usual writers in the Maga-
zine. Mr. Blackwood received the sobriquet of Ebony from a pun upon his name, which ori-
ginated in the “Chaldee Manuscript,” where he was spoken of a man whose “mame was as
it had been the color of ebomy.”—M.
f “The Martyr of Antioch, a dramatic poem, by the Rev. H. H. Milman,” was published by
John Murray, of London, in March, 1822. At that time Milman was Professor of Poetry in the
University of Oxford. . He had written a prize poem when he was an under-graduate. In 1817
he produced the tragedy of “Fazio,” in which Miss O'Neill sustained the part of the heroine.
This play retains its place in the Acted Drama. “Samor, Lord of the Bright City,” a heroic
poem in twelve books, appeared in 1818. “The Fall of Jerusalem,” and “Anna Boley me.”
were followed by “'The Martyr of Antioch” and “ Belshazzar.” Milman has contributed
largely to the Quarterly Review, edited Gibbon's Declime and Fall, and written a History of
the Jews, and other serious works. He entered the Church in 1817, had a good vicarage at
Reading, whence he removed to the rectory at St. Margaret's (the church which adjoins West-
minster Abbey, partly com cealing that stately structure from view), and was appointed Dean
of St. Paul's in 1849. As a poet, Dr. Milman’s reputation is even mow almost traditionary.
Of his dramatic works, ‘Fazio” alone is known to the bulk of the present generation, and
§: from its frequent representationſ on the stage. Dr. Milman is nºw [1854] aged sixty-
three.—M. - -
WOL. I.-11
130 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
f
Quarterly. He's a clever fellow, but they cry him too high. The
report goes, that he is to step into Gifford's shoes one of these days.”
Editor. That accounts for the puffing; but it will do a really clever
fellow, like Milman, no good.
Odoherty. It will, Mr. North. I know nobody that puffs more
lustily than yourself now and them. What made you puff Proctert
so much at first 2 -
Editor. It was you that puffed him. It was an article of your
own, Ensign.
Odoherty. By Mahomet's mustard-pot, I’ve written so much, I
don’t remember half the things I’ve done in your own lubberly Mag-
azine, and elsewhere. At one time I wrote all Day and Martin's
poetry. They were grateful. They kept the whole mess of the 44th
in blacking.
Editor. Then you wrote the World, did not you ?
Odoherty. I never heard of such a thing. They’ve been quizzing
you, old boy. Impostors are abroad. .
Editor. Then somebody has been sporting false colors about town.
Odoherty. Like enough. Set a thief to catch a thief. * -
Editor. You’ve been writing in Colburn, they say, Master Mor-
an 7 .* ,
g Odoherty. Not one line. The pretty boys have applied to me a
dozen times, but I never sent them any answer except once, and then
it was an epigram on themselves. - . . .
Jºditor. Let's hear it. * .. 4
Odoherty. Now, by Jupiter | I have forgotten the beginning of it.
I think it was something like this:—
Colburn, Campbell, and Co. write rather so so,
But atone for’t by puff and profession—
Every month gives us scope for the Pleasures of Hope,
But all ends in the Pains of Possession.
Editor. How do they get on ? Heavily, Ensign
Odoherty. D— heavily They lay out a cool hundred on adver-
tisements every month; but Campbell does very little—at least so
it is to be hoped—and the Subs are no great shakes.j. They have a
* Milman would never have dome justice to the Quarterly Review;-his prose is deficient in
force and terseness. The present Sir John T. Coleridge, now one of the Judges of the Queen's
Bench in England, edited the Quarterly in the brief interval between Gifford's retirement and
Lockhart's accession.—MI.
t Procter, who was Byron's schoolſellow at Harrow, assumed the nom de plume of Barry
Cornwall, when he published his first volume of Dramatic Sketches, in 1815. He wrote a
tragedy called Mirandola, played in 1821, at Covent Garden Theatre. Marcian Colomma, The
Fiocq of Thessaly, a Life of Edmund Kean (which was severely criticised in Blackwood), and
a variety of songs, many of which are admirable, complete the list of his writings—except his
magazine articles, which have been collected in this country (but not yet in England), and
published as his “Essays and Tales in Prose.” As a song-writer, vigorous, yet delicate, in
thought and expression, Procter has won a mame “the world will not willingly let die.”—M.
# Campbell, the poet, edited Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, from 1821 to 1831, at £500
pel annum, with separate payment, as a contributor, for all articles by himself. This im-
LITERARY GOSSIP. ,131
miserable set of bullaboos about them—broken-winded dominies,
from the manufacturing districts, and so forth. Even Hazlitt does
the drama better. --
Editor. O, Hazlitt's a real fellow in his small way. He has more
sense in his little finger, than many who laugh at him have in their
heads, but he is bothering too long at that table-talk. -
, Odoherty. Proper humbug
Editor. Did you see any of the Cockneys? What's the gossip
about Murray's, Ridgeway’s,” and so forth 2 Did you make a tour
of the shops ? *
Odoherty. Of course—I went round them all with a bundle of
discarded articles you gave me to line my trunk with, when I went
to the moors last year. I passed myself off for a country clergyman,
wanting to publish a series of essays. I said I had a wife and seven
Small children. -
Editor. You have some tolerably big ones, I believe.
Odoherty. Which you never will have, old boy. The booksellers
are a very civil set of fellows: Murray took me into a room by my-
self, and told me of the row between him and the Divan. --
J'ditor. What row 2 and with whom 3
Odoherty. Why, they call Murray Emperor of the West, and
Longman and Company the Divan. They’ve fallen out about
Mother Rundell’s book upon cookery. I told Kitchener the next
day, that I thought his own book as good a one.f -
Editor. Shameless fellow ! Don't you remember how you cut it
up 7 I wonder you could look the doctor in the face.
Odoherty. By jing ! he thought I was a doctor myself. I had a
black rose in my hat, and talked very wisely about the famous mis-
take touching a Mr. Winton of Chelsea. I'll tell you about that, too,
some other time.]
,”
mense payment, in fact, was for his name. The Magazine was actually edited by Cyrus Red:
ding (whose later Recollections of Campbell and Beckford are full of interest and truth), and
the dramatic criticism was supplied, for many years, by T. N. Talfourd (afterwards one of the
Judges of the Court of Common Pleas in England), so well known, subsequently, as the author
of “Ion.”—M. -
* What Murray's, in Albemarle-street, was for Tory literati and politicians in London—a
pleasant lounging place, where public affairs, books, and persomal gossip, supplied the conver-
sation—Ridgeway's, in Piccadilly, was for the Whigs. To this hour, both places retain this
distinctive character.—M. -
f Im Dr. Kitchener’s “Cook's Oracle” there was a boast, that every receipt in it had been
tried by the author—and his friends, might have been added, for he was right hospitable, in
his smug house close to Fitzroy-Square, and was pleasantly addicted to giving charming dinner-
parties at which the number of the guests was regulated on the classic rule, “Not less than the
Graces, nor more than the Muses.” At these emtertainments, which Theodore Hook frequently
attended, judgment was solemnly passed upon the Doctor's gastronomic inventions or ill-
º since the last repast. Sometimes, it is true, opinions would be balanced (particu-
arly if the dimmer was very good, and the party very agreeable), and the Doctor would then
invite the same party for that day week, in order to give the culinary treasure another tria.
All his receipts were treasures—if his own report were to be credited. He was a clever, well-
informed man, who gracefully rode his hobbies—all but one. He had invented a digestive
pill, 'yclept the Perisăltic Persuader, and sometimes would insist on coaxing his guests into
swallowing one or two before dinner —M. & r g
| The story never was told in Blackwood, and is too good to be lost :—Dr. Tomline had
132 - NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Editor. The Bishop's first two volumes are not quite the potato.
I hope the others are better. - -
Odoherty. Who cares? I shall never read them. Have you seen
Horace Walpole's Memoirs ? |
Editor. I have. A most charming book. A most malicious,
prying, lying old fox.” What a prime contributor he would have
made —but, to be sure, he was a Whig.
Odoherty. So am I. For that matter, half your best contributors
are Whigs, I take it. *
Editor. Mum, for that, Ensign. But, at least, I have nothing to
do with the Scotch Kangaroo Canaille. -
Odoherty. They have nothing to do with you, you mean to say.
Jºditor. They’re a dirty, dull, detestable set. I hate them all—I
despise them all—except little Jeffrey.
Odoherty. He's a clever chap, certainly,–I have not given him a
dressing these two years; I shall give you a song upon him one of
these days.
JEditor. Do. What's afoot among the Tumbledowns 7
Odoherty. The Holland House gentry are chuckling very much
over a little tit-bit of blasphemy, sent over by a certain learned Lord
from Italy, 'tis call'd the “Irish Advent,”—’tis a base parody on
the Advent of our Saviour, 'tis circulated widely among the same
Thebans who blarneyed about Hogg's Chaldee.f
been College tutor, at Cambridge, to William Pitt, was made B.º. of Lincoln by him, an
in 1820, was translated to the wealthy See of Winchester. He had long been preparing a Life
of Pitt, and in 1821, wrote briefly to Murray, to ask whether he would publish it, and on what
terms. English Bishops sign with the Latin names of their respective sees instead of
their own surnames. §e letter to Murray was dated “Chelsea,” where the Bishop had a
suburban dwelling, and was signed Geo. Winton—in contraction of Georgius Wintonensis.
which would have been his full Latimized signature, as Bishop of Winchester. It happened
that Murray was ignoramt of this, and considering it, a great liberty for an utter strange to
write a three-line letter to him, sent a sharp reply to the eſtect, that “Mr. Murray had recei-zod
Mr. George Winton's mote, and declined the proposed publication.” Presently, Mr. Croker, (of
the Admiralty), came in, and Murray, whose dignity continued to be slightly ruſhed, threw the
unfortunate “Winton,” epistle across the table to him. “The very book,” said Croker, “ and
the very man to write it.” Murray, in amaze, demanded an explanation, and Croker answered,
“The Bishop of Winchester was Pitt's tutor, private secretary, correspondent, friend, and
literary executor.” “My dear fellow,” said Murray, “what has the Bishop of Winchester to
do with that letter?” Croker explaimed the matter of the Episcopal signature. “Bless me,”
said Murray, “I thougnt it was some Grub-street cornpiler, and wrote him a stiſſ and saucy
answer. I hope it has not been posted.” On inquiry, it was found that the letter had already
been taken, with others, to the Two-penny Post-office. With some difficulty, Freeling, the
Secretary of the General Post-office, allowed Murray to get back the letter, in place of which
he sent a very courtly epistle, oſtering to wait on the Bishop, and so on. The result was
the publication of the first part, in two volumes, of Tomline's Life of William Pitt. A third
volume did not complete the work, which it was understood that the Bishop was busy on up to
his death, in 1827. The biography was large and dull. The best of the “Wintom” joke was
that Croker, who knew the Bishop, and spared no one, told it to his Lordship, who let Murray
know, once or twice, that he was in the secret.-M.
* Horace Walpole's Memoirs and Correspondence, to say nothing of his other writings, show
extraordimary industry, lively wit, close j, and sly satire. They give on the whole
more of political, literary, fashionable, artistical, and scandalous gossip during the last sixty
rears of the Eighteenth Century, than we have yet received. Walpole became J2arl of Orford,
§ succession, in 1791, but never took his seat in the House of Lords. He died in 1797, in his
eightieth year —M. -
# The poem alluded to, was “The Irish Avatar,” written in sº IS21, on the visit
which George IV. had paid to Ireland, in the preceding August. Byron, who was shocked at
| 6p) &
TEITE MAGAZINES. 133
Editor. Hogg's Chaldee —good.
Odoherty. You would notice the puffs about another thing, called
“the Royal Progress;”—they say 'tis writ by Mrs. Morgan's ex-
chevalier; and I can believe it, for it is equally dull and disloyal.
Editor. Are these all the news you have picked up? How do the
minor periodicals sell ? !
Odoherty. Worse and worse. Taylor and Hessey are going down
like the devil.” Colburn pays like a hero, for what you would fling
into the fire. The copyright of the * was disposed of t'other
day for about 1600l., back numbers, plates, and all included. 'Twas
about the best of them.
Editor. I hope old Sir Richard is thriving. º
Odoherty. Capitally. He circulates between three and four thou-
sand; and his advertisements are very profitable. Why don't you
sport a little extra matter of cover ? -
Editor. At present mine are mostly preserves. I’ll enlarge them,
if you won’t poach.
Odoherty. Depend on’t, 'twill pay.
Editor. I hope Nicholas gets on.
Odoherty. Very fair. 'Tis the only Gentleman's Magazine besides
your own. -
Editor. What is that thing called the Gazette of Fashion ?
Odoherty. 'Tis a poor imitation of the Literary Gazette. Mr.
, they say, patronizes it; but this can't be true, for it
attacks, very shamefully, the man who did HIM more good?han any
body else ever will be able to do him, here or hereafter.
Editor. Hercles' vein with a vengeance 1 You've been studying
the Eclectic, one would think.
tne enthusiasm with which the Irish Catholics received a monarch who had the power, but
lavked the will, to give them Emancipation, headed his stanzas, which are strong and stinging,
with this motto, from. Curram, “And Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive
the paltry rider.” The poem, which gracefully closes with complimentary motices of Grattan,
Curram, and Moore, was so personal on George IV., that it was not published in his life-time,
But Byron sent it to Moore, at Paris, and allowed him to have a dozen copies printed, for
rivate circulation. Some of these found their way to London, and were handed about, in
iterary society, until the poem became pretty generally known. It was first published, in
England, in 1831.-M.
* After John Scott, the original editor of the London Magazine. was shot in a duel by Mr.
Ghristie, the periodical fell into the hands of Taylor and Hessey of Fleet-street, very intelli-
gent publishers. The duel (as will be more particularly stated in my Memoir of Lockhart, in
the present edition of The Noctes), arose from a quarrel which sprung out of some articles in
Blackwood,—M. -
f Phillips was a bookseller, who had been one of the sheriffs of Londom, and was knighted,
on presenting some city address to George III. He was proprietor, publisher, and editor of
the Monthly Magazine, at one time a thriving periodical. The European Magazine gave a
Variety of good engravings, (landscapes and public buildings, with very good portraits of
living characters), and was long the property of Mr. Asperm, who published the letters of the
famous John Wilkes.—M.
f The Gentleman's Magazine, commenced by Edmund Cave, early in the reign of George
II., flourishes in that of Victoria, under the editorship of the Rev. John Mitford. For nearly
half a century, it was conducted by John Nichols, an able writer on literary and antiquarian
Subjects. He died in 1828.-Mſ.
| l an unable 'o say what person is here alluded to.—M.
134 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE,
Odoherty. The Eclectic is not so poor an affair as you insinuate,
Mr. Christopher. The principal writers tip us a little of the Snuffle
and Whine,—but you are up to that yourself, when it serves your
turn. Montgomery's articles are such as you would like very well
to lay your own fist upon, I fancy. -
Editor. If Foster still writes in it, they have one of the first
thinkers in England beneath their banner.” I wish you would read
him, before you begin to write the auto-biography you’ve been talking
about these three years.
Odoherty, Coleridge's diºt pay.f -
Editor. But yours may,+may, will,—must pay. I’ll insure you
of 3000l. if you go to “the proper man.” I intend to give him the
first offer of my own great work,+my Armenian Grammar, which
is now nearly ready for press.
Odoherty. Your name will sell anything. Is there much personal-
ity in the notes?
Editor. I have cut up the commentators here and there. I have
fixed an indelible stigma on old Scioppius.j.
Odoherty. I’ll defy you to write a sermon without being personal.
Editor. I’ll defy Dr. Chalmers to do that. He is deuced severe
on the Glasgow Baillies and Professors I am told. -,
Odoherty. Do many clergymen contribute %
Bditor. Droves.
Odoherty. What do the lads chiefly affect? e
Editor. Jocular topics. 'Twas an arch-deacon sent me the Irish
Melodies, which I know you have been owning everywhere for your
OWI).
- ºw. I follow one great rule, never to own anything that
is my own, nor deny anything that is not my own.
Editor. 'Tis the age of owning and disowning. It was a long while
ere I believed Hope to be Anastasius.S
* John Foster, author of the “Essays” which have procured for him the reputation of being
one of the most original thinkers of his age, was a frequent contributor to the Eclectic
Review, them more decidedly religious in its tone than at present. He died in 1843. James
Montgomery, the poet, was a casual contributor to the same periodical, and died in 1854. The
Eclectic, which occasionally contains very able articles, is now edited by Dr. Thomas Pryse,
of London, who is its proprietor, M. -
t Coleridge’s “Biographia Literaria,” was only a fragment, and not a very satisfactory one,
It went through ...? editions in his life-time, and will always command a certain degree
of attention.
f Gaspar Scioppius, a learned German, who wrote in the seventeenth century, was called
“the grammatical cur,” on account of his spiteful and injurious way of calumniating all who
were eminent for their erudition. He was one of the class who, thernselves not meriting mor
obtaining success, consider it unpardonable in others to be more deserving and fortunate.-M,
| A series of Irish Melodies, purporting to be sent by “Morty Macnamara Mulligan,” of
Dublin, but really written by Maginn, and published, with music and words, in Blackwood,
for December, 1821. They were to have commenced a series, but only No. 1 appeared, contain.
ing six melodies.—Al
# When “Amastasius” first appeared, in 1819, it was reviewed, in Blurkwood, as written by
lord Byron. The late Thomas Hope, whose previous literary publications, had been “ Th9
Costumes of the Amcients,” and “Designs of Modern Costumes,” twowed himself the author. in
a brief letter which was printed in Blackwood.—M.
IN WINO. 135
Odoherty. It will be a long while ere I believe that Anastasius
wrote those quartos about mahogany. I believe he might furnish the
wood, but, by Jericho, did he carve it at all ? - -
Jºditor. You are an incorrigible Irishman. Have you any news
from your country It seems to me to be in a fine state.
Odoherty. Why, for that matter, I think we are very common-
place in our national diversions. , Sir William Chambers complained
of nature being monotonous, for furnishing only earth, air, and
water. Blood and whisky may sum up all the amusements of the
Irish Whigs.-Burning, throat-cutting; shooting an old proctor or
..policeman—that's all. They fight in a cowardly fashion. There's
my cousin, Tom Magrath, writes me he saw 500 of them run away
from about forty gentlemen. One of the chief stimulants the poor
devils have, is a prophecy of the papist Bishop Walmesley, (the same
that goes under the name of Pastorini,) that the Protestant church is
to be destroyed in 1825.” .
JEditor. Why, some few years ago, a godly squire in Ayrshire
here, published a thumping book, to prove that Bonaparte would
die in 1825, at the siege of Jerusalem. The year 1825 will be a rare
one when it comes.
Odoherty. These events will furnish fine materials for a new hour's
Tête-à-tête with the public.? -
Editor. What a world of things will have happened ere 1825 !
Odoherty. You will be knocked up ere then. You talk about your
stomach—only see how little remains in the bottle !
Bditor. I had finished two ere you came in. I can never write
without a bottle beside me. Judge Blackstone followed the same
plan, he had always a bottle of port by him while he was at his
commentaries. When Addison was composing his Essay on the
Evidences, he used to walk up and down the long room in Holland
House—there was a table with the black strap at each end, and he
always turned up his little finger twice ere he had polished a sentence
to his mind.]—I believe he took brandy while he was doing the last
act of Cato. There is no good writing without one glass.
“Nemo bene potest scribere jejunus.”
Odoherty. I prefer smoking, on the whole. But I have no objec.
tion to a glass of punch along with it. It clears our mouth.
* The prophecy was:
“In the year eighteen hundred twenty-five,
There will not be a Protestant alive.”
I was in the south of Ireland, on New Year's Day, 1825, and recollect seeing several Protes-
tants, who were going to attend divine service, stealthily take loaded pistols with them, fearing
that a general massacre was in contemplation, and resolving to sell their lives dearly.—M.
f The mame of an amusing, chatty article which had appeared in Blackwood, some timo
. (evidently written by Wilsom,) and had gained great approbation from the patient
public.—M. - -
f This is the tradition at Holland House.-M.
136 NOCTES AMBROSTANAE.
Editor. “Experto crede Roberto.” -
Odoherty. I am glad to see you have dropt your cursed humbug
articles on German Plays. I hate all that trash. Is Kempferhausen
defunct 2
Editor. I had a present of two awms of Johannisberg from him not
a week ago. • *
Odoherty. The piperly fellow once promised me a few dozens;
but he took it amiss that I peppered him so at the Tent.
Editor. I am sure you would have sold it to Ambrose if you had
got it.—Will you have some supper ? -
Odoherty. Excuse me, I never eat supper.
Editor, (Rings.) Waiter, Welsh rabbits for five, scolloped oysters
for ten, six quarts of porter, and covers for two.
Waiter. It is all ready, sir; Mr. Ambrose knew what you would
want the moment the Captain came in.
Odoherty. I am thinking seriously of writing some book. What
shape do you recommend ? I was thinking of a quarto. 1
Bditor. A duodecimo you mean ; will a quarto go into a sabre-
tache, or a work-basket, or a reticule? Are you the bishop of Win-
chester 2*
Odoherty. What bookseller do you recommend? (These are
prime powldoodies'
JEditor. Ebony to be sure, if he will give the best price. But be
sure you don’t abuse his temper. There was a worthy young man
done up only a few months ago by the cockney poets. He gave
£100 to one for a bundle of verses, (I forget the title,) of which just
thirty copies were sold. They were all at him like leeches, and he
was soon sucked to the bone. You must not tip Ebony any shabby
trash—you must be upon honor, Mr. Odoherty. You have a great
name, and you must support it. If you mind your hits, you may
rise as high as any body I know in any of the slang lines.
Odoherty. You flatter me! Butter
Editor. Not one lick! Egan is not worthy of holding a candle to
your Boxiana; and yet Egan is a prime swell. You should get little
Cruikshank to draw the vignettes; your life would sell as well as
Hogg’s, or Haggart's, or any body else, that I remember.}
Odoherty. You'll cut a great figure in it yourself.
Editor. A good one, you mean 2
Odoherty. No, d , I scorn to flatter you, or any man. I shall
tell the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth. Do you
* The Bishop's Life of William Pitt had appeared in quarto.—M.
t The articles called “Boxiana,”—which have been generally attributed to Maginn—ram
through, several volumes of Blackwood. They gave the history of the English prize-ring.
Pierce Egan wrote the work on which they were based, and was additionally motorious as
Editor of Bell’s Liſe, a sporting paper. and author of “Ilife in London,” which, when drama-
tized, had more success than any performance which the Londom play-goers had seen for years.
‘Life in London'' was illustrated by George Cruikshank and his brother Robert.—M.
SCANDALUM MAGNATUM. 137
expect me to say that you are a handsome man? Or that you have
slim ankles? Or that you don't squint? Or that you understand
the whole doctrine of quadrille Or that you are the author of
Waverley? Or the author of Anastasius' Are these the bams you
expect? - -
Editor. Say that I am the author of the Chaldee, and I am satis-
fied. .
Odoherty. No, I’ll stick to my own rule. I’ll claim it myself. I’ll
challenge Hogg if he disputes the point. *
Editor. I hope you’ll shoot potatoes; for I could not afford to lose
either of you ! you are both of you rum ones to look at, but devils
to go. -
Odoherty. I intend to be modest as to my amours.
Bditor. You had better not. The ladies won't buy if you do so.
Your amour with Mrs. Macwhirter* raised my sale considerably.
Odoherty. This is a very delicate age. I fear nothing at all high
would go down with it.
Bditor. Why there's a vast deal of cant afloat as to this matter;
people don’t know what they are speaking about. Show me any
production of genius, written in our time, which does not contain
what they pretend to abhor.
Odoherty. Why, there's the Edinburgh Review—you must at
least allow ’tis a decent work. - -
Editor. Have you forgotten Sidney Smith's article about missien-
aries?—I won’t repeat the names of some of them.
Odoherty. The Quarterly?
Editor. Why, Gifford and I are old boys, and past our dancing
days; but I believe you will find some very sly touches here and
there. - l -
Odoherty. Byron 7
Editor. Poh! you’re wild now. We may despise the cant about
him, but you must confess that there's always a little of what’s wrong
in the best of his works. Even the Corsair seems to have flirted a
bit now and them. And Juan, you know, is a perfect Richelieu.}
Odoherty. Have you anything to say against the Waverley
novels 3 - - -
Jºditor. Not much. Yet even the old Dame Norna in the Pirate
seems to have danced in her youth. I strongly suspect her son was
a mere filius carnalis. r
Odoherty. What of Kenilworth, then Q
Editor. 'Tis all full of going about the bush. One always sees
what Elizabeth is thinking about. She has never some handsome
* This amour is related, rather particularly, in the Memoirs of Odoherty, and the lady's last
appearance was, in The Tent.—M. -
f Not the Cardinal, but the Duc de Richelieu, of the Orleans Regency, equally distinguished
for his profligacy and valor.—M.
138 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE,
fellow or other out of her mind. And then the scene where Leices-
ter and Amy get up is certainly rather richly colored. There is
nothing a whit worse in the Sorrows of Werter, or Julia de Rou-
bigné, or any of that sentimental set. - - -
Odoherty. Milman is a very well-behaved boy. You can say
nothing of that sort against him. -
Faitor. He is a very respectable man, and a clergyman to boot;
but the bridal songs in his Fall of Jerusalem are not much behind
what a layman might have done. There are some very luxurious
hits in that part of the performance. Did you attend old P ’s
sale when you were in town'; -
Odoherty. No, I can’t say I did ; but I hear there was a fine collec-
tion of the Facetiae, and other forbidden fruits. A friend of mine
got the editio princeps of Poggio,” but he sweated for it. The
Whigs bid high. They worked to keep all those tit-bits for them-
selves. *... *
JEditor. Does this affair of Lord Byron's Mystery; create any sen-
sation in London 2 - -
Odoherty. Very little. The parsons about Murray's shop are
not the most untractable people in the world, otherwise they would
never have abstained so long from attacking Juan, Beppo, and the
rest of Byron's improprieties—they that are so foul-mouthed against
Shelley, and such insignificant blasphemers as that Cockney crew.
JEditor. I have often wondered at the face they show in that omis-
sion.
Odoherty. Really -
Jºditor. No doubt a bookseller must have something to say as to
his own Review. But the thing should not be pushed too far, else a
noodle can see through it. -
Odoherty. Meaning me? - r
Editor. Not at all. But as to Cain, I entirely differ from the
Chancellor. I think, if Cain be prosecuted, it will be a great shame.
The humbug of the age will then have achieved its most visible tri.
umph. -
Odoherty. I never saw it, but I thought it had been blasphe-
II) OllS.
Editor. No, sir, I can’t see that. The Society might have had some
pretence had they fallen on Don Juan ; but I suppose those well-feil
Archdeacons, and so forth, have their own ways of observing certain
lmatters. -
* Poggio Bracciolini, Apostolical Secretary to eight Popes, but a profligate in his conduct and
writings. He lived in the fifteenth century.—M. .
f “Cain, a Mystery,” dedicated to Scott, was written at Ravenna in the autumn of 1821, and
published in December of that year. It was pirated. Murray applied for an injunction against
the pirates, and the Chancellor (Eldon,) declared that an immoral or irreligious book was not
entitled to protection.—M. - -
BYRON TO MURRAY. - 139
Odoherty. Have you seen Lord Byron's letter on the subject to
Mr. Murray 7
Bditor. Yes; ’tis in the papers.
Odoherty. A bite that’s the prose edition. It was written origin-
ally in verse, but Murray's friends thought it would have more effect :
if translated into prose; and a young clergyman, who writes in the
Quarterly, turned the thing very neatly, considering; I believe I have
a copy of Lord Byron's own letter in my pocket.
Jºditor. Let's see it.
Odoherty. You shall have it.
BYRON To MURRAY.”
Attacks on me were what I look'd for, Murray,
But why the devil do they badger you?
These godly newspapers seem hot as curry,
But don’t, dear Publisher, be in a stew.
They'll be so glad to see you in a flurry—
I Inean those canting Quacks of your Review—
They fain would have you all to their own Set;
But never mind them—we're not parted yet.
They surely don't suspect you, Mr. j.
Of being more than accouchewr to Cain;
What mortal ever said you wrote the Don 1
I dig the mine—you only fire the train
But here—why, really, no great lengths I’ve gone—
Big wigs and buzz were always my disdain—
But my poor shoulders why throw all the guilt on ?
There's as much blasphemy, or more, in Milton.
* Letter from Lord Byron to Mr. Murray. -
PrsA, Feb. 8, 1822.
DEAR SIR-Attacks upon me were to be expected; but I perceive one upon you in the papers,
which, I confess, that I did not expect. How, or in what manner you can be considered re-
sponsible for what J publish, I am at a loss to conceive. If “Cain,” be “blasphemous,” Para-
dise, Lost is blasphemous; and the very words of the Oxford Gentleman, “Evil be thou, my
good,” are from that very poern, from the mouth of Satan ; and is there any thing more in that
of Lucifer in the Mystery! Cain is nothing more than a drama, not a piece of argument. If
Lucifer and Cain speak as the first murderer and the first rebel may be supposed to speak, surely
all the rest of the personages talk also according to their characters; .# the stronger passions
have ever been permitted to the drama. I have even avoided introducing the Deity, as in
Scripture (though Milton does, and not very wisely either;) but have adopted his angel, as sent
to Cain, instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any feelings on the subject, by falling short of,
what all uninspired men must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate motion of the effect of the
presence of Jehovah. The old mysteries introduced him liberally enough, and all this is
avoided in the new one,
The attempt to bully you, because they think it will not succeed with me, seems to me as
atrocious an attempt as ever disgraced the times. What! when Gibbon’s, Hume's, Priestley's,
and Drummond's publishers have been allowed to rest in peace for seventy years, are you to be
singled out for a work of fiction, not of history or argument? There must be something at the
bottom of this—some private enemy of your own—it is otherwise incredible. *
I can only say, “Me—ºne adswºm qui feci,” that any proceedings directed against you, I beg
may be transferred to me, who am willing and ought to endure them all; that if you have lost
money by the publication, I will refund any, or all of the copyright; that I desire you will say,
that both you and Mr. Gifford remonstrated against the ...; as also Mr. Hobhouse; that
I alone occasioned it, and I alone a.m., the person who either legally or otherwise should bear
the burthen. If they prosecute, I will come to England ; that is, if by meeting it in my own
person, I can save yours. Let me know—you sha’n’t suffer for me, if I can help it. Make any
use of this letter which you please. Yours ever, BYRON.
140 NOCTES AMBROSTANAE.
The thing's a drama, not a sermon-book;
Here stands the murderer—that’s the old one there;
In gown and cassock how would Satan look? -
Should Fratricides discourse like Doctor Blair;
The puritanic Milton freedom took,
Which now-a-days would make a bishop stare;
But not to shock the feelings of the age,
I only bring you angels on the stage.
To bully You—yet shrink from battling Me,
Is baseness. Nothing baser stains “The Times.”
While Jeffrey in each catalogue I see,
While no one talks of priestly Playfair's crimes,
While Drummond, at Marseilles, blasphemes with glee,
Why all this row about my harmless rhymes?
Depend on 't, Piso, 'tis some private pique
'Mong those that cram your Quarterly with Greek.
If this goes on, I wish you’d plainly tell 'em,
T were quite a treat to me to be indicted;
Is it less sin to write such books than sell 'em :
There's muscle 1–I’m resolved I’ll see you righted.
In me, great Sharpe, in me converte telum !
Come, Doctor Sewell, show you have been knighted.
—On my account you never shall be dunn'd,
The copyright, in part, I will refund.
You may tell all who come into your shop,
You and your Bull-dog both remonstrated;
My Jackall did the same, you hints may drop,
(All which, perhaps, you have already said.)
Just speak the word, I'll fly to be your prop,
They shall not touch a hair, man, in your head.
You're free to print this letter; you’re a fool
If you do n’t send it first to the JoHN BULL"
Editor. Come, this is a good letter. If I had been Murray I would
not have thought of the prose. I’ll be hanged if I would.
Odoherty. Is there any thing new in the literary world here?
Editor. Not much that I hear of . There’s Colonel Stewart's
History of the Highland Regiments, one of the most entertaining
books that have been published this long time. You're a soldier,
you must review it for me in my next number.f
Odoherty. I think I'll tip you a series of articles on the history of
the Irish regiments. I’m sure I know as many queer stories about
them, as any colonel of them all. Is the book well written ? -
Editor. Plainly, but sensibly, and elegantly too, I think. Not
much of the flash that's in vogue, but a great deal of feeling and truth.
Some of the anecdotes are quite beautiful, and the Colonel's view of
the Highland character is admirably, drawn. -
* The poetical version was by Maginn.—M.
t In the April number of Blackwood, the opening article was a review of Colonel David
Stewart's Sketches of the Highland Regiments—not written, however, by Odoherty.—M.
NEW BOOKS. 141
Odoherty. I’m glad to hear it. Few officers write well except
Julius Caesar, the Heavy Horseman,” and myself. . . .
Editor. You forget General Burgoyne. -
Odoherty. Aye, true enough. The General was a sweet fellow.f
Editor. So are you all. Have you done nothing to your Cam-
paigns? I’m sure they would sell better than Southey's. . .
Odoherty. That's no great matter, perhaps... I don't think the
Laureate has much of a military eye. . . . .
Editor. How does the John Bull get on? . . -
Odoherty. Famously, they say. I’m told they divided £6000 at
the end of the first year. I intend contributing myself if you do not
pay me better.
Editor. Why, how much would you have? Are you not always
sure of your twenty guineas a-sheet? I’m sure that's enough for
such articles as yours. You never take any pains.
Odoherty. If I did, they would not be worth five.—Have you seen
John Home's Life 2 -
Editor. To be sure.—'Tis very amusing. The old gentleman
writes as well as ever.] I wish he would try his hand at a novel
ODC6, Ill OI’e. -
Odoherty. Why, no novels sell now except the Author of Wav-
erlev’s. . . . -
Žºr. Write a good ohe, and I warrant you 'twill sell. There's
Adam Blair has taken like a shot; and Sir Andrew Wylie is almost
out of print already. ; -
Odoherty. I don’t think Sir Andrew near so good as the Annals
of the Parish.-What say you ? º
* Poems by Edward Quilliman (who was successively the son-in-law of Sir Egerton Brydges
and Wordsworth,) were reviewed, in Blackwood, by Captain Hamilton, who, because their
author was or had been in the army, treated them as if written by a Heavy Dragoon. The
critique was so personal as to be offensive, and Captain Quilliman went to Edinburgh to chal-
lenge, the reviewer, whoever he might be. Accidentally sitting next Hamilton at dinner,
Quillimam was so much pleased with him as to accept his invitation to have a cigar and walk
home together. In the course of their conversation Quilliman mentioned how difficult he
found it to ascertain the authorship of an article in Blackwood, and mentioned his own par-
ticular grievance of the critique. Hamilton Smiled, and said, “My dear fellow, there was mo
private spleen in the matter. I, who wrote the article, knew nothing of the author I was quiz-
zing, and am sorry that, º accident, I annoyed you.” There was no more enmity moranger,
and they remained warm friends through *ś. -
t. This is the General Burgoyne who had a British command here, in the Revolutionary war,
and issued an address to the native Indians, in such an inflated and turgid style as to fix on him
the sobriquet of Chronomhotonthologos. His surrender at Saratoga, with all his army, caused
much, dissatisfaction in England, and one of the epigrams of the day, which also embodied the
name of the successful American general, ran thus: … • * : * *
Burgoyne, unconscious of impending fates,
Could cut his way through woods—but not through Gates.
He was dismissed the British service for having refused to return to America, (his visit to
England being on his parole) pursuant to the terms of the convention, but was restored three
years after. He was a successful dramatic writer.—M. -
# Southey's History of the Peninsular War.—M. ~
| Life of John Home, author of “ Douglas,” by Henry Mackenzie.—M. - -
§ “Adam Blair,” a tale of intense passion, suffering, and expiation, by Lockhart. “Sir
Andrew Wylie,” one of Galt's novels of familiar life, improbable in incidents, and exaggerated:
in character, but clever, amusing, and full of matural interest.—M. ! - . . . . . . .]
142 - NOCTES AMBROSIANAE. •
Editor. I agree with you. The story is d- improbable ; the
hero a borish fellow, an abominable bore 1 but there is so much
cleverness in the writing, and many of the scenes are so capitally
managed, that one can never lay down the book after beginning it.
On the whole, ’tis a very strange performance. I hear the Provost
is likely to be better, however. * -
Odoherty. The Author has a vast deal of humor, but he should
stick to what he has seen. The first part of Wylie is far the best.
Editor. The scene with old George is as good as possible.
Odoherty. It is. Why did he not produce the present King too !
Editor. He will probably have him some other time. If he could
but write stories as well as the King tells them,” he would be the
first author of his time.
Odoherty. Were you ever in company with the King, North 7
JEditor. Three or four times, long ago now, when he used to come
a-hunting in the New Forest. -
Odoherty. Will he come to Scotland this summer ? -
Editor. One can never be sure of a King's movements; but 'tis said
he is quite resolved upon the trip.f
Odoherty. What will the Whigs do - . -
Editor. Poh the Whigs here are nobody. Even Lord Moira
could not endure them. He lived altogether among the Tories when
he was in Scotland. The Whigs would be queer pigs at a drawing:
I’OOIſl.
Odoherty. Sir Ronald Ferguson seems to be a great spoon.
JEditor. He is what he seems. At the Fox dinner, t'other day, he
came prepared with two speeches; one to preface the memory of old
Charlie; the other returning thanks for his own health being drunk.
He forgot himself, and transposed them. He introduced Fox with
twenty minutes' harangue about his own merits, and them, discover-
ing his mistake, sat down in such a quandary |
Odoherty. Good they’re a pretty set. What sort of a thing is
the Thame of Fife—Tennant's poem -
JEditor. Mere humbug—quite defunct.
Odoherty. What are they saying about Hogg's new romance,
“The Three Perils of Man; or, War Women, and Witchcraft,”—Is.
not that the name 7 * -
Editor. I think so. I dare say 'twill be like all his things, a
mixture of the admirable, the execrable, and the tolerable. It is to
be published by some London house.
* Scott repeatedly said that George IV. was an admirable story-teller.—M.
f George IV. visited Scotland in the autumn of 1822.-M.
† Lord Moira, in the peerage of Ireland, and afterwards, Marquis of Hastings, in that of
England, bore the name of Lord Rawdon, when he served in the British army, during the
Revolutionary war. lie died in 1825, after having been Governor-General of India and
Governor of Malta. Ome of his daughters was Lady Flora Hastings, “dome to death by evil.
tongues,” in the Court of Queen Victoria, in 1839.-M.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY. - 143
Odoherty. Does he never come to Edinburgh now
Editor. Oh yes, now and then he is to be seen about five in the
morning, selling sheep in the Grassmarket. I am told he is a capital
manager about his farm, and getting rich apace.
Odoherty. I am glad to hear it. I’m sorry I wrote that article on
his life.” It was too severe, perhaps.
Editor. Never mind; ’tis quite forgotten. He is now giving out
that he wrote it himself. - '.
Odoherty. It was a devilish good article. He could not have
written, three lines of it. -
Jºditor. No, no, but neither could you have written three lines of
Kilmeny, no, nor one line of his dedication to Lady Anne Scott.
Hogg's a true genius in his own style. Just compare him with any
of the others of the same sort; compare him with Clare for a
moment. # Upon my word, Hogg appears to me to be one of the
most wonderful creatures in the world, taking all things together. I
wish he would send me more articles than he does, and take more
pains with them. -
Odoherty. Is Dr. Scott in town 2 -
Editor. No-he's busy writing the Odontist. They say it will
be the oddest jumble. All his life—every thing he has seen, Or
might have seen, from a boy—and some strange anecdotes of the
French Revolution.
Odoherty. Was he ever in the Bastile 2
Editor. Oh yes, and in the Temple too. He has been every-
where but at Timbuctoo. .
Odoherty. Where is Timbuctoo !
Editor. Somewhere in Egypt, I am told. I never was there. . .
Odoherty. What is your serious opinion about the present state of
literature ? - -
Editor. Why, we live in an age that will be much discussed when
'tis over—a very stirring, productive, active age—a generation of
commentators will probably succeed—and I, for one, look to furnish
them with some tough work. There is a great deal of genius astir,
but, after all, not many first-rate works produced. If I were asked
to say how many will survive, I could answer in a few syllables.
Wordsworth's Ballads will be much talked of a hundred years hence;
so will the Waverley Novels; so will Don Juan, I think, and
Manfred ; so will Thalaba, and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and the
Pilgrimage to the Kirk of Shotts, and Christabel —
Odoherty. And the Essay on the Scope and Tendency of Bacon.|
* A “slashing” review in Blackwood, of the liſe of Hogg, which had appeared in Constable's
Magazine.—M. -
t John Clare, the Northamptonshire Peasant (as he was called), wrote pretty verses. Some
of Hogg's poetry will perish only with the language in which they are writ.—M.
He was not Doctor, and “The Odontist” never was written.—M.
ū This unfortunate Essay, the constant butt of the wits of Ebony, was written by Professor
Macvey Napier, who succeeded Jeffrey in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review,
144 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Editor. You wag, I suppose you expect to float yourself.
Odoherty. Do you? - - . .
Editor. None of your quizzing here, Mr. Odoherty. I’ll get Hogg |
to review your next book, sir, if you don’t mend your manners.
Odoherty. Do—I would fain have a row, as I say in my song-
“O, no matter with whom—no, nor what it was for.”
JEditor. Aye, you are always in that mood. -
Odoherty. Sometimes only. Do you disapprove of personality ?
Editor. No, no. I am not quite fool enough to sport that ; least
of all to you. In reviewing, in particular, what can be done without
personality ? Nothing, nothing. What are books that don’t express -
the personal characters of their authors; and who can review books,
without reviewing those that wrote them 7
Odoherty. You get warm, Christopher; out with it.
Editor. Can a man read La Fontaine, Mr. Odoherty, without
perceiving his personal good nature ? Swift's personal ill-mature is
quite as visible. Can a man read Burns without having the idea of a
great and a bold man—or Barry Cornwall, without the very uncom-
fortable feeling of a little man and a timid one? The whole of the
talk about personality is, as Fogarty” says, cant.
Odoherty. Get on.
Editor. I have done. Did you pick me up any good new hands
when you were in town'; -
Odoherty. Several—two or three, that is. But t think the less
you have to do with the Cockney underscrubs, the better.
Editor. You're right there.
Odoherty. Oh yes, I have no love of the “Young Geniuses about
town.” The glorious army of Parliamentary reporters has no
magnificence in my eyes. I detest news-writers—paragraphers—
spouting-club speechifiers—all equally. You have them writing on
different lays, but they are at bottom, with very few exceptions, the
same dirty radicals, — meanly born,-meanly bred,— uneducated
adventurers, who have been thrown upon literature only by having
ſailed as attorneys, apothecaries, painters, schoolmasters, preachers,
grocers
Editor. Or Adjutants.-Ha! haſ
they still puff him as much as ever ?
Odoherty. Yes, they do; but the best joke is, that in one of his
own prefaces he takes the trouble to tell us that Mirandola, (a charac.
ter in One of his playthings,) is not the same man with Othello.
JEditor. One might as well say that Tom Thumb is not the same
man as Richard the Third. ---
* Fogarty O’Fogarty was the nom de plume of Mr. Gosnell, son of an apothecary in Cork,
who wrote a poem in Blackwood, in six Cantos, edited by Magimm, and called “ Daniel
O'Rourke.”—Ml. -
This Barry Cornwall, do
N
“THE LIBERAL.” - 145
Odoherty. Or that Joseph Hume is not Edmund Burke.
Editor. Or that the friend of Gerald” is not the exemplar of Sir
Philip Sidney. . . . .
Odoherty. Or that a painted broomstick is not an oak.
Editor. Or that Baby Cornwall is not Giant Shakspeare. To be
serious, do you think Campbell is gaining reputation by his editor-
ship 2 - - -
bour, No; nor do I think Byron will by his.}
Editor. How are you sure of that, Ensign? -
Odoherty. The Duke of Wellington would not raise himself by the
best of all possible corn-bills. Hannibal did not raise himself by his
excellent conduct at the head of the Carthaginian Police. Even if
Tom Campbell had turned out the prince of Editors, I should still
have preferred him thinking of . . .
On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
- * , Of Iser rolling rapidly. -
Editor. You are getting sentimental now, I think. Will you
have another tumbler? $ -
Odoherty, Hand me the lemons. This holy alliance of Pisa will
be a queer affair. The Examiner has let down its price from a ten-
penny to a sevenpenny. They say the editor here.is to be one of
that faction, for they must publish in London of course. -
Editor. Of course; but I doubt if they will be able to sell many.
Byron is a prince; but these dabbling dogglerers destroy every dish
they dip in. >
Odoherty. Apt alliteration's artful aid. -
Editor. Imagine Shelley, with his spavin, and Hunt, with his
stringhalt, going in the same harness with such a caperer as Byron,
three-a-breast ! He'll knock the wind out of them both the first
Cânter, -
Odoherty. 'Tis pity Keats is dead.|—I suppose you could not
venture to publish a sonnet in which he is mentioned now? The
Quarterly (who killed him, as Shelley says) would blame you.
Editor. Let's hear it. Is it your own
Odoherty. No ; ’twas written many months ago by a certain great
Italian genius, who cuts a figure about the London routs—one
Fudgiolo.S
* “The friend of Gerald was Sir James Mackintosh,--M.
t Of “The Liberal.”—M.
# The alliance between Byron, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, in the production of the Liberal.—
1 John Keats, author of “Endymion,” and other poems. He died at Rome, in December
1820, aged twenty-four. With some mannerisms, he had wonderful imagination, delicate
taste, deep sensibilities, and musical expression of no common order.—M.
$ Ugo Foscolo, an Italian poet and exile, established his fame by his “Letters of Ortis.”
He contributed largely to the higher periodicais, and died in London, in 1827–M.
WOL. I.-12
**
146 NOCTES AMBROSLANE.
Editor. Try to recollect it.
Odoherty. It began
Signor Le Hunto, gloria di Cocagna
Chi scrive il poema della Rimini
Che tutta apparenza ha, per Gemini,
D'esser cantato sopra la montagna
Dibel Ludgato, o nella campagna
D'Amsted, o sulle marge Serpentimini
Com' esta Don Giovanni d'Endymini
Il gran poeta d'Ipecacuanha?
Tu sei il Re del Cocknio Parnasso
Ed egli il herede apparente,
Tu sei un gran Giacassociertamente,
Ed egliciertamente gran Giacassol
Tu sei il Signor del Examinero
Ed egli soave Signor del Glystero.
Editor. I don’t see why Evaminero and Glystero should be so
coupled together.
Odoherty. Both vehicles of dirt, you know.
Editor. You have me there. Who is Regent at present during
his Majesty’s absence?
Odoherty. Of course Prince John.* I don’t think Hazlitt is in
the Council of Regency. From the moment King George went to
Hanover, King Leigh was in the fidgets to be off.
Editor. What a cursed number of sonnets he'll write about the
Venus de Medicis and the Hermaphrodite The pictures and
statues will drive him clean out of his wits. He'll fall in love with
some of them.
Odoherty. If he sees Niobe and her Nine Daughters, he's a lost
Iſlall.
Editor. Quite done for. - -
Odoherty. Will the ladies admire his somets when they come
Over ?
Editor. According to Dr. Colquhoun, there is one parish in
Iondon, Mary-le-bone, which contains 50,000 ladies capable of
appreciating his poetry.
Odoherty. Is the new novel nearly ready—The Fortunes of Nigel
---is not that it 2
Editor. I hear it will soon be out, and that it is better than the
Pirate.
Odoherty. I can believe that.
- * John Hunt.—M. - e d
t pr. Patrick Colquhoun was a police magistrate in. London, aſ much ability and shrewdness. He
published several works, chiefly connected with statistics, and jurisprudence. Of these his “Treatise
on the Police of the Metropolis,” attracted general attention, from its anatomy of the lower grades o'
society in London. He died in 1820, aged seventy-five.—M.
f #. The Fortunes of Nigel” was published in May, 1822. It was reviewed, very briefly, in Blackwood,
or June.-M. - -
A VOLUNTARY. - 147
Editor. The subject is better. The time a very picturesque one.
I am informed, that we may expect to have the most high and mighty
Prince, King Jamie, and old Geordie Heriot, introduced in high
style. - -
Odoherty. In London, I hope.
Jºditor. I hope so, too. I think he shows most in a bustle.
Odoherty. I don’t know. I like the glen in the Monastery.
JEditor. Your affectation is consummate. You that never breathed
at ease out of a tavern, to be sporting romance. +.
Odoherty. I have written as many sentimental verses as any
Sempstress alive. I once tried an epic in dead earnest.
JEditor. How did you get on ? -
Odoherly. My heroine was with child at the end of the first canto,
but I never had patience to deliver her. -
Editor. Have you still got the MS.
Odoherty. Yes; I think of sending it to Tom Campbell, or Taylor
and Hessey, or the Aberdeen Review, if there be such a book still.
JEditor. I never heard of it ; but steamboats and magazines are
all the go at present. They’ve got a magazine at Brighton—
another at Newcastle, for the colliers—another at Dundee—and, I
believe, five or six about Paisley and Glasgow. You may choose
which you like best—they’re all works of genius–Hogg writes in
them all. • , & - .
Odoherty. I’ll sing you a song. (Sings.)
Thus speaks out Christopher,
To his gallant crew—
Up with the Olive flag,
Down with the Blue ;
Fire upon Jeffrey,
Fire on Sir James,
Fire on the Benthams,
Fire on the Grahams.
Fire upon Bennet,
Fire on Joe Hume
Fire upon Lambton,
Fire upon Brougham.
Fire upon Hallam,
Fire upon Moore,
Spit upon Hazlitt,
* * * * * *.
I’ve forgot the last line. 'Tis my call. Your stave, Christopher!
Editor. (Rings.) Walter l if Willison Glass be in the house, desire
him to come up stairs, and he shall have a bottle of porter.
148 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
- Jºnter WILLIson GLASS.*
Willison. What's your will 7
Editor. Sing the dialogue between yourself and Jeremy Bentham.
Willison. I have it in my pocket, sir—I will sing directly, sir—-
there's a running commentary, sir—would you be pleased to hear it
too, sir? . • - X-
Editor. Tip us the affair as it stands, Willison.
UIALOGUE BETWEEN WILLISON GLASS, Esq., OF EDINBURGH, AND JEREMY
Willison inviteth
Jeremy to the sign
of the Jolly Bac-
chus, whereof he
speaketh in com
mendation. -
Jeremy refuseth tho
invitation, blamdly
alleging that he had
much rather destroy
the young man of
the west, and other
persons.
i.
BENTHAM, ESQ., OF LONDON.
- 1.
JEREMY, throw your pen aside,
And come get drunk with me ;
We'll go where Bacchus sits astride,
Perch’d bigh upon barrels three;
'Tis there the ale is frothing up,
And genuine is the gin ;
So we shall take a liberal sup,
To comfort our souls within.
2
O cheerier than the nappy ale,
Or the Hollands smacking fine,
Is sitting by the taper pale,
And piling line on line;
Smashing with many a heavy word
Anti-usurers in a row,
Or pointing arguments absurdi
To level the Boroughs low.
3.
Jeremy, trust me, ’tis but stuff
To scribble the livelong night,
While the Quarterly bloodhounds howl so rough,
And so gruesome is their bite. -
But down at the sign of the Triple Tun,
There's nothing like them to fear,
But sweet is its brandy's genial run,
And barmy is its beer.
4.
Brandy, I know, is liquor good,
And barmy the beer may be ;
But common law is my favorite food,
And it must be crunch'd by me :
And I’m writing a word three pages long,
The Quarterly dogs to rout
A word which never will human tongue
Be able to wind about $
Whereupon Willi-
son remindeth him
of the Quarterly,
and extolleth the
good liquor.
Jeremy disvalueth
beer, brandy, and
the Quarterly, de-
clares that he choos-
eth rather to eat
lawyers than drink
brandy.
* Willison Glass, vender_o
annotated in The Tent.-M. . . .
f See Essay on the Usury Laws.
f strong liquors and maker of weak verses, has been already noticed and
! Reform Catechism. Il Theorie de Legislation.—C. N.
S. Jeremy Bentham, in his day, like Thomas Carlisle in ours, invented a new phraseology which
had the advantage of being particularly obscure.”—M.
will ISON GLASS AND BENTHAM.
- 5.
Jeremy, never shall tongue of mine
Be put to such silly use;
I'll keep it to smack the brandy-wine,
Or barleycorn's gallant juice.
Then mount your mitre on your skull,
And, waddle with me, my lad,
To take a long and hearty pull,
At the brimmer bumpering glad.
6. -
Though ale be comforting to the maw,
Yet here I still shall dwell,
Until I prove that judge-made law
Is uncognoscible, -
That the schools at Canterbury's beck”
Exist but in the mind;
And that T. T. Walmsey, Esquire, Sec.
Is no more than a spirit of wind. H
:*
M '7.
Jeremy, never mind such trash,
And of better spirits think,
And out of your throat the cobwebs wash
With a foaming flagon of drink;
For ’tis sweet the pewter pots to spy,
Imprisoning the liquor stout,
As jail-bird rogues are ring'd in by
Your Panopticon roundabout.
8.
Sweeter it is to see the sheet
With paradox scribbled fair, *
Where jawbreaking words every line you meet,
To make poor people stare.
And Sir Richard of Bridge-street my books shall puff,
And Ensor will swear them fine,f
And Jeffrey will say, though my style is tough,
Yet my arguments are divine.
9.
Jeremy, trust me, the puff of the three,
(I tell you the truth indeed,)
Is not worth the puff you'd get from me,
Of the pure Virginian weed.
And beneath its fume, while we gaily quaff
The beer or the ruin blue,
You at the world may merrily laugh,
Instead of its laughing at you.
*
Willison preferreth
long draughts to
long words.
Jeremy bringeth up
his mine-pounders,
and declareth that
he is a Berkleiau
philosopher.
Willison compareth
Jeremy's Palm opti-
con to a porter-pot
in a pretty simile.
Jeremy calleth on
three great men,
Sir Pythagoras. Geo.
Ensor, and Master
Francis Jeffrey.
Willison disparag-
ing the three : re-
commendeth to blow
a cloud.
* Church of Englandism.—C. N. - -
ºf Mr. Walmsley was Secretary to the then Archbishop of Canterbury.—M.
{\Sir Richard Phillips, (of Bridge-street, Blackfriars), publisher and editor, was very likol
to “puff" Bentham. Mr. Ensor was an Irish writer on Population, Political Economy, &c.-M.
150
NOUTES AMBROSIANA2.
Jeremy proposeth
leasant reading to
his friend Mr. Glass.
who thereupon re-
coileth horror-struck
and departeth to the
sign of the Jolly
Bacchus, there to
sing about . Prince
Charlie, and other
oodly ballads. And
eremy abideth in
his place.
I().
The world may lay what it likes to my charge,
May laugh, or may say I'm crack'd.
If it do, I shall swear that the world at large
Is no more than a jury F.
Such a jury as those on which I penn'd”
A Treatise genteel and clear;
And I’ll read it now to you, my friend,
For 'twill give you joy to hear.
11.
Jeremy, not for a gallon of ale
Would I stay that book to hear;
Why, even at its sight my cheek turns pale,
And my heart leaps up like a deer.
So I must off without more delay,
My courage to raise with a glass;
And as you prefer o'er such stuff to stay,
I'll toast you, my lad, for an ass.
(Eil Willison Glass)
Bditor. Well, but say candidly, what have you been doing for
us? Your active mind must have been after something. I heard
lately, (perhaps it was said in allusion to your late detention in
London,) that you were engaged with a novel, to be entitled “Fleet-
ing Impressions.” - •
Odoherty. You are quite mistaken. I have not patience for a
novel. I must go off like a cracker, or an ode of Horace.
Editor. Then why don’t you give us an essay for our periodical ?
Odoherty. To prove what? or nothing. When I last saw Cole-
ridge, he said he considered an essay, in a periodical publication, as
merely “a say” for the time—an ingenious string of sentences,
driving apparently, with great vehemence, towards some object, but
never meant to lead to anything, or to arrive at any conclusion, (for
in what conclusion are the public interested but the abuse of indivi-
duals). Fortunately, there is one subject for critical disquisition,
which can never be exhausted. º
Editor. What is this treasure ? - -
Odoherty. The question, whether is Pope a poet? e
Editor. True ! But confess, Odoherty, what have you been after?
Odoherty. The truth is, I have some thoughts of finishing my
tragedy of the Black Revenge. *
JEditor. Ye gods ! what a scheme !
Odoherty. The truth is, I must either do this, or go on with my
great quarto disquisition, on “The Decline and Fall of Genius” .
Jºditor. I would advise to let alone the drama. I do not think it
at present a good field for the exertion of genius,
Odoherty. For what reason, Honey?
- * IElements of Packing.—C N.
fºr OSE FICTION, - 151
Editor. I think the good novels, which are published, come in
place of new dramas. Besides, they are better fitted for the present
state of public taste. The public are merely capable of strong sensa-
tions, but of nothing which requires knowledge, taste, or judgment.
A certain ideal dignity of style, and regularity of arrangement, must
be required for a drama, before it can deserve the name of a compo-
sition. But what sense have the common herd of barbarians of com-
position, or order, or any thing else of that kind?
Odoherty. But there is also the more loose and popular drama,
which is only a novel without the narrative parts. -
Editor. Yes, the acting is the chief difference. But I think the
novel has the advantage in being without the acting, for its power
over the feelings is more undisturbed and entire, and the imagination
of the reader blends the whole into a harmony which is not found on
the stage. I think those who read novels need not go to the theatre,
for they are in general beforehand with the whole progress of the story.
Odoherty. This is true to a certain extent. But novels can never
carry away from the theatre those things which are peculiarly its
own; that is to say, the powers of expression in the acting, the elo-
quence of declamation, music, buffoonery, the splendor of painted
decorations, &c.
JEditor. You are perfectly right. Novels may carry away sympa-
thy, plot, invention, distress, catastrophe, and everything—(Wide Blair.)
Odoherty. Do you mean Dr. Blair, or Adam Blair 2 .
Jºditor. The latter. I say the novels may carry away all these
things, but the theatre must still be strong in its power of affecting
the senses. This is its peculiar dominion. Yet our populace do
not much seek after what strikes and pleases the senses; for the
elegances of sight and hearing require a sort of abstract taste which
they do not seem to have. Anything which is not an appeal through
sympathy to some of their vulgar personal feelings, appears to them
uninteresting and unmeaning.
Odoherty. They think it has no reference to meum and tuum.
Editor. It probably would not be easy to find a people more
lamentably deficient in all those liberal and general feelings which
partake of the quality of taste. - .
Odoherty. You sink me into despair. I think I must betake my
self to my old and favorite study of theological controversy, and
furnish a reply to Coplestone. I perceive that Lord Byron, in his
Mystery of Cain, tends very much to go off into the same disputes.
JEditor. A skeptically disputatious turn of mind, appears a good
deal here and there in his poetry. -
Odoherty. I suppose you think Sardanapalus the best Tragedy
he has written.” ... . -
* One scene in Sardanapalus is worth nearly all, (from its intensity of regretful tenderness,
152 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Editor. Yes. The Foscari is interesting to read, but rather
painful and disagreeable in the subject. Besides, the dialogue is too
much in the short and pointed manner of Alfieri. When a play, is
not meant to be acted, there is no necessity for its having that hu py
in the action and speeches, which excludes wandering strains of poet-
ical beauty, or reflection and thought, nor should it want the advan-
tages of rhyme. The Faustus of Goethe seems to be the best
specimen of the kind of plan fit for a poem of this kind not meant to
be acted. -
Odoherty. Pindarum quisquis.
Editor. Byron's Manfred is certainly but an Icarian flutter in com-
parison; his Sardanapalus is better composed, and more original.
Odoherty. How do you like Nimrod and Semiramis';
Editor. That dream is a very frightful one, and I admire the
conception of Nimrod.*
Odoherty. You know that I am not subject to nocturnal terrors,
even after the heaviest supper; but I acknowledge that the ancestors
of Sardanapalus almost made my hair stand on end; and I have
some intention of introducing the ghost of Fingal in my “Black
Revenge.” The superstitious vein has not lately been waked with
much success. I slight the conception of Norma in relation to fear.
The scorpion lash, which Mr. David Lindsay applied to the tyrant
Firaoun, is not at all formidable to the reader, but there is solemnity.
and sentiment in the conception of the people being called away one
by one from the festival, till he is left alone. That same piece of the
Deluge would be very good, if it were not sometimes like music,
which aims rather at loudness than harmony or expression. The
most elegant and well composed piece in Lindsay’s book is the
Destiny of Cain.
JEditor. How do you like the Nereid's love?
Odoherty. It is vastly pretty, but too profuse in images drawn
from mythology. However, there are many fables. of the ancients on
which poems might be successfully made even in modern times, and
according to modern feeling, if the meaning of the fables were deeply
enough studied. It does not necessarily follow that all mythological
poems should be written in imitation of the manner of the ancients,
and much less in the pretty style of Ovid, and those moderns who
have adopted the same taste. -
Odoherty. You do not think Mr. Lindsay’s Nereid French
Editor. By no means. It is free from any fault of that kind. In
“the late remorse of love,”) that modern playwrights have written. This is the hero's parting
with his “gentle, wronged Zarina.”—M. -
* The description of Nimrod is a picture:
“The features were a giant's, and the eye
Was still, yet lighted ; his long locks curl’d down
On his vast bust, whence a huge quiver rose,
With shaft-heads feather'd from the eagle’s wing,
That peep’d up bristling thro' his serpent hair.—M.
“THE IRISHMAN!” - : 153
some of Wordsworth's later poems, there appears something like a
reviving imagination for those fine old conceptions, which have been
and always will be. - -
An age hath been, when earth was proud,
* Of lustre too intense
To be sustain'd: and mortals bow’d
The front in self-defence.
Who, then, if Dian's crescent gleam d,
Ör Cupid's sparkling arrow stream'd,
While on the wing the urchin play'd,
Could fearlessly approach the shade #
Enough for one soft vernal day,
If I, a bard of ebbing time,
And nurtur'd in a fickle clime,
May haunt this horned bay;
Whose am’rous water multiplies
The flitting halcyon's vivid dyes,
And smooths its liquid breast to show
These swan-like specks of mountain snow,
White, as the pair that slid along the plains
Of heaven, while Venus held the reins. r
Odoherty. Beautifully recited; and now touch the bell again, for
we're getting prosy. . . .
Editor. Positively Ensign, we must rise.
Odoherty. Having now relinquished the army, I rise by sitting
still, and applying either to study, or will you ring 7
Editor. "Tis time to be going, I believe. I see the daylight peep-
ing down the chimney. But sing one good song more, Odoherty,
and so wind up the evening. º
Odoherty. (Sings.)
ARIA—-With boisterous eacpression.
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There was a la - dy lived at Leith, a la - dy ve - ry sty-lish, man, And
y y
yet, in spite of all her teeth, she ſell in love with an I - rish-man, A
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nas - ty, ug - ly I - rish-man, a wild, tre - men-dous I - rishman, A
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tear - ing, swearing, thumping, bumping, ramping, roaring I - rishman

154 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
2.
His face was no ways beautiful,
For with small-pox 'twas scarr'd across;
And the shoulders of the ugly dog
Were almost doubled a yard across.
O, the lump of an Irishman,
- The whisky-devouring Irishman—,
The great he-rogue, with his wonderful brogue, the fighting, rioting, Irishman.
3.
One of his eyes was bottle-green,
And the other eye was out, my dear;
And the calves of his wicked-looking legs
Where more than two feet about, my dear,
O, the great big Irishman,
The rattling, battling Irishman— .
The stamping, ramping, swaggering, staggering, leathering swash of an Irishman
4.
He took so much of Lundy-Foot,
That he used to snort and snuffle—O ;
And in shape and size, the fellow's neck,
Was as bad as the neck of a buffalo.
O, the horrible Irishman, -
The thundering, blundering Irishman—
The slashing, dashing, Smashing, lashing, thrashing, hashing Irishman.
5.
His name was a terrible name, indeed,
Being Timothy Thady Mulligan;
And whenever he emptied his tumbler of punch,
He’d not rest till he filled it full again.
The boozing, bruising Irishman,
The 'toxicated Irishman—
The whisky, frisky, rummy, gummy, brandy, no dandy Irishman.
6.
This was the lad the lady loved,
Like all the girls of quality;
And he broke the skulls of the men of Leith,
Just by the way of jollity.
O, the leathering Irishman,
The barbarous, Savage Irishman—
The hearts of the maids, and the gentlemen's heads, were bother'd,
I’m sure, by this Irishman.*
I think I hear the rattles, Christopher. By Saint Patrick, there's
a row in the street ! Come along, old one | Up with your crutch
- (Eveunt AMBO.)
* This song was written by Dr. Maginn.—M
NO. II.-APRIL, 1822.
SCENE.-The little wainscotted room behind—a good fire—a table
covered with books and papers, decanters and glasses. TIME–Nºne
o'clock in the evening :-a high wind, without.
Present—Mr. CHRISTOPHER NoFTH, and Mr. BüLLER of Brasennose
(seated in arm-chairs at the opposite sides of the fire-place.)
Mr. North. So—Mr. Buller, you’ve been reading Henry Macken-
zie's Life of John Home.* What say you to the book? I am sure
your chief objection is, that it is too short by half.
Mr. Buller. It is; for, to tell you the truth, I know very little
about the characters with whom Mr. Mackenzie seems to take it for
granted that every body is as familiar as himself. Do you remem.
ber John Home?
North. Perfectly. I remember going out to his farm-house, in
East Lothian, and spending two delightful days with him there, so
far back as the year seventy-seven. I was then a very stripling, but
I can recall a great deal of what he said quite distinctly. After he
came to live in Edinburgh, I was not much in Scotland; but I once
called upon him, and drank tea with him here, I think about 1807 or
1808—very shortly before his death. He was, indeed, a fine highly-
finished gentleman—and bright to the last.
Buller. What sort of looking man was he? .
North. A fine, thinking face—extremely handsome he had been in
his youth—a dark-gray eye, full of thought, and, at the same time,
full of fire—his hair highly curled and powdered—a rich robé-de-
chambre—pale green, if I recollect, like one John Kemble used to
Wear—a scarlet waistcoat—a very striking figure, I assure you.
Buller. He had been a clergyman in his early life -
North. Yes, and, you know, left the kirk in consequence of a
foolish outcry they were making about his Douglas. I remember
him sitting in their General Assembly, however, as an elder—and
Once dressed in scarlet; for he had a commission in a fencible regi-
līlent.

* In 1822, when his Life of John Home was published, Henry Mackenzie was seventy-fivo
years old. . But his reminiscences of the illustrious men whom he had long survived, were
: M. the last, and extremely graphic. When he died, in 1831, he was eighty-five years
010,-- e. -
156 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Buller. Dr. Adam Fergusson,” too, was in the church at first, I
think? ... '
North. He was—and he went out chaplain to the forty-second, in
the Seven Years' War. Colonel David Stewart tells a fine story of
his heroism at the battle of Fontenoy. He could not be kept back
from the front line. -
Buller. ‘Ispaug usy &XX& Moxºrng, like somebody in Homer. The
Scotch literati of that time seem to have been a noble set of fellows.
Good God! how you are fallen off! •
North. We may thank the Whigs for that—transeat cum ceteris.
Buller. I don’t exactly understand your meaning. Do you allude
to the Edinburgh Review? *
North. Certainly, Mr. Buller. They introduced a lower tone in
every thing. In the first place, few of them were gentlemen either
by birth or breeding—and some of the cleverest of them have always
preserved a sort of plebeian snappishness which is mighty disgusting,
What would David Hume, for example, have thought of such a set
of superficial chattering bodies?
Buller. David Hume appears in a very amiable light in this
volume. He was, after all, a most worthy man, though an infidel.
North. He was a man of the truest genius—the truest learning—
and the truest excellence. His nature was so mild that he could do
without restraints, the want of which would have ruined the charac-
ter of almost any other man. I love the memory of David Hume–
the first historian the modern world has produced—primus absque
secundo, to my mind His account of the different sects and parties
in the time of Charles I. is worth all the English prose that has been
written since. At least, 'tis well worth half of it.
Buller. Why are not his letters published? The few that have
been printed are exquisite, one or two very fine specimens in this
very volume—and what a beautiful thing is that notice of his last
journey to Bath by the poet—a few such pages are worth an Ency-
clopædia.
North. What a sensation was produced in England when that fine
constellation of Scotch genius first began to blaze out upon the world!
You thought us little better than Hottentots before. -
Buller. And yet Dr. Johnson always somehow or other kept th
first place himself. - •
North. He could not, or would not, make so good books as other
* The Historian. He was chaplain of the 42d Highlanders, in Flanders, until the peace of
Aix la Chapelle, and actually joined in the charge of his regiment at Fontenoy. Returning
to Edinburgh, he was chosen Professor of Natural Philosophy, but afterwards took the chair
of moral philosophy. His chief work is a “History of the Roman Republic.” He died in 1816,
aged ninety-two.—M.
f David Hume's interesting correspondence has since been collected and published, under
the editorship of J. Hill burton, of Fdinburgh. He stands at the head of the modern philoso:
phical skeptics, and his History of England is the most permanent proof of his ability and
research.es.—M. 4
•
JOHN HOME. 157
people, but God knows there was a pith about old Samuel which
nothing could stand up against. His influence was not so much that
of an author as of a thinker. He was the most powerful intellect in
the world of books. He was the Jackson of the literary ring—the
judge——the emperor—a giant—acknowledged to be a Saul amongst
the people. Even David Hume would have been like a woman in
his grasp ; but, odd enough, the two never met.
Buller. Your Magazine once had a good Essay on Johnson and
Warburton. - -
North. Yes; I wrote it myself. But, after all, Warburton was
not Johnson’s match.” He had more flame but less heat. Johnson’s
mind was a furnace—it reduced everything to its elements. We
have no truly great critical intellect since his time.
Buller. What would he have thought of our modern reviewers ?
North. Why, not one of the tribe would have dared to cry mew
had he been alive. The terror of him would have kept them as mum
as mice when there's a cat in the room. If he had detected such a
thing as Jeffrey astir, he would have cracked every bone in his body
with one worry. -
Buller, I can believe it all. Even Gifford would have been
annihilated. *
North. Like an ill-natured pug-dog flung into a lion's cage.
Buller. He did not like your old Scots literati.
North. He hated the name of Scotland, and would not condescend
to know what they were. Yet he must have admired such a play as
Douglas. The chief element of John Home's inspiration seems to
have been a sort of stately elevation of sentiment, which must have
struck some congenial chords in his own great mind.
Buller. What is your opinion of John Home as a poet
North. I think nobody can bestow too much praise on Douglas.
There has been no English tragedy worthy of the name since it
appeared. H. 'Tis a noble piece—beautifully and loftily written; but,
after all, the principal merit is in the charming old story itself.
Douglas is the only true forerunner of the Scotch imaginative litera-
ture of our own age. Home's other tragedies are all very indifferent
—most of them quite bad, Mr. Mackenzie should not have disturbed
their slumbers.
Buller. The natural partiality of friendship and affection—
North. Surely ; and it is most delightful to read his Memoir,
simply for its overflowing with that fine strain of sentiments. He is
like Ossian, “the last of all his race,” and talks of his peers as they
* Dr. Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, was more highly praised by Johnson, (in his Life of
Pope), than he really deserved. He knew a great deal, but knew few things so as to master
them. As an author he was diffuse, coarse, and dogmatical.—M.
* This is one of the instances where North’s judgment was clouded by his nationality. The
tragedy of Douglas by no means merits the high praise here given to it.—M. -
158 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
should be talked of. One may differ from his opinions here and
there, but there is a halo over the whole surface of his language.
'Tis to me a very pathetic work. - \
Buller. Mackenzie is himself a very great author. .
North. A discovery indeed, Mr. Buller | Henry Mackenzie, sir,
is one of the most original in thought, and splendid in fancy, and
chaste in expression, that can be found in the whole line of our
Worthies. He will live as long as our tongue, or longer.
Buller. Which of his works do you like best ? -
Worth. Julia de Roubigné and the story of La Roche. I thought.
that vein had been extinct, till Adam Blair came out. But Nature
in none of her domains can ever be exhausted.
Buller. But an author's invention may be exhausted, I suppose.
North. Not easily. You might as well talk of exhausting the
Nile as a true genius. People talk of wearing out a man's intel-
lectual power, as if it were a certain determinate sum of cash in a
strong box. 'Tis more like the income of a princely estate—which,
with good management, must always be improving, not falling off. A
great author's power of acquisition is in the same ratio with his power
of displaying. He who can write well might be able to see well—and
his eyes will feed his fancy as long as his fingers can hold the pen.
JBuller. At that rate we shall have three or four more new
Waverley romances every year 7 -
Morth. I hope so. There's old Goethe has written one of the best.
romances he ever did, within the last twelve months—a most splendid
continuation of his Wilhelm Meister—and Goethe was born, I think,
in the year 1742. I wish Mackenzie, who is a good ten years his
junior, would follow the example.*
Buller. Voltaire held on wonderfully to the last, too. . -
North. Ay, there was another true creature | Heavens ! what a
genius was Voltaire's So grave, so gay, so profound, so brilliant—
his mame is worth all the rest in the French literature.
Buller. Always excepting my dear Rabelais.
North. A glorious old fellow, to be sure | . Once get into his
stream, and try if you can land again! He is the only man whose
mirth exerts the sway of uncontrollable vehemence. His comic is as
strong as the tragic of Æschylus himself.
Buller. We are Pygmies'
North. More's the pity. Yet we have our demi-gods too. In
manners and in dignity we are behind the last age—but in genius,
properly so called, we are a thousand miles above it. They had
little or no poetry then. Such a play even as. Douglas would, if
published now-a-days, appear rather feeble. It would be better as a
* Instead of Mackenzie's being ten years younger than Goethe, he was ſoul years' older.
Mackenzie was born in 1745, Goethe in 1740.-M.
MODERN STATESMEN. 159
play certainly—but the poetry of Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth,
would be in men's minds, and they would not take that for poetry,
fine though it be. -
Buller. What would people say to one of Shakspeare's plays, were
it to be written now % - -
Worth. The Edinburgh Reviewers would say it was a Lakish
Rant. The Quarterly would tear it to bits, growling like a mastiff.
The fact is, that, our theatre is at an end, I fear. A new play, to be.
received triumphantly, would require to have all the fire and passion
of the old drama, and all the chasteness and Order of the new. I doubt
to reconcile these two will pass the power of any body now living.
Buller. Try yourself, man.
North. I never will—but if I did, I should make something
altogether unlike anything that has ever been done in our language.
Unless I could hit upon some new—really new—key, I should not
think the attempt worth making. Even our dramatic verse is quite
worn out. It would pall on one's ear were it written never so well.
Buller. Why? Sophocles wrote the same metre with AEschylus.
North. No more than Shakspeare wrote the same blank verse
with Milton—or Byron, in the Corsair, the same measure with the
Rape of the Lock. Counting the longs and shorts is not enough, Mr.
Bachelor of Arts.
Buller? You despise our English study of the classics. You think
it carried too far. I understand your meaning, Mr. North. .
North. I doubt that. I suspect that I myself have read as much
Greek in my day as most of your crack-men. In my younger days,
sir, the glory of our Buchanans and Barclays” was not forgotten in
Scotland. In this matter again, we have to thank the blue and
yellowf gentry for a good deal of our national deterioration.
Buller. They are not scholars.
North. They scholars witlings can’t be scholars, Buller. Know-
ledge is a great calmer of people's minds. Milton would have been
A compassionate critic.
Buller. Are you a compassionate one - - -
North. Sir, I am ever compassionate, when I see anything like.
nature and originality. I do not demand the strength of a Hercules
from every man. Let me have an humble love of, and a sincere
aspiration after what is great, and I am satisfied. I am intolerant to
nobody but Quacks and Cockneys. :
; : There are five Barclays, whose names are recorded:—Alexander Barclay, translator of the
“Navis Stultifera,” or Ship of Fools, died 1532 ; Robert Barclay, author of “Am Apology for
the Quakers,” died 1690; William Barclay, Professor of Law at Angers, in France, and a great
civilian, died 1605; John Barclay, his son, author of “Euphoronium,” a Latin Satire, and
“Aryemis,” a romance, died 1621 ; and John Barclay, of Cruden, who wrote a rare and curious
work in verse, now very scarce, called “A Description of the Roman Catholic Church,--M. . .
i “The blue and yellow” was the Edinburgh Review, published with a cover of blue and
yellow paper.—M. -
160 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Buller. Whom you crucify, like a very Czar of Muscovy
North. No, sir, I only hang them up to air, like so many pieces
of old theatrical finery on the poles of Monmouth-street.
Buller. But to return to John Horne and Henry Mackenzie—I
confess, I think the History of the Rebellion in 1745 is a far better
work than it is generally held to be.
North. Why any account of that brilliant episode in our history
must needs be full of interest, and Hume being concerned so far
himself, has preserved a number of picturesque enough anecdotes;
but on the whole, the book wants vigor, and it is full of quizzibles;
what can be more absurd than his giving us more pages about the
escape of two or three Whig students of Divinity from the Castle of
Doune than he spends upon all the wild wandering of the unfortunate
Chevalier 2
Buller. The young Pretender. - -
North. The Chevalier—the Prince, sir. My father would have
knocked any man down that said the Pretender in his presence.
Buller. Ask your pardon, Christopher. I did not know you were
Jacobite.
North. Had I lived in those days I should certainly have been
one. Look at Horace Walpole's Memoirs, if you wish to see what
a paltry set of fellows steered the vessel of the State in the early
Hanover reigns. It is refreshing to turn from your Bedfords, and
Newcastles, and Cavendishes, to the Statesmen of our own times.
Buller. Wait for fifty years till some such legacy of spleen be
opened by the heirs of some disappointed statesman now living.
North. There is something in that, sir; but yet not much. Sir,
nobody will ever be able to bring any disgraceful accusations against
the personal honor and probity of the leading Tory statesmen who
now rule in England. They are all men of worth and principle.
They have their faults, I believe, but no shameful ones.
Buller. Whom do you place highest? -
. North. Lord Londonderry without question. He wants some of
the lesser ornaments which set off a public man—ſ mean in his style
of speaking”—but sense, sir, and knowledge, and thorough skill in
affairs, are worth all the rest a million times over; and he has some-
thing besides all these, that distinguishes him from every body with
whom he can at present be compared—a true active dignity and pith
of mind—the chief element of a ruling character, and worth all the
eloquence even of a Burke.
Buller. His fine person is an advantage to him.
* He was so deficient as a speaker, confused in ideas, and unable to put them, properly, into
sentences, that Byron said he was an orator framed in the fashion of Mrs. Malaprop. In action
he was bold and decisive, in manners gentle and courtly. He committed suicide in August,
1822, while George IV. was in Scotland.—M.
JOSEPEI HUME. - 161
North. The grace of the Seymours would be an advantage to
any man. But just look at the two sets of people the next time you
are in the House of Commons, and observe what a raffish-looking
crew the modern Whigs are. I’m sure their benches must have a
great loss in the absence of George Tierney’s bluff face and buff
waistcoat.*
Buller. What manner of man is Joseph Hume 3 -
North. Did you never see him 2 He is a shrewd-looking fellow
enough : but most decidedly vulgar. Nobody that sees him could
ever for a moment suspect him of being a gentleman born. He has
the air of a Montrose dandy, at this moment, and there is an intoler-
able affectation about the creature. I suppose he must have sunk
quite into the dirt since Croker curried him. A.
Buller. I don’t believe anything can make an impression on him.
A gentleman's whip would not be felt through the beaver of a coal-
heaver. Depend on’t, Joseph will go on just as he has been doing.
North. Why, a small matter will make a man who has once
ratted, rat again. We all remember what Joe Hume was a few
years ago.
Buller. A Tory? -
*North. I would not prostitute the name so far; but he always
voted with them. As a clever poet of last year said— *
“I grant you he never behaved, anno 12, ill—
He always used then to chime in with Lord Melville.
There were words, I remember, he used to pronounce ill;
But he always supported the Orders in Council.
At the Whigs it was then his chief pleasure to rail—
He opposed all the Catholic claims, tooth and nail;
Nay, he carried his zeal to so great an excess,
That he voted against Stewart Wortley's address;
And while others were anxious for bringing in Canning—
His principal point seemed to be to keep Van in."
Buller. What a memory you have Joseph has not so good a
one, I’ll swear, or he would not look the Tories in the face after such
a ratting !
North. Why, no wonder then he hates the Tories. They never
* Tierney, who had been a sort of Parliamentary leader of the Whigs, was not in Parliament
in 1822. In 1827, Canning made him Master of the Mint, which he resigned, early in 1828,
(w non Lord Godericn retired from the Premiership), and died in 1830. In the bluff face, and buff
. and I might add the bluff manner in which he spoke, an imitation of Fox was
palpable.—M.
#. was he. Hume's mother kept a small stand, on market-days, in Montrose, and Fox
Maule (afterwards Lord Panmure), was seized with a whim of apprenticing him to a druggist,
which led to his becoming a surgeon in the East lm dies, where he made a fortune.—M.
f Hume, originally entered Parliament, from January to November, 1812, as a Tory member,
for the Borough Weymouth. In 1818, when he returned to the House of Commons, it was ag
tl Radical member for Montrose.—M.
| See letter to a Friend in the Country. London, Triphook. 1821.-C. N. Tº Van” meant
Mr. Vansit tart. Chancellor of the Exchequer, afterwards Lord Bexley.]—M.
WOL. I —13
162 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
thought of him while he was with them—and now the Whigs do talk
of Joe as if he were somebody. But as John Bull says—
“A very small man with the Tories | -
Is a very great man 'mong the Whigs”
Buller. If you were to rat, North, what a rumpus they would
make about you! Why, they would lift you on their shoulders, and
huzza till you were tired. -
North. That would not be long. Away with stinking breath, say I.
Buller. At first they pretended to say you were dull. But that
was soon over. Jeffrey persuaded them that would never pass, I alſ,
told. -
North. I can believe it. Jeffrey is a king among the blind. '
Buller. I suppose he hates you cordially, however.
North. No doubt, in a small toothy way: just as a rat hates a
terrier. But what makes you always speak about him I’m sure
you don’t mind such folks.
Buller. Not much; but, next to abusing one's friends, what, after
all, is so pleasant as abusing one's enemies?
North. Try praising them, my friend: You'll find that embitters
them far more fiercely. There's an air of superiority about com-
mendation which makes a man wince to his backbone. The Whigs
can’t endure to be lauded. -
Buller. That's the reason you always lash them, I presume.
North. Me lash them | I would as soon get on horseback to spear
a tailor. I just tickle their noses with the tip of my thong. Put me
into a passion, and I’ll show you what lashing is.
Buller. I have no curiosity, Christopher. I’ll take it all upon
trust. When you cock your wig awry, you look as if you could eat
a Turk. -
North. I would rather eat any thing than a Whig. When you
cut them up, 'tis all stuffing, and skin and gall. -
J3.uller. They cry each other up at a fine rate.
North. Why, I believe there is but one animal who may, in a
certain sense, commit all crimes with impunity, and its name is
WHIG. To have been detected in the basest embezzlement of money
would not hinder one of them from being talked of as the light of the
age. I suppose the next thing will be to have some habit and repute
thief or housebreaker proposing a reformation of the criminal code.
A Whig is never cut by the Whigs. Fox and Tom Erskine stuck
by Arthur O’Connor to the last, and swore that they believed him to
have the same political principles as themselves.* I suppose, in
spite of his behavior to Mackerrel, Brougham could get a certificate 1
Bven Bennet is something with them still !
* O’Connor was tried for high treason.—M.
MITCHELL's ARISTOPHANES. I63
Buller. Not much. 'Tis a fine thing to be Whig, however. How
* #. Chaldee would have been praised had it been written against the
Tories
North. Why the English Tories would have laughed at it, and
the Scotch Tories would have joined trembling with their mirth—and
Jamie Hogg would have been dinnered to his death, poor fellow.
Buller. I have a sort of lurking hereditary respect for the name
of Whig, I can’t bear its having come to designate such people.
Worth. What stuff is this? You might as well wax wroth because
a cicerone is not the same thing with a Cicero, nor a bravo the same
thing with a brave man.
Buller. Why is it that the Whigs attack you so much more bit-
terly than they do Gifford?
North. Why, Mr. Buller, the crow always darts first at THE EYE.
Buller. Their attacks on you are as zealous as their laudations of
themselves. -
North. And as ineffectual.
“Talk and spare not for speech, and at last you will reach,
And the proverb hold good, I opine, sirs,
In spite of ablution, scent and perfume, pollution
Show'd still that the sow was a swine, sirs.”
Buller. What is that you are quoting now %
North. Aristophanes—Mitchell, I mean.* I think the verses are
in his version of The Wasps,
JBuller. I have not seen his new volume yet. Is it as good as the
first --
North. I don’t know. The dissertations on the first volume were
the most popular things in it, and there are no dissertations in this;
but, 'tis full of capital notes, and the translation is quite in the same
spirited style. Nothing can be more true, I imagine. I am quite
sure nothing can be more spirited or more graceful.
Buller. That's high praise from a Cynic like you, Mr. Christopher.
I suppose ’tis the first thing of the sort in our language, however.
North. Oh most certainly it is so. None of the ancient drama-
tists have ever had anything like justice done them before. There is
so much poetry in some of the passages in this last volume, that I
can’t but wish Mitchell would take some of the tragedians in hand
next. What a name might he not make if he could master Æschylus
as well as he has done Aristophanes? Or perhaps some of Euripides’
plays would fall more easily into his management. I wish he would
try the Bacchae or the Cyclops. .
# Thomas Mitchell's chief title to fame rests upon his admirable translation into English
verse, of the Plays of Aristophanes. He was a good philologist; wrote several . in the

Quarterly Review, on subjects connected with Greek manners and literature ; and edited a few
of the classical works printed at the Clarendon press, Oxford. He died in 1845. aged sixty-two. .
-M, -
2.
164 - NOCTES AMBROSTANAE.
Buller. Spout a little piece more of him, if you can,
North. I will give you part of a passage that I consider nobody
has so good a right to quote as myself; for I am the true represent-
ative of the Vetus Comcedia— - -
“When the swell of private rage foam’d indignant, that The Stage
Dared upbraid lawless love and affection,
And will'd our poet's speech, (guilty pleasures not to reach) .
Should assume a more lowly direction:—
Did he heed the loud reproof? No-he wisely kept aloof,
And spurn'd at corruption's base duress;
For never could he choose, to behold his dearest Muse,
In the dress of a wanton procuress.”
Buller. Why, this certainly looks as if it had been written since
Rimini and Juan.
North. Listen, Iman—
“When first the scenic trade of instruction he essay’d,
Monsters, not men, were his game, sirs;
Strange Leviathans, that ask'd strength and mettle, and had task'd
Alcides, their fury to tame, sirs’ -
Buller. The Shepherd of Chaldea may hold up his head now, I think.
North. Hush— - &
“In peril and alarms was his 'prenticeship of arms,
With a shARK fight and battle essaying,
* From whose eyes stream'd baleful light, like the blazing balls of sight
Which in CyNNA’s (Query, Jeffrey's É) fierce face are seen playing.
Swathed and banded round his head, five-score sycophants were fed—
Ever slav'riug, and licking, and glueing, (young Whigs to be sure)
While his voice scream'd loud and hoarse, like the torrent's angry course,
When death and destruction are brewing. -
Rude the portent, fierce and fell, did its sight the poet quell,
Was he seen to a truce basely stooping?
No; his blows still fell unsparing that and next year, when came warring
With foes of a different trooping.”
Builer. No! nobody can say that of you, Christopher.
North. There's another passage—a semi-chorus of Wasps, which I
must give you. It seems as if I heard a certain “CLEVER old Body”
singing in the midst of all his disjecta membra.
“O the days that are gone by, O the days so blithe and bland,
When my foot was strong in dance, and the spear was in my hand,
Then my limbs and years were green, I could toil and yet to spare,
And the foeman, to his cost, knew what strength and mettle are.
O the days that are gone by, &c.
JEnter MR. AMBRosł.
Mr. Ambrose. Mr. Tickler | [Enter MR. TickLER.
Tickler. Ha! Buller, my dear boy—may you live a thousand
years. - - -
WORDSWORTH AND DRYDENſ, :1.65
Buller. Allow me to congratulate you on your marriage. I trust
Mrs. Tickler is tolerably well—not complaining very much?
Tickler. No bantering, you dog—I might marry without losing
any good fellowship, which is more than you can say, Mr. Brazen-
nose. Why the devil don't you all marry at Oxford'ſ What could
be more interesting than to see Christ Church Walk swarming with
the wives, children, and nurses of senior fellows 7 --
Buller. Sparé us, Tickler, spare us. What are you about 2 Not
a single article of yours has gladdened England for a twelvemonth.
Tickler. I am engaged on the Pope Controversy.* My work will
embrace three quarto volumes. I begin with pointing out the differ
ence between nature and art, which has been often written about, but
never understood. Do you know the difference?
JBuller. No |—confound me if I do. .
Tickler. Take an illustration. Mr. Bowles walking to church in a
suit of black—with a gown, bands, and shovel hat—is an artificial
object, though he may not think so; and therefore, according to his
own principles, an unfit theme for the highest species of poetical
composition. So is Mr. Bowles in his night-shirt and night-cap—but
Mr. Bowles going in to bathe in puris naturalibus, is artificial no more
—he is a natural—and, as such, a fit subject for the loftiest song.
North. Very well, Tickler—but I love and respect Bowles.
Tickler. Very well, North—but I love and respect Pope. And
of all the abject and despicable drivelling, ever drivelled by clerk or
layman, is all that late drivelling about the etermal principles of
poetry, and the genius of the Bard of Twickenham. Why, there is
more passion in that one single line of Eloisa to Abelard, “Give all
thou can'st, and let me dream the rest,” than in all the verses Mr.
Bowles ever wrote in his life, or Mr. Campbell either.
Buller. Wordsworth says Dryden's Ode is low, and vulgar, and .
stupid. - ar
Tickler. Wordsworth is an ass—that is, as great an ass as Dryden.
Pray, is his poem of Alice Fell worth a bad farthing? Only think
of the author of the Lyrical Ballads sitting by himself in a post-chaise,
driving like the very devil into Durham. No poet ought to have
made such a confession. Besides, it is well-known that it was a
Teturn-chaise, and I question if the post-boy “who drove in fierce
career,” (such are the Bard's absurd words) gave his master the coin.
I shrewdly suspect he fobbed it. - *
North. Stop, Tickler—you are becoming personal. I discounte-
nance all personalities, either here or elsewhere.
Tickler. I beg your and Mr. Wordsworth's pardon. I mean no
* The Pope Controversy, (as it was called) was carried on by Bowles, Campbell, Byron, Dr.
Gilchrist, Roscoe, and three or four minor writers. The dispute ramified into a variety of sub-
jects, but the main question was—Was Pope a Poet 2—M. -
166 NOOTES AMBROSIAN AF.
disrespect to that gentleman—but as long as my name is Tickler, he
shall not abuse Dryden without getting abused himself. -
North. Why, Tickler—many of the poets of our days are, with all
their genius, a set of enormous Spoons. Wordsworth walks about
the woods like a great satyr, or rather like the god Pan ; and piping
away upon his reed, sometimes most infernally out of tune, he thinks
he is listening, at the very least, to music equal to that of the spheres,
and that nobody can blow a note but himself. -
Buller. Ay, ay, Mr. North—there is Satan reproving sin, as you
presbyters are wont to say. Believe me, you have never yet done
Southey justice in your work. He is a splendid genius. His mind
has a high tone. Southey, sir, is one of the giants.
Tickler. Why, the Whigs, and Radicals, and Reformers, abuse Mr.
Southey, I observe, because, when an enthusiastic youth, soon after
the French Revolution, he spoke and wrote a quantity of clever
nonsense; and twenty years afterwards, when a wise man, he spoke
and wrote a far greater quantity of saving knowledge.
Buller. Just so : you could not-state the fact better, were you to
talk an hour. - -
Tickler. Pray, North, are you for pulling down Lord Nelson's
Monument 7 -
North. It is no great shakes of an erection; but I would let it
stand.
Tickler. If Lord Nelson's Monument is to be pulled down,” because
a better one might be built up, then I have a small proposal to make,
namely that the whole New Town of Edinburgh shall be pulled
down. Does there exist in Europe—in the world—a more absurd,
stupid, and unmeaning street than George's-street 2 Why, this very
tavern of Mr. Ambrose, admirable as it is beyond all earthly
taverns, ought on the same principle to be pulled down. But may l
never live see that time ! [Much affected.
Builer. You will pardon me, my beloved and honored friends, but
do you not think that the “Modern Athens,” as applied to the good
town of Edinburgh, is pure humbug? -
[TICKLER and North rising from their chairs at once.
Both. Humbug aye, humbug, indeed, Buller
Buller. I wish to hear Mr. Tickler. He is the elder.
Tickler. No, sir, I am no Elder. I never stood at the plate; but
young as I am, I am old enough to recollect the day when such an
* On the rocky apex of the Calton Hill, in Edinburgh, (an elevation of 350 feet above the level
of the sea), stands a momument to Lord Nelsom, in the form of a tall shaft springing from an
octagonal base. As a work of art, nothing can be meaner. But the panoramic view from its
summit is magnificent, embracing views on land and water, with the city lying far beneath,
but full in sight. The lodge in the base of the Monument is rented to a vendor of muts, cakes
“sweeties,” (as comfits are called in Scotland), and an effervescing fluid apparently composed
of bottled soap-suds, sweetened with molasses, and dignified with the name of ginger beer.—M.
t This was Ambrose's old hostelrie, back of Princes’-street.—M. -
THE NEW PARTHENON. 167
impertinence would not have been tolerated in Auld Reekie. In
the days of Smith, and Hume, and Robertson, we were satisfied with
our national name, and so were we during a later dynasty of genius,
of which old Mackenzie still survives; but now-a-days, when with
the exception of Scott, yourself North, and myself, and a few others,
there is not a single man of power or genius in Edinburgh, the prigs
call themselves Athenians / Why, you may just as appropriately
call the first Parallelogram, that shall be erected on Mr. Owen's
plan, the Modern Athens, as the New Town of Edinburgh. -
Buller. Excellent, excellent, go on.
Tickler. Where are our sculptors, painters, musicians, orators, poets,
and philosophers ?—But give me my tumbler of gin-twist, for I am
sick.—(Drinks and recovers.)—The minnies have not even the sense
to know that our Calton Hill is no more like the Acropolis than
Lord Buchan” is like Pericles, or Jeffrey like Demosthenes. It is
the Castle Rock that is like the Acropolis, or may be said to be so;
and if the Parthenon is to be built at all, it must be built on the
Castle Rock. This is the first egregious blunder of our Modern
Athenians. &
Buller. Take another tift—now for blunder second.
Tickler. It is all one great, big, blown, blustering blunder together.
We are Scotsmen, not Greeks. We want no Parthenon—we are
entitled to mone. There are not ten persons in Edinburgh—not one
Whig I am sure, who could read three lines of Homer “ad aper
turam libri.” There are pretty Athenians for you! Think of shoals
of Scotch artisans, with long lank greasy hair, and corduroy breeches,
walking in the Parthenon
Buller. Spare me, spare me—not a word more.
Tickler. Nay, we are to have the Kirk of Scotland in the naked
simplicity of her worship, put under the tutelary power of the
Virgin Goddess. Will the Scottish nation submit to this?
North. How fares the subscription for this Parthenon 7
Tickler. One parish has subscribed, I understand, about nine gui-
meas—Aberdour, I think. One old farmer there, has come forward
with a sixpence for the Grand National Monument; but perhaps he
has not yet advanced the sum : it is only on paper.
North. It seems to me, that if the people of Scotland really desire
a National Monument, they will build one. They are not building
one—ergo, they do not desire one.
* The Earl of Bucham, who aſſected to be the patron of Art and Letters in Edinburgh, was a
silly nobleman, whose two brothers were eminently gifted. One, Thomas Erskine, went to the s.
English Bar and rose to the Chancellorship, with a peerage. The other, Henry lºrskine, was a
member of the Scottish Bar, eminently shrewd, witty, and learned.—M.
t The National Monument, which was an unfortunate attempt to imitate the Parthenon of
Athens, was erected between 1824 and 1830, ºn one of the summits of the Calton Hill. It never
}; and never will be completed, and its thirteen columns simply record the expeniture of
220,000.--Al.
168 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Tickler. Michael Linning goes incessantly about poking the public
on the posteriors, and pointing to a subscription paper, but the public
won’t stir. Such conduct is very teasing in Michael Linning, and
should not be permitted. --
Buller. Well, let Michael Linning go to the devil.—But I wish to
know what all the young Whigs are about. I see none of them
.*
.*
Tickler. Look into a ditch in dry droughty weather, and you will
behold a sad mortality annong the tadpoles. The poor Powheads,
(see Dr. Jamieson) are all baked up together in a mud-pie, and not
a wriggle is in the ditch. -
North. Why, Buller, in other times these tadpoles shot out legs
and arms, and became small bouncing frogs. Their activity was
surprising, and their croak loud. But the race is nearly extinct, and
in a few years must be entirely so ; for the old frogs don’t spawn
now—very seldom at least ; and when they do, the spawn is either
not prolific, or immediately destroyed. Now and then a young
Whig or two comes forth, nobody can conjecture whence; but we
either take him and throw him aside, or he leaps off himself into
some crevice or cranny, and is no more seen. .
Buller. I cannot agree with you, Tickler, in thinking Jeffrey a poor
creature.
Tickler. I don’t think him a poor creature—I never said so. But
I think he is a small-minded man. His ambition is low. He talks
about it—and about it—and about it. He is contented to be a critic
—that is, a palaverer. His politics are enough to damn him for ever,
as mo, Scotchman. But he is not worth talking about. He is just
like a small black-faced mountain sheep, who, spying a gap in a fence,
bolts through it with his hinder clooties jerked up pertly and yet
timidly in the air, and is immediately followed by all the wethers
and ewes, who ask no questions at their Leader, but wheel round
about upon you with spiral horns, and large gray glowering eyes, as
much as to say, “What think you o' that ?” We think merely, that
they are a set of silly sheep, whose wool is not worth the clipping,
but that do very well when cut up.
Buller. I observed tºother day an article in the Edinburgh Review,
in which Oriel College is described as a sink, into which ran every
thing vile and loathsome, and Coplestone sneered at as a pompous
ninny. In the next number, Oriel College was said to be the most
distinguished in Europe, I believe, and Coplestone one of the most
illustrious writers of the age. Must not Jeffrey, if a gentleman and
a scholar, or a gentleman and no scholar, which I believe is the case,
feel ashamed of such childish and beggarly contradiction as this?
What right has he to make a fool of himself to that extent? Is not
Jeffrey an Oxonian 7 - -
North. Upwards of thirty years ago, he remained for a few weeks
THE NEW MONTHLY. - 169
in a small garret in Queen's—does that make him an Oxonian'?—
But enough of this little personage. Tickler, start a new subject.
Tickler. I hate novelties. Is the prosecution mania about to sub-
side, think you ? Now-a-days, every word is said to be actionable.
You cannot open your mouth, or put pen to paper, without feeing a
libel-lawyer. An Edinburgh Whig, and really some of the London
ones seem no better, is an animal without a skin. True, he is often
covered with long shaggy hair, and he roars like an absolute lion;
but the instant you give him a kick, or stir him up with a long pole,
he begins to yell out in the most piteous strain, and you tremble lest
you have killed him. You then perceive that under this formidable-
looking hair, the creature's body is quite raw, and that a prick with
the point of the pen gives him intolerable anguish. Nay, if you but .
turn the round nose of a quill towards him, he bellows; and more
than once have I put him to flight with my keelie-vine.*
JBuller. What is the Prosecution-mania 2
Tickler. The Whigs here have, as you know, been laughing at
every body for twenty years—indulging in every species of stupid
personalities and slanders—may, they are doing so still hourly—in
all the envenomed bitterness of impotent and mauled malice—and
yet they have entered into a cowardly compact to prosecule every
syllable that shall ever be written against any one of their degraded
and slanderous selves. Is not this base and cravenlike º These are
the Slaves of Freedom—the dolts of wit—these are our modern
Athenians. -
North. I am a prejudiced person—what think you of the London
periodicals lately, Tickler ? -
Tickler. Campbell's Magazine is a respectable work, on the whole.
It is seldom very personal, although sometimes. That, in my opinion,
is a great point, whether gained or lost, it is hard to decide. It is
often unaccountably dull. It cannot be read after dinner, at the
fireside, with your feet on the fender, and your back on an easy
chair, without immediate sleep. But that is a severe test to try any
periodical by. It has no plan, aim, object, or drift. You are swim-
ming in fresh water; there is no buoyancy, one number is precisely
like another—sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less dull—
that is all, and it is a distinction without a difference.
Buller. What think you of its politics? &
Tickler. Very badly. Its politics consist in concealed, suppressed,
discontented, yawmering (see the Dr.) whiggism. There is nothing
manly in them—be a Tory—be a Whig–but don’t go mumbling
your political opinions, and stuttering out sentiments of liberty, and
Whispering reform below your breath. If you have got any thing to
say, out with it; if not, shut your mouth, or open it and go to bed.
* Koelic-vine;—a pen, a pencil of black or red lead,—M
170 NOCTES AMIBIROSIANAE.
Buller. I intend to take Campbell's Magazine, for I wish to know
his opinion of his contemporaries. .
Tickler. Do you? Put him on the rack then, or threaten to 'break
his bones on the wheel; for without some prompt and vigorous mea-
sure of that sort, he will utter nothing satisfactory. He gets Cock-
meys to criticise his contemporaries.
North. Who are the poor creatures? -
Tickler. What you pretend you don’t know. But let them rest.
It is a sad sight to see a true poet and gentleman like Tom Campbell
with such paltry associates, to hear the Attic bee murmuring among
a set of blue-bottle-flies, moths, and midges. Wasps are better than
great fat stingless bummers . . . But notwithstanding, Campbell's
Magazine is a very respectable one, and I will not suffer you, North,
out of pure jealousy, to run it down. You ought rather to give it a
lift—if it does not deserve, it at least requires one.
North. Tickler, if you saw Tom Campbell falling out of a window
four stories high would you try, at the risk of your bones, to break
his fall ? Would it make any difference whether he had flung himself
over, or Mr. Colburn had insidiously opened the sash and enticed
him over ? Not a whit. You would stand out of the way. There
can be no successful interference with the great laws of nature, espe-
cially gravitation.
Buller. Taylor and Hessey’s Magazine—is it better?
Tickler. Sometimes much better, and often much worse. Elia
in his happiest moods delights ine; he is a fine soul; but when he is
dull, his dulness sets human stupidity at defiance. He is like a well-
bred, ill-trained pointer. He has a fine nose, but he won’t or can’t
range. He keeps always close to your foot, and then he points larks
and titmice. You see him snuffing and smoking and brandishing his
tail with the most impassioned enthusiasm, and then drawn round
into a semicircle he stands beautifully—dead set. You expect a
burst of partridges, or a towering cock-pheasant, when lo, and behold,
away flits a lark, or you discover a mouse's nest, or there is abso-
lutely nothing at all. Perhaps a shrew has been there the day before.
Yet if Elia were mine, I would not part with him, for all his faults.”
Buller. Who, in the name of St. Luke's, Bedlam, and the Retreat
at York, is the English Opium-Eater He ought to go to Smyrna.
Tickler. The English Opium-Eater would be an invaluable con-
tributor to any periodical, especially if it were published once in the
four years.f He threatened to make the London Magazine the
* In later years, Lamb did write for Blackwood.—M.
f De Quincey, speaking of the London Magazine, says, “ Meantime, the following writers
were, in 1821-33, among my own Collaboratewrs;–Charles Lamb; Hazlitt: Allan Cunning-
ham ; Hood ; Hamilton Reynolds; Cary, the unrivalled translator of Dante ; Crowe, the Public
Orator of Oxford. . And so well were all departments provided for, that even the monthly ab-
$1: … t of politics, brief as it necessarily was, had been confided to the care of Phillips, the cele-
liated Irish barrister,”-There were 9thers, among whom were John Clare, the peasant poet
THE MAGAZINES. " . 171
receptacle of all the philosophy and literature of Germany. “Os
magna sonaturum !” “Vox et nihil praeterea.” . . . .
Worth. When he writes again in the London Magazine, it will be
well worth half-a-crown. By the way, Tickler, what do you think
“of the Continuation of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets in that
periodical? . -
Tickler. Mere quackery.* Why, the compiler manufactures a life
of this and that poet from materials in every body’s hands, and then
boldly calls it “A Continuation of Dr. Johnson's Lives,” &c. There
seems no attempt to imitate his style at all. According to this
motion, every thing that comes after another is a continuation of it.
Is this quackery, or is it not, North ? -
Morth. I see no harm in a little quackery; all we editors are
quacks. I acknowledge myself to be a quack.
Tickler. Ay, here carousing over Ambrosia and Nectar. But
would you, publicly 7
North. Yes; on the top of St. Paul's—or in my own Magazine,
that is, before the whole universe.-Buller, what are you about 7
Butler. Mr. North, have you seen a new periodical called the
Album ? • . .
North. I have; it promises well.f The editor is manifestly a
gentleman. The work is on beautiful paper, admirably printed, and
the articles are well written, elegant and judicious. I think that in
all probability the next number will be better. The editor has not
attempted to make a splash-dash-flash all at once; but he has stuff in
him, I know that, and so have some of his coadjutors. I know him
and them extremely well; I pat them on the back, bid them be good
boys, and always speak truth, and they will have nothing to fear.
Tickler. Nothing amuses me more than to see Magazines—which,
after all, are not living beings, but just so many stitched sheets of
letter-press, going to loggerheads and becoming personal. Up jumps
Ebony’s Magazine, and plants a left-handed lounge on the bread-
basket of Taylor and Hessey's. ' That periodical strips instanter, a
ring is formed, and the numbers are piping hot as mutton-pies, Can
*
of Northamptomshire; Talfourd, then the undistinguished, but future author of “Jon ;” Wain-
wright, whose nom de plumne was “Janus Weathercock,” whose crimes subsequently supplied
real tragic incidents, on which Bulwer founded his domestic romance—full of tragic interest—
called “ Lucretia ; or the Children of Night !” I think, too, that Haydon sometimes wrote for
The JLondon, which gave clehings from his pictures of Christ's Agony in the Garden, and the
Entry into Jerusalern. With such an array of contributors, the London Magazine should
have flourished. In the words of ſhe Irish Keeners, when they apostrophize the departed whose
remains lie cold before thern, we might ask, “Ah, why did you die ""--M.
* 'I'o continue Johnson's lives of the Poets might have been “mere quackery,” in North's
opinion, but the Continuator was the Rev. Henry I'rancis Cary, the Translator of Dante, of
the Odes of Pindar, and of the “Birds of Aristophanes.”—l n the last London edition of Johu-
son's Lives of the 1'oets, beautifully illustrated, the continuation by Cary has been incorpo-
rated, and #. additional value to a work, which, with many ſaults (for Johnson had numerous
literary and personal prejudices), is one of the most remarkable books in the English º:
not having been cominenced until the author was seventy years old !—Cary died in 1844.—M.
# It was edited by Charles Knight (assisted, I believe, by Charles ()llier, author of “Inesells”)
and was short-lived.—M. * * • &
172 NOCTES AMBROSIANZE.
any thing be more ridiculous? Colburn's Magazine, on the other,
hand, is a Corinthian, and won't show fight. All I mean is; that:
Magazines ought not to quarrel; there are snuff dealers and pāstry.
cooks enow for us all; and a sale will be found for us all at last.
North. Who the devil is more pugnacious than yourself. Tickler?
Why, you lay about you like a bull in a chima shop.
Tickler. Not at all. I have serious intentions of turning Quaker.
If not—certainly a clergyman. Quakers and parsons may be as per-
sonal as they choose. The same man might then either give or take
the lie direct, who would, as a layman, have boggled at the retort.
COurteollS. -
North. What is the world saying now about me, do you think, my
Tickler 3 -
Tickler. They flatter you so in all directions, that you must become
a spoiled child. A few weeks ago I met an elderly young woman in
a coach going to Glasgow, who could not speak of you without tears.
She said you were the most pathetic man she had ever read. The
coach was crowded—there were seven of us inside, for we had kindly.
taken in a grazier during a hail-storm near Westcraigs, and there was
not a single dissentient voice. - -
North. Did the grazier entertain the same sentiments as the lady ?
Tickler. He said, with a smile that would have graced a slaughter-
house, that it was not the first Stot you had knocked down. The
lady seemed to understand the allusion, and blushed.
North. Did you proceed to Glasgow %
Tickler. Yes; I had been elected an honorary member of the
“Oriental Club of the West.” I went to take my seat. They are
a set of most admirable despots. We all sat cross-legged like Turks
or tailors, as if Glasgow had been Constantinople. I will give you a
description of Us for your next Number. -
North. Do so. But then the London people will say it is local.
And why not? London itself is the most provincial spot alive. I.et
our Magazine be read in the interior of Africa, along with either, or
both of the two Monthlies, and which will seem most of a cosmopo-
lite to the impartial black population? Ebony. The London people,
with their theatres, operas, Cockneys, &c., &c., are wholly unintel.
ligible out of their own small town. The truth must be told them—
London is a very small insignificant place.” Our ambition is, that
our wit shall be local all over the world. e
Tickler. It is so. It is naturalized in all the kingdoms of the
earth. What can John Bull mean by saying he does not understand
many of your allusions? He is mistaken. John Bull understands
every thing worth understanding—and therefore, his knowledge of
|Ebony is complete. But even if he did not, is it not pleasant some.
* Yes'—particularly in 1854, with a population of 2,500,000.-M.
JOHN BULL AND EBONY. 173
times to see things under a tender, obscure, and hazy light? John
Bull's notices to correspondents I do not always thoroughly under.
stand; but I read them with delight: and I never lay down a No. of
his paper without repeating that wise saw of Hamlet, “There are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy.”
North. It is not at all like John Bull to accuse us of laughing
occasionally at the Quarterly Review, “because there has been a quar-
rel between Blackwood and Murray.” What do we care about
Blackwood or Murray ? Not one sous, But when, how, why, or
where did these mighty personages quarrel ? I never heard of it
before last Wednesday. . -
Tickler. Don’t you recollect, North, some years ago, that Murray's
name was on our title-page; and that, being alarmed for Subscrip-
tion Jamie, and Harry Twitcher,” he took up his pen and scratched
his name out, as if he had been Emperor of the West, signing an
Order for our execution ? The death-warrant came down, but we are
still alive, +.
North. I do indistinctly remember reading something to that effect
in a Whig newspaper, but of course I supposed it to be a lie; but, if
true, what then Are we angry now with a gentlemanly person like
Mr. Murray, for attempting to cut his own throat some years ago
Too absurd a great deal.
Tickler, Certainly, John Bull himself knows that we laugh at
the Quarterly Review, only when it is laughable. He knows we ad-
mire it, and say so, when it is admirable. Of all the periodicals now
flourishing or fading, BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE IS THE MOST IMPAR-
TIAL. Yes, its illustrious editor despises all the chicanery of the
trade. Trojan or Tyrian, that is, Murray or Constable, Longman
and Rees, or Taylor and Hessey, Richardson of Cornhill, or Ollier
of Bond-street, with you they are held in no distinction. Their
good books you toss up to the stars, and their bad you trample down
to Tartarus. **
North. John Bull also says, that the Edinburgh and Quarterly
Reviews are works of a higher class than Blackwood's Magazine. I
am truly vexed to differ from him here. They are works of an older,
thicker, and heavier, but not of a higher class. A review is not
necessarily a higher work than a magazine—any more than a maga-
zine is necessarily a higher work than a weekly newspaper—or a
weekly newspaper than a daily one. Genius, learning, and virtue,
constitute the only essential difference between work and work; and
in these, we never heard it whispered, that this Magazine is inferior
to any work, living or dead. -
* Sir James Mackintosh and He ary Brougham.—M,
174 NOCTES AMBROSTANAE,
Tickler, John Bull may be right after all. He is an incompre-
hensible mortal.” - -
North. The John Bull newspaper is a chariot armed with scythes
—the Morning Chronicle is a market cart, out of which a big empty
turnip or cabbage keeps trundling ever and anon against homest peo-
ple's legs; but a dexterous turn of the ankle shys it into the kennel,
and no harm done. te -
Tickler. However, in sober seriousness, you are an almost univer-
sal favorite. You burn like a gas-light among oil-lamps. The affec-
tion felt for you is a mixture of love, fear, and astonishment, three
emotions that play into each other's hands. The sex regard you with
a mixed passion, of which the fundamental feature is love. Fear is
the chief ingredient in the ruling passion towards you of literary
gentlemen under fifty—and with Grey Bennet,f and old women in
general—astonishment, -
Buller. (Yawning.) Would you like to marry an actress?
Tickler and North. Whom are you speaking to ?
Buller. To any body.
Tickler. Not for my first wife. After a private spouse or two, I
should not care for marrying a pretty young actress to rub my bald
pate in my old age; at the same time, a man should consider his
posthumous fame. Now, if your relict, before you are well warm
in your grave, marry an Irishman forty years younger, and three
feet broader across the back than you her late dearly beloved hus-
band, your posthumous fame receives a blow that demolishes it at
once irretrievably—that should be considered.
Buller. Why, I begin to get drowsy—was I snoring ?
Tickler. Like a trooper. Ring the bell, my buck.
Jºnter MR. AMBROSE.
North. What's to pay?
Mr. Ambrose. I beg you won’t mention it. I am so happy to see
Mr. Buller in Scotland again, that I cannot think of making any
charge for a few hundred oysters, and a mere gallon of gin.
North. Assist me on with my great-coat—there—there—easy—
easy. Now, my cane. Give me your arm, Ambrose—am I quite
steady ?
Mr. Ambrose. As steady as York Minster, sir. -
[They vanish into thin air.
* In those days Theodore Hook was the presiding genius of the John Bull newspaper, and
made it overflow with wit, satire, scandal, humor, Toryism, and dashing personalities.—Al.
1 Henry Grey Bennett, an active liberal, represented Shrewsbury in Parliament for man
years, but on the discovery of certain criminal practices, fied to Paris, where he died —Al... .
No. III.-MAY, 1822. s
SCENE I.-TIME—Sia: o'clock, P. M. ScKNE—The Blue Parlor.
To MR. NoFTH, standing in the centre of the room, in full fig,
Jºnter MR. TIMOTHY TICKLER. .
North. Good day, sir; I'm glad I’m not to dine quite alone. I
began to think nobody was coming. k
Tickler. I beg your pardon, Mr. North, but I really had no notion
it was so far in the day. I took my chocolate as usual about two,
and then went out into the Meadows” and wandered about. -
Morth. About what, you old rogue, yotl But no apologies. I’m
glad you’ve made your appearance at least. -
Tickler. I hope you’ll excuse my gaiters, North; I had not the
least idea you, were to sport a regular blow-out to-day. I looked
into the other room, and saw such a smash of covers—and you in
your silk stockings too !—I suppose you’ve been sporting your ankles
with the Commissioner. -
. North, Not I; but I expect several strangers to dinner, and an
editor is nothing without black breeches, you know—but you need
not say a word about your dress. Upon my honor, that's a most
matty surtout—and your spatterdashes, why they are quite the potato.
For a contributor you are well enough—and, after all, there's no
ladies in the party. - *
Tickler. What! not even Mrs. M'Whirter # I’ll do well enough
as I am for your Kempferhausens and Mullions, et hoc genus, if that's
all the party.
North. That's not it quite either, Mr. Timothy. I expect two or
three gentlemen you have never been in company with, and I believe
the meeting will give pleasure on all sides—There's Sir Andrew
Wylie for one.
Tickler. What he of that Ilk 2 Old Wheelie *
*The Meadows lie south of Heriot's and George Watson's Hospital’s, in Edinburgh, and,
with Bruntsfield Links, extend to about 200 acres, which are open for the recreation of the
inhabitants, by virtue of royal grants to the city. The national game of Golf is played on the
fine open dowms of Bruntsfield Links,—M. * * * -
f Mrs. M'Whirter, Odoherty's ancient Philadelphia flame, mever homored The Noctes with
her presence. Her last appearance was—in The Tent.—M. *~,
f Galt, in the novel of “Sir Andrew Wylie, of that Ilk,” (equivalent to “of Wylie”) had
narrated the adventures of a poor Scottish lad who went to London to seek his fortune, and
returned i orne with riches and rank.-MI. -
176 NOCTES AMIBIROSTANAE.
North. The same—he's an Elder in this General Assembly, and
his chum, Dr. Scott,” who is also a member of the venerable) court,
introduced him to me a few mornings ago at the Moderator's break-
fast. I declare the western worthies eclipsed even the ministers I
never saw two such twists—I beg your pardon—I hope Mrs. Tickler
is well.
Tickler. So, so, North :—Of course Sir Andrew wrote his own Life?
North. Why, you know every body writes books in our days, and
nobody owns them. But I suppose he and the Odontist patched up
the Life between them. They’re a couple of queer comical old
devils. The Baronet, a deuced rum fellow, to be sure; but Coun-
tesses and Duchesses adore him, and we must all confess he is one of
the cleverest, and at the same time best-tempered creatures alive.
Tickler. Whom else have ye? .
North. Mr. Pendarves Owen—a very pretty-behaved young gen-
tleman.
Tickler. By Jove, if he leaps out of a window here, there will be
a pretty end of the pretty-behaved gentleman. Imagine a fellow
clearing the Cowgate, or Hopping over the Horse Wynd, fourteen
stories deep, from a skylight to a chimney top.? Of course the lad
has a bee in his bonnet.
North. Perhaps you’ll find it a wasp if you go too near. He's a
cursed hot fellow—but so are all the Taffy breed. But what was I
thinking of? There's Feldborg behind.:
Tickler. Feldborg the Dane —really
North. Feldborg—ipsissimus ipse ! I hear his cough on the stair
this moment. IIe arrived in the Roads last night at a quarter after
eleven.
Enter MR. AMBROSE.
Mr. Ambrose. Professor Feldborg [Evit.
Enter FELDBORG, THE DANE.
Feldborg. With joy and ravishment, O illustrious man, do I once
more contemplate thee. From the very first instant of the time I
* Tr. Scott, “the Odontist,” as shown in Maga, was nearly as imaginary as Sir Andrew
Wylie.—M.
t In the summer of 1822 was published, by Blackwood, of Edinburgh, a novel called Pem
Owen, in three volumes. It was written by the Rev. Mr. Hook, who was cousin to the
facetious Theodore. Another novel, called “Percy Mallory,” was all that the same pen con-
tributed to public amusement, in the way of prose fiction. Pem Owen was revièved in Black-
wood ſor June, 1822, by which its merits were widely made known. The reviewer said that
it was an eminently successful “attempt to revive the old style of the time of George II.
and apply it to the time of George IV.”—The work took its hero into all sorts of plays: now in
the House of Commons, listening to a debate ; in Newgate, in company with Cobbett: in
Albemarle-street, dining at John Murray's, next to Tom Sheridan ; in a sort of Cato-street
Conspiracy, with an examination at the Ilome Office as a wind-up; at Smithficli, amid the
drovers, (ilow capitally Noah Tup ro is simple Tom Crossthwaite (); in a political debating
society : in fact, in all places and with all people in London, in the year of grace 1822. Pen
Owen, the hero, was the most impulsive of beings, and this is the gentleman b: ought into the
Third of the Noctes.—M. -
# The Dane was imaginary—as far as tºe Noctes were concerned.—M.
wº
TTIE C UESTS. - 177
re-landed on the Albionean coast, did my mind—my soul—my
spirituous part thirst after thee. And to thee, also most admired
and honorable Mr. Tickler, I offer my heartfelt salutations. Heaven
Surely, what I hope, has favored you both, me absente, dum in Daniä
meå moratus sum.
North. All hail, Prince of Denmark And how is the little Prince
that you told so many pretty stories to, and how are Oehlenschlaeger,
and Baggesen, and Bombardius, and all the rest of the Dames?
Feldborg. All quite hearty, quite the charming agreeable spirits,
and all in louf with you. Baggesen is writing a very big book all
about you. Its title is De Amore Worthi apud Danos. The book will
make a sensation—it is dedicated what you call to Oehlenschlaeger.
North. What?—so they have made up matters
Feldborg. Quite reconciled—I saw with mine own eyes Baggesen
Smoking one, two, three long, very long puffs out of Oehlenschlaeger's
pipe. I wrote a very pretty poem on that subject in the Copenhagen
Chronicle. It has already been translated into Swedish and Lapp.
North. It must now be well known if that's the case—but here
comes the rest of our friends. Sir Andrew, your most obedient
humble servant.
Entér SIR ANDREw WYLIE, DR. Scott, MR. PENDARVES Owl:N,
ENSIGN O’Doh ERTY, and the REv. DoNALD Wolrow, D.D.
I’m exceedingly proud of having the honor to see you all here,
gentlemen—Dr. Scott, don’t pull my wrist out of joint, man—Mr.
Owen, I’m delighted—Dr. Wodrow, how-do-you-do, my good sir?
IIas the overture come on yet? [Aside.] Order dinner, Odoherty.
Rev. Dr. Wodrow. Why, Mr. North, you see that business from
the Ayr brethren has occupied the committee so long, that our
Overture
North. Gentlemen, allow me to make you all acquainted. Sir
Andrew Wylie, Mr. Tickler—Mr. Tickler, Sir Andrew Wylie.
Professor Feldborg, Captain Odoherty—Captain Odoherty, Profes-
sor Feldborg. Captain Odoherty, allow me the pleasure of introduc-
ing you to my friend Dr. Wodrow—I’m sure you’re no strangers to
each other's names at all events. Well, now, are all the salaams
over ? Do any of you choose a whet before dinner ?
Rev. Dr. Wodrow. It is not my custom to take any thing before
dinner; but really, you folk in the town, you dine so late—and I
took, thoughtlessly, some very salt ham this morning at the Mode-
rator's. -
North. There’s a variety of liquors on the side-table—Odoherty,
give Dr. Wodrow a little Seltzer-water, or something cooling.
While ODoHERTY is handing round a salver, covered with
small glasses, déc., enter AMBROSE, with a towel under his arm.)
WOL. I.-14
178 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Ambrose. Gentlemen—dinner. . 1
North. Gentlemen, I’ll show the way. Sir Andrew, your arm.
[Éreunt C. N. and SIR. A. W.
Odoherty. Seniores sint priores / Cedant arma togae.
[Evil PROFESSOR FELDBORG.
Tickler. I can’t walk before so many Doctors. Walk away, Dr.
Scott.
Rev. Dr. Wodrow, (brushing hastily out of the room.) Come away,
Dr. Scott.
Dr. Scott. Mr. Tickler, if you please, sir.
Tickler. O fie, Doctor—after you, Doctor.
... [Evit DR. Scott—evit TICKLER.
Odoherty. Come along, Mr. Owen. What a hubbub these old
Puts make, with their hanged precedence | Did you motice how the
D.D. hopped off? As brisk as a beetle, by St. Patrick |
SCENIE II.
C. NoKTH, Esq.

O
SIR ANDREW WYLIE |O O|PROF. FELDBORG.
Bart.
REv. DR. Wod Row. |O O|DR. SCOTT.
TIMOTHY TICKLER, O OPENDARVES OWEN,
Esq. Esq.
O
ENSIGN. ODoBERTY.
North. A bumper | THE KING ! God bless him
Omnes. The King!!! [Three times three. Thumpets without.
s Air—God save the King.]
Tickler. A bumper—the Kirk of Scotland!
Omnes. The Kirk of Scotland [Air-The Bush aboon Traquair.,
Rev. Dr. Wodrow. Gentlemen, all your very good healths I am
extremely sensible of the honor you have done —
North. —A bumper “The general joy of the whole table !”
Odoherty. (Aside.) Wide Shakspeare hem h
Omnes. The General joy, &c. (Three times three.) -
(Air, we are the Lads, déc.
PERSONALITIES, 179
North. Now, gentlemen, these three bumpers being discussed, I
leave the filling of your glasses to your own discretion. -
Odoherty. Let each man fill his neighbor's glass, and push the port
and sherry into the middle of the table. Mr. Chairman, give Sir
Andrew a little drop; I'm sure he'll do as much for the Reverend
Doctor on his right.
Sir. A. Wylie. Na, wha ever heard o' sic like doings as this l and
me a ruling Elder too ! Oh dear, you literary men are the most un-
conscionable chields I ever foregathered wi'—but to be sure it's ill to
make a silk purse out of a sow's lug.
Dr. Scott, Hear till him Would any body think the Baronet had
lived sa mony years out of his ain country, and been in high life too,
Iord preserve us, (I beg your pardon, Dr. Wodrow, it just slipped
frae the tongue, man)—and kittled ladies of quality in his time—and
crackit a bottle with Mr. Pitt himself—an' a' the lave o’t 2 Ame
that did not ken the history, would, saving his presence, just take
him for some Paisley baillie, that had never had the stink of the
Sneddon out of his nostrils
Morth. Mr. Odontist, I disapprove of personalities.
Dr. Scott. Hout! Like the Duke of Bedford, I meant nothing per-
Somal, upon my honor.
Sir A. Wylie. Dr. Scott having in the handsomest manner de-
clared that he meant no allusion to me personally, I am now per-
fectly satisfied. Fill your glass, Dr. Scott.
Rev. Dr. Wodrow. That puts me in mind of a story of Mr. Tham
of Govan—a queer fellow—but sound, very sound in his doctrine.
He had been rebuking a young lad and lassie one day in his kirk,
and he had in his rough way, (for Tham was a very rough brother,
sirs,) gone a great length in miscalling the lad; and as they were a'
coming out of the kirk, the lad he came down from the cutty-stool
and runs up to the minister, and says he, “I dimma ken what you
meant by yon blackguard language about me. I think you're ex-
ceedingly impertinent, Mr. Tham.” And wi' that Mr. Tham up with
his stick, (he had aye a good bit sapling in his hand,) and comes a
clink o'er the chield's head, and gar'd him reel away back, and he fell
on the braid o' his back among the dirt, hee! hee! hee!
Dr. Scott. A bonny parallel, my certy
Feldborg. When Baggesen and Oehlenschlaeger first began to
Write pamphlets concerning each other—Ay, what pamphlets Bag-
gesen does make —there was some talk of their fighting with the
Sword, and to be sure they went one day into Hamlet's Garden.
what we call, and they drew their swords so bright, so clear, and up
comes I by accident, and says I, “What fools you are, let us go dine
all together at the White Feather.” This is a great inn, what you
call, in Elsinore.
180 NOCTES AMIBIROSIANAE.
North. And did you go, accordingly'. - ./
Feldborg. Oh, what for a dinner we did eat that day! At the
head of the table was a sausage-pie.—O, what for a pie and at the
foot there was a boiled goose with mustard pudding; and there was
One dozen big black bottles of the best beer, and how we did rejoice ]
—Oh, me !
Pen Owen. (Aside to ODoHERTY.)—Noctes Coenaeque Deûm.
Odoherty. (Aside to PEN Owen.)—Noctes Coenaeque de hum.
Pen Owen. Pray, Dr. Scott, what is that book called the Percy
Anecdotes?—I saw it in a window at York as I came through, and
bought it to divert us in the chaise, and I can make very little mean-
ing of it, although it is an amusing production enough in its way.”
Dr. Scott. I only possess two or three numbers of the work;
there's one of them called “Anecdotes of Instinct, with a portrait of
the Ettrick Shepherd;” I was much amused with it.
Pen Owen. Yes; but why Anecdotes of Instinct with a Portrait of
Bogg?—Do they mean to represent Hogg as being totally devoid of
Beason 3–A mere new edition of the Learned Pig 3
I}r. Scott. It did not strike me before; but now you point it out,
'tis absurd. Then there's one, “Anecdotes of Genius, with a portrait
of Mr. Southey;” and, immediately after, comes another, “Anecdotes
of Crime and Punishment, with a portrait of Sir James Mackintosh.”
Now, I for one, can make neither head nor tail of this.
Pen Owen. Do you suppose they mean to insinuate that Sir James
stands in the same relation to Crime and Punishment in which Southey
stands to Genius'. If so, what has been the learned knight's crime 3
What has been his punishment?
Tickler. What say you, Sir Andrew 2
Sir A. Wylie. I suppose they mean to let us to wit, that Sir James
Mackintosh is above Crime and Punishment, just as the Poet Hogg
is above Instinct ºf
Rev. Dr. Wodrow. Good, very good, I’m clear for Sir Andrew's
way of expounding the dubiety, 'tis like Lucus a non lucendo—ehem
Odoherty. (Sings.) * -
This is the wine
That in former time
Each wise one of the Magi
Was wont to carouse
In a frolicsome bowse.
Becubans sub tegmine fagi
* It was published in London. It was meatly illustrated. It formed a series of 40 mumbers,
or 20 duodecimo volumes. It professed to consist of “Anecdotes, original and select, by Sholto
and Reuben Percy, brothers of the Benedictime Monastery, Mont Benger.”—Sholto, being a
Mr. Robertson, for many years editor of the Mechanics' Magazine and the Railway Record
newspaper.—M.
f The actual reason why a portrait of Sir James Mackintosh illustrated the volume on Crime
and Punishment, may be traced to the fact, that Sir James had been a Judge in lindia, and, as
member of Parliament, had endeavored to mitigate the severity of the English penal code.
g * &
TICKLER's BRIDAL SONG. 181
Mr. North, you’re keeping the bottle rather long by you.
North, Well, Odoherty, since your pipe is so clear, suppose you
do sing us another song—and if it be one of your own, so much the
better for Dr. Wodrow, -
Odoherty. Well,—since you will have it, I shall tip you what I
wrote last month, on the interesting occasion of the marriage of Mr.
Timothy Tickler, if you know any such person.
North. You're quizzing, Odoherty—Sing, but remember, that I
depend upon your good feelings, to introduce nothing that could call
up a blush on the delicate cheek of Mrs. Tickler, if she were
present.
Tickler. Delicate cheek hem,--
“O call it fair, not pale ſ”
Odoherty. (Sings.)
SONG. *.
ON THE WEDDING-DAY OF TIMOTHY TICKLER, Esq., AND
MISS AMARANTHA. ALOESBUD.
1.
Fill, fill to the brim, fill a bumper to him,
Who is call'd to a happier duty away,
Who, seated beside his own loved one—his bride—
Drinks large draughts of joy from her eyes' sunny ray;
And let not the toast to the man we love most,
Be silently pass'd round the board as we sit;
But rising about, with a heart-stirring shout,
Let us hail the dear union of Beauty and Wit.
2.
Though, perhaps, now no more, shall our friend, as before
Join his bachelor mates in their frolicsome knot;
Nor pour forth his soul over bottle and bowl,
That soul free from taint of dishonoring thought;"
Though that eloquent tongue upon which we have hung
So oft with delight, may no more glad us here;
Yet still his loved name a full bumper shall claim,
And it still shall be hail'd with a thrice given cheer.
- 3.
O, blest be this day, by the smile of the gay,
By the bright eyes of beauty, by music and dancel
O, blest be this day—and as life wears away,
May he joy on its moments his thoughts back to glance!
May the maid, whose bright charms are resign'd to his arms,
Still be loved with the love that he feels for her now !
And may her dear lord be by her still adored,
As when first she lisp'd forth the unchangeable vow.
182 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
4.
Then fill to the brim, fill a bumper to him,
Who is called to a happier duty away,
Who, seated beside his own loved one—his bride—
Drinks large draughts of joy from her eyes' sunny ray;
And let not the toast to the man we love most
Be silently pass'd round the board as we sit;
But rising about, with a heart-stirring shout,
Let us hail the dear union of Beauty and Witl
D. Scott. (Singing.)
“Let us bail the dear union of Beauty and Wit.”
Devilish good song, upon my honor, Mr. North, I crave a bumper
—Mrs. Tickler, with three times three.
JRev. Dr. Wodrow. Cheers or children, Dr. Scott 2 ha 1 ha hal
the like o’ that (Trumpets without.)
Omnes. Mrs. Tickler | [Air-Green grow the rashes, O.] {
Mr. Pen Owen. (Aside to ODoHERTY.) They’re getting dull at
that end of the table. May I tip them a touch of the long pole?
Odoherty. (Aside to PEN Owen.) To be sure, honey ! Where's
Liberty-hall, think ye? Plant the prong!
Pen Owen. Mr. North, with your permission, and with the per-
mission of the distinguished company, whom I have now the honor
of seeing assembled around this festive board, there is a name which
I would earnestly but respectfully entreat permission to join with
the Smack of a bumper.
North. Contributors, a bumper, Mr. Pendarves Owen's toast.
Pen Owen. I beg leave to propose the health of THE SMALL
KNowN. º
North. Gentlemen, this is an appeal to your liberality, and I am
sure your conduct will justify it. Take the time from me.
(Trumpets without—Air—Saw ye my wee thing #)
Sir A. Wylie, (aside to Dr. Wodrow.) We've all heard enough of
the Great Unknown, but wha is this we’ve been drinking, Doctor 7
Rev. Dr. Wodrow. Dr. Cook, I take it.
North. Pooh, pooh, 'tis our friend, the Prince of Reviewers, Sir
Andrew. *
JDr. Wodrow. The like o’ that—ha! haſ The Small Known /
well, I never heard sic like toasts I'se propose it myself at the
Moderate Club, the morn’s might, may I ?
North. By all means. A toast, is nothing until it comes into
general vogue, like The Cause for which Sidney bled on the Scaffold,
and Hampden on the field, dēc.
Pen Owen. Which is pretty much the same thing with “the
THE SMALL KNOWN. 183
Cause for which Sandt died by the axe, and Thistlewood by the
drop.” .
*. I beg leave to propose a bumper, Mr. Chairman,—To
the memory of Thistlewood | | |
Professor Feldborg, (aside to Dr. Scott.) What man was Thistle-
wood 2 Was he a Tory Reviewer %
Dr. Scott. Ask your friend Mr. Owen. I think he's like to give
you the best notion.* --
Pen Owen. Come, come | you should not make such allusions, Mr.
Odoherty. I’m sure you will admit that I was most innocently pre-
sent on that unfortunate occasion, when Thistlewood —
Odoherty. I could have forgiven any thing but that humbugging
note, in which you, or whoever did your history, says the chapter
about that affair was writ before the affair happened.
Pem. Owen. 'Pon honor it was.
Odoherty. Nay, nay, man ; a joke's a joke—but do you mean to
say, that you thought of that quotation about “Cato's little senate,”
before the night you made your famous leap over the little back
court behind Cato-street.
Pen Owen. What do you believe, Mr. Odoherty 2 .
Odoherty. I believe that any man may with impunity, (so far as a
certain concern goes,) touch the King-abuse the Lords,--black-
guard the Commons,—and ruffianize the prime writers of the age
and country; but that vengeance will fall on his head if he dares but
to lay his little finger on the smallest of Critics.
Feldborg. What? call Baggesen the smallest of critics What
for a joke | Baggesen? He that did compose the glorious garland?
Oh, what ignorance - ->
Odoherty. I meant not Baggesen—I talked of Jeffrey. Clap not
thy wings so fiercely, Cock of the North. ~.
Sir A. Wylie. What? aye at the Sma' Known? Will you never
be done with your personalities about that gentleman? -
Tickler. Fie, Odoherty And after that beautiful rebuke of his,
in his last number, which, I am sure, will shut Lord Byron's mouth
for ever and a day. ...
Odoherty. As effectually as a prime pouldoodie of Burrant would
shut my potato-trap for three seconds.
* Arthur Thistlewood, who had previously been acquitted on a charge of treason, and was
discontented with the British Government, threw himself into what was called the Cato-street
Conspiracy, and conspired to murder the Ministry, at a Cabinet-dinner at Lord Harrowby's, and
thereon raise an insurrection in London. This was early in 1820, immediately on the accession
of George IV., and a spy having revealed all that was done and intended, a party of police and
soldiers went to arrost the conspirators. Thistlewood resisted, killed one of the police with a
sword, escaped, was captured, tried, and condemned. Thistlewood and four others were ex-
bcuted, as traitors, on May 1, 1820.-One of the scenes in “Pen Owen” was marvellously like
the actual scene in Cato-street, though written before it.—M. r
t The Poul docilies of Burran were a description of Irish oysters, an ent which, Mrs. M'Whirter
chanted a laudatory song, in presence of Christopher in the Tênt. which see, ante.-p. 98. M.
184 NOCTES AMIBIROSLANAE.
Dr. Wodrow. Well, now, I must say that I read that passage with
delight; there is no doubt that Lord Byron is very much tó blame,
if it really be so, which I am no judge of that he was the first who
wrote in a personal manner. It was introducing a dangerous—a
deadly trick. There's no saying where it may end yet. Christian
folk should dwell together like brethren in unity. Oh I sirs, there's
a deal of needless heart-burning and hot water among you literary
folk of this time, take ye my word for that. – -
Dr. Scott. Ay, and so is there among the illiterary folk of this
time, Dr. Wodrow—what say ye to your bickers in the aisle, Oure
bye yonder My faith! you ministers and elders, ye're the most
tinkler-tongued pack of illiterati, when ye begin your collieshangie.
Sir A. Wylie. Come, come, Odondist, you need not be so bitter,
though you could not manage to get yourself returned for the Uni-
versity of St. Andrews this Assembly—but what is all this that you’re
saying? Does Mr. Jeffrey really charge Lord Byron with being the
author and institutor of the sin of personality ?
Tickler. “”Tis true, ’tis pity; and pity 'tis, ’tis true.”
Dr. Scott, (closely imitating Tickler in enunciation.) 'Tis trash, 'tis
certain; and certain 'tis, ’tis trash.
Pen Owen. I have not yet seen the last Number of the Edinburgh
Review—but if the Small Known has said so, he has certainly not a
large memory. - .
Tickler. Alas, he will never have such a memory as Smithers'
Pen Owen. But I’m speaking in earnest. What, sir? Has Jeffrey
forgot that he could once read without spectacles? Has he forgot
that he was not always a dandy of sixty? Has he forgot how, from
the beginning of his career, he abused SouTHEY! Has he forgot how
he lashed his friend, ToMMy MooRE 2 Was it not personality that
pointed the path to Chalk Farm 2 Has he forgot Thelwall 3 Was
there no personality in calling Thelwall a Tailor # Was there no
personality in his attacks on CoPPLESTON ? Was there no per-
sonality in comparing Mr. DAVISON To A RAT IN A GUTTER Was
there no personality in the lucubrations, concerning that patriotic,
that most enlightened Peer, my Lord ELGIN? Was there no person-
ality in that most flagitious insinuation concerning the birth of our
late venerable venerated Sovereign º Bah!—
North. Take your breath, young sir, and fill a bumper. The bottle
is with you, and we would rather be excused waiting till you have
done with such a catalogue as this. &
ºr A. Wylie. I would be very sorry to interrupt Mr. Owen, but
I would fain ask one question, for really and truly, sir, I’m to seek
* One of the scandals of the last century was, that George III. was son—not of Frederio
Prince of Wales, but of the Earl of Bute. It was the influence of the Princess of Wales (Fre-
deric's widow) that placed Lord Bute in the high office of Premier, (ſor which he was by mo
means adequate) shortly after George llſ. becaine king.—M. r - -
PERSONALITY. 185
in sic matters. Did Lord Byron ever write any thing personal about
Mr. Jeffrey himself?
Tickler. Bravo! bravissimo Rem acutetigisti!
Odoherty. (Sings.)
“Wain is every fond endeavor
To resist the gentle dart;
For examples move us never,
We must feel to know the smart.”
When the bard, in verse undying,
Pays the Prose of the Review,
Vanity, her aid supplying,
Bids them think it not their due.
CHORUS—Vanity, her sting supplying,
Pokes the Yellow and the Blue.
North. Thank ye, Adjutant l But now there's been so much
fighting about the bush, let's to the scratch with it at once. Mr.
Pendarves Owen, what do you understand by the word Personality?
Pen Owen. I don’t know—I can’t well say. I suppose Jeffrey
means, when he accuses Lord Byron of it, to allude to his cuts at
Coleridge, and Southey, and Sotheby, and Wordsworth, and Bowles,
and Sam Rogers, and the King, and so forth.
North. Sir, did you ever read a poem called “English Bards, and
Scotch Reviewers ?”
Pen Owen. I remember seeing such a thing in Mr. Mapletoft's
library long ago, and glancing over it; but at that time I was young
and ignorant, and took no interest in it. I understood very little
about what was meant or insinuated.
North. Very likely; but stil) you can’t have forgot the two great
and general facts, that this poem was written by Lord Byron, and
that it contains many most bitter pungent lines of personal satire
against Hallam, Pillams, &c., and least not last, against Mr. Francis
Jeffrey himself, whose birth is ridiculed, whose person is derided,
whose genius is scorned, whose personal honor and courage even
held up to utter and open contempt, and all this in a manner equally
ummerited—unparalleled — -
Tickler. (Interrupts him.) And unpardoned.
North. Ay, there's the rub | Look ye, it would take a bat not to
see through the whole of this mighty millstone. The Edinburgh
Reviewers (Jeffrey himself, 'tis generally supposed,”) began the row
with a violent attack on Lord Byron's juvenile poems, in a review,
in the conclusion of which there is certainly not a little personality.
This is done in utter ignorance of Lord Byron's talents, in utter con-
tempt of him and all that pertains to him. Very well, Lord Byron
writes and publishes the poetical satire of which we have been speak-
* Brougham is generally supposed to have written the article.—MI.
186 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
ing, and the Edinburgh Reviewers are laughed at for several weeks
all over England, Ireland, Scotland, and the town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed, to say nothing of Yankeeland and Botany Bay. So far so
well. But in a few years, out comes CHILDE HAROLD, and Lord
Byron is at once placed mem. con. by the side Öf the first poets of our
age. What a moment of mortification must that have been, when
Mr. Francis Jeffrey first discovered whom he had to do with ! Why,
did you ever see a little slim greyhound, half the Surrey breed per-
haps, attack a strong Yorkshire fox who had jumped up from the
cover, when they were whipping for hares? Jeffrey was just in such
a quandary. Down he goes on his knees, and worships the rising
star. Puff! puff! puff!—nothing but puffing ſ—nothing but who
shall puff the highest.
Sir A. Wylie. Under favor, ye're forgetting to mention that Lord
Byron had been putting himself forrit as a Whig also.
North. True—but I don’t make much of that in this particular
instance. Lord Byron, however, does not intimate any particular
sensibility in his olfactory nerves, to the stimulus of the Blue and
Yellow incense. - Jº;
Tickler. Censer and censure, sir, came alike to him;-he was
incensed by their very incense.
Dr. Scott. He became quite the Tage with them; yet his rage
waxeth not cool, neither was his anger appeased.
JDr. Wodrow. O, that Chaldee it has spoiled even the Odontist.
North. On proceeds “Byron my Baron,” meantime, in his glorious,
but not stainless, any more than gainless career. The critics of the
English press in general applaud, as they ought to do, his rising and
resplendent genius; but many, very many of them, at least, have the
candor and the justice to complain of the immoral, irreligious, and
unpatriotic tendency of too many of his productions. Two only, and
these the two highest authorities, are silent as to the faults of the
splendid sinner. The Quarterly Cerberus had got a sop—and as for
the Edinburgh, what think ye kept its mouth mum ? &
Odoherty. Could it be our old acquaintance, “Corporal Fear?”
Tickler. I am inspired. Anch'io improvisatore. I shall tip you an
extempore Parody on one of Mrs. Pilkington's old favorites. (Aside)
—You all remember “Stella, darling of the Muses.”
: Jeffrey, darling of the Muses, -
Strong probation now we bring;
Knowingly, the poet chooses,
Who of thee essays to sing.
While his keen derision traces
Every fault of form or mind,
He gets on in thy good graces—
Stings, but leaves no wound behind.
(Plaudite Omnes.)
JEFFREY AND BYRON. 187
Omones (sing.)
“Very good song, -
Very well sung,
* Jolly companions every one,” &c. &c. &c.
Rev. Dr. Wodrow. Well, I never was in such a company as this
Ance I was ordained. Why it beats Presbytery dinners, Modera-
lor's breakfasts, and even settlement-occasions, a to nothing. The
mist's just clearing away from my eyes every moment ' How I'll
enlighten the Baillies when I win back to the Manse.
Dr. Scott, Haud your tongues | Haud your tongues' Do ye no
see how the chairman's drinking three bumpers all by himsel?
(Aside)—He's clearing his pipes, I'se warrant. Od, how he's glow-
ering on yon decanter . .
North. Revenons a nos moutons / Childe Harold raved with im-
punity against Talavera, Wellington, and the Bible. , Lord Byron
insulted with impunity the most complete gentleman that has sat on
the English throne since the time of Charles I., and this too in the
most offensive way. He insulted his Prince by meddling with his
domestic affairs—Lord Byron insulted all England in Beppo-
Beppo was lauded—He flung the insults with tenfold vigor from
the luscious lip of Don Juan—Don Juan was never alluded to, except
once or twice, in the way of commending its style—and even so it
goes on, until at length, after five or six years of silence, and utter
forbearance, the Edinburgh Review does pluck up courage—and to
do what?
Omnes, What 3 sº -
Morth. To say feebly what had been said strongly by fifty other
people—to say late what should have been said early, gº never said
at all—to creep out under the shadow, and in the rear of Universal-
Indignation—and, making a big mouth, stammer out a single, silly,
senile, insignificant sarcasm —(Hear ! hear !)
Udoherty. It puts me in mind of a thing I once saw at Doncas-
ter.—I was sitting in the inn there with the landlady—a pretty,
comely body, I assure ye—and through came Reynard, and all Lord
Dal ſington's hounds in full cry at his tail. A little puppy dog—a
queer, odd, grim-looking thing belonging to the landlady, was sitting
close beside us, on the end of the sofa. It stared like a stuck pig,
till the last red-coat was passing, and then out with a small frightened
snarl—I thought at first it had smelt a mouse behind the wainscot.
Dr. Scott, Mr. North, this is very good claret. —I make no objec-
tions to the claret—but really I cannot thole it, it is so very cold.
(Sºngs)—Fill me a bowl—a mighty bowl,
Large as my capacious soul,
Vast as my thirst is ; let it have
Depth enough to be my grave—
188 NOCTES AMIBIROSTANAE.
I mean the grave of all my care,
For I intend to bury't there.
Let it a bowl of China be, -
Worthy of punch composed by me,
To drown pale eant and fat humbug,
And stretch a Tory on the rug.
Fill me a bowl, &c. lJºhter PUNCH.]
North. Tip us a blast of the trombone, or the Gaelic sermon, or
any thing you like—Do make yourself agreeable.
Odoherty. The Instrumentality or the Parsonality ?—Both are at
your service. . -
Omnes. The Parsonality the Parsonality -
[Odoherty gives a facsimile of a Gaelic sermon. While he is
performing, exit, unobserved, the REv. DR. WodRow.]
North. What! bless me the minister's off. I think.
Sir A. Wylie. Ay, ay, just gang round the company. Rub every
one's shins, and ye’ll have a toom table belyve. I'se warrant the
Doctor will be concocting an overture against personality, ere lang be.
Pen Owen. What! the reverend divine could not stand that little
shadow of a shade of personality? Bah! if he had been an Edin-
burgh Reviewer, he would have been as tender in the skin as any
Small Known among them all.
North. Heaven preserve us! I believe nothing will put down
this accursed cant but a thumping folio disquisition. I shall cer-
tainly, when I die, bequeath to the world a regular treatise de ro
personali. -
Tickler. Proving that every person had been personal, as well as
Byron and Jeffrey ! -
Worth. To be sure—To begin with the blind old Maeonian–Does
any body doubt his Thersites is a lump of personality? Without
question, Polyphemus was a sore wipe against some purblind,
bloody-minded reviewer of his day. But why talk of Homer ?
Has not the Stagyrite told us that his last poem, the MARGITEs, stood
to the old Greek Comedy in the same relation in which the Iliad
and Odyssey did to the old Greek Tragedy ?—And what was the
old Greek Comedy ?
Pem. Owen. “Comoedia prisca VIRORUM est!”
North. True!’tis a manly comedy; but what is it but a string
of personalities? There is not one line in all Aristophanes that is
not personal. º -
Pen Owen. Aristophanes was, I suppose, just what Jeffrey says
Swift was, “nothing but a great libeller.” *
Worth. Yes, and yet you see this same critic, who, four years ago,
said “Swift was nothing but a great libeller,” has now thought proper
to say that personality was a thing unknown until Lord Byron set
the example, -
LITERARY PERSONALITIES. - 189
Pen Owen. It looks like a contradiction—but go on with your .
sketch of the great treatise in posse, however. -
Worth. Is Horace not personal in his satires? He is so in every
line of them, and in half his odes to boot. Was not Virgil abomina-
bly personal about the old soldier that got his bonnet-lairdship 7 Is
there no personality in Cicero's Philippics, or in his master, Demos-
themes? or in Sallust? or in Tacitus? By Jupiter Tonans, you
might as well say that Jeffrey had began the sin of charlatanism as
that any man now living began that of personality. .
Sir A. Wylie. Weel, weel, but I would like to hear ye on some
authors that we hae heard mair about than thae auld heathen Greeks
and Romans. - -
North. Swift we have already heard of You know Shakspeare
owed his rise in life and letters to a song which he wrote against a
Warwickshire Justice of the Peace. And Justice Shallow is alto-
gether a personal attack on the same worthy body. Ben Jonson
was a perfect Turk for personality—his whole life was past in hot
water.—Wide D'Israeli !—Why should I allude to the Greens and
the Nashes? -
Tickler. These fellows were always at cat and dog—quite more
recentiorum.
North. Nay, nay, forbid that we should be quite so bad as that
altas avorum. / I would rather die upon a pile of blazing Magazines,
like Sardanapalus on his throne, than write one word within one
million of miles of the personalities of Milton—the divine Milton—
against Salmasius! - .
Dr. Scott. Keep us a'! Is that the same great gospel-gun that
wrote the Paradise Lost, that the Spectautor speaks sae muckle about?
Pen Owen. The same, the same. Bah! 'tis all fudge, and fudge
fusty—as fusty as Benthamism.
North. Come down to the polite era of Charles II. Is there no
personality in Dryden' or rather, is there any thing else in half his
most eternal master-pieces? Is there no personality in Butler's
Hudibras, nor in Cowley’s Cutter of Coleman-street? Or take the
glorious days of Queen Anne. There's Swift for one, and there's
Pope. I suppose we’ve all heard of such a thing as the Dunciad.
There's one Arbuthnot too—he wrote a work called the History of
John Bull—that is commonly supposed to be something personal, I
believe. -
Dr. Scott. As bad as the present John Bull ?
North. Yes, very truly, nearly as bad, and indeed rather worse, I
take it; inasmuch as John Duke of Marlborough was rather a greater
man than the present John Duke of Bedford; and inasmuch likewise,
as to be a WHIG was not quite so bad a thing a hurdred years ago,
thank God! as it is now. -
190 . NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Pera Owen. But in those days there were no reviews nor maga
ZlneS. s * . . . .
North. True, but they came not long after, and personality, which
no literature ever was without, blended itself with them ab ovo. Is
it possible that you have need for ME to tell you all the old stories
about Samuel Johnson and Ossian Macpherson and the oak cudgel ?
or about JDr. Smollett and the Critical ? and Fielding'. How he
kept the Thames on fire with his farces and novels, and roasted all
his brother justices to cinders ? . .
Tickler. Why, you know, all the old novelists dealt in nothing but
personalities; about that there was no manner of dispute. The only
question was, not whether there were a real Morgan or a real
Trunnion, but which of the author's competing friends had sat for the
portrait. -
North. Just so; and to tell you the truth, I’m really sick of such
hackneyed truths—you may just trace personality as distinctly as
stupidity, down the whole line of our Whig literature in particular.
Turn over. D'Israeli's nice little books, if you have doubts—The
Quarrels of Authors above all—
Nocturnā versate manu, versate diurná.
Tickler. Once landed in our own times, we can be at no great loss
to find our way. Plenty of fine staring finger-posts as one moves
along. The Fudge Family, a production of one of the most charming
Whigs that ever breathed—and a more disloyal piece of Whiggery
was never written, even by that charming Whig, -stands pretty
visible yonder against the sky.
Pen Owen. Yes, the black and lowering sky of disgustful remem-
brance.
Tickler. The Twopenny Post-bag' 'Tis sufficient to mention the
name of such a bag of poison—base brutal poison. Hone's nice little
books, (worthy man the Whigs subscribed for him, you know, as
well as for Gerald—I hope the money did him much good 1) The
Morning Chronicle, with so many of Tom Moore's songs against
kings and ladies introduced into it by good Mr. Perry, whom Sir
James Mackintosh so disinterestedly lauded in the House of Com-
mons. The Old Times, stinking of Cockney radicalism and Cock-
ney personality in every column—there's no want of landmarks to
guide one along the mare magnum of Whiggish ruffianism.
Sir A. Wylie. And after a this poor Lord Byron must be charged,
forsooth, with beginning the vice o' personality. Oh dear! what a
thumper -
North. The fact is, that Lord Byron, instead of being the sole
personal libeller, is only a unit in the Whig array, whereof Mr.
Jeffrey himself is another unit—and if the question were, which of
“HERE LET ME DINE, !” 191
these two is the more deserving of the title of leader in such work, I
protest I think I should have no difficulty in giving my vote to the
commoner. I beg leave to propose the memory of Dr. Jonathan
Swift, Dean of St. Patrick. -
Omnes. Dean Swift |! ! (Music without.—Air, Diogenes,
swriy and prowd.)
()doherty (sings.)*
'Tis not when on turtle and venison dining,
And sipping Tokay at the cost of his Grace;
Like the plate on bis sideboard, I’m set to be shining—
(So nearly a mug may resemble a face.) -
This is not the dinner for me—a poor Sinner;
Where I’m bound to show off, and throw pearls before swine.
Give me turnips and mutton-(1 ne'er was a glutton)—
Good friends and good liquor—and here let me dine.
Your critic shows off, with his snatches and tastes
Of odd trash from Reviews, and odd sorts of odd wine;
Half a glass—half a joke—from the Publisher's stock
Of Balaam and Hock, are but trash, I opine.
Convérsazioni—are not for my money,
Where Blue Stockings prate about Wylie and Pen;
l’d rather get tipsy with ipsissimi ipsi—
Plain women must yield to plain sense and plain men.
Your dowager gives you good dinners, ’tis true;
She shines in liqueurs, and her Sherry's antique;
But then you must swear by her eye's lovely blue,
And adore the bright bloom that is laid on her cheek.
Blue eyes in young faces are quite in their places;
One praises and gazes with boundless delight
And juvenile roses ne'er trespass on noses,
As the custom of those is, I've cut for to-night.
Your colonels talk but of a siege or a battlé—
Your merchants of naught but the course of exchange—
Your squires, of their hounds, of the corn-bill or cattle—
Your doctors their cases and cures will arrange-
Your lawyer's confounding, on multiple poinding—
Your artists are great on expression and tone—
Parsons sport Moderators and Church-procurators,
Each set is the devil when feeding alone.
But here, where all sets and all topics are mingled—
The hero—the dentist—the parson—the squire—
No one branch of blarney's selected or singled,—
But our wine and our wit each discussion inspire:
Where the pun and the glass simultaneously pass;
Where each song seems quite heavenly, each bumper divine;
Where there's drinking and smoking, and quizzing and joking,
But nothing provoking—HERE! HERE! let me dine.
--, (IHere! here 1)
* This song was written by Dr. Maginn.--M.
192 NOCTES AMBROSIANAD.
Pen Owen. Talking of Dean Swift–what is Mr. Maturin about?
Odoherty. Grinding, grinding ! Isn't it a shame for people to run
him down at such a rate 7 and the man a Tory—an Aristocrat—a
well-dressed gentleman-like author 'Tis abominable. 'Tis too bad
to think of such a man being poor, and you know he complained of
it himself in his preface.* *
Pen Owen. Mr. Odoherty, I don’t mean to defend the Quarterly-
but did you never take a wipe at Mother Morgan yourself?
Odoherty. I believe I may have done such a thing—But how
different the case: why that little cidevant Miladi absolutely brags
of her cash, f and sets off public reprobation with a balance of pounds,
shillings, and pence. •
Tickter. Her motto is, no doubt—
|
“Populus me sibilat: at mihi plaudo,
• * * e tº 33
Ipsa domi, simulac nummos contemplor in arcă.
But did not Maturin write something called the Universe 2
Odoherty. That has reached long ago the uttermost ends of the
earth—but why allude to such things? when are we to have the
Southside Papers? + .
Tickler. Why, I am kept back by a late decision. I fear the
judge who refuses his protection to Byron's Cain, would scarcely
take my raſtan under his wing. -
Sir A. Wylie. Gentlemen, I’ve sat here a long while, and been
greatly diverted with many things I’ve heard, and edified with some
—but the Chancellor, I have the honor to say, is my friend, and I.
must quit the company, if I hear any thing further in a similar strain.
besides, he was perfectly right in that decision. -
Per Owen. Multum dubito. * - -
Odoherty (aside to Pen Owen.) You had better not enter into any
dispute with Sir Andrew. Not much flash, but the longest Scotch
head I am acquainted with. And his humor, why even you might
find him ill to deal with. -
* The Rev. Rober. Charles Maturin lived and died a curate in the richest Church Establish-
ment in the world—that of Ireland. He was a mative of Dublin, and was curate of St. Peter’s
Church, in that city. A limited income, which always kept him in difficulties, led him to
proffer his tragedy of “Bertram,” to the management of Drury Lane Theatre, . It was accepted,
acted, (Kean playing the hero), and brought Maturin if 500. Another of his plays, called
** Montorio,” was offered to John Kemble, by Scott, (who took a strong and kind interest in
Maturin), but nothing advantageous came from it. He also wrote the tragedies of “Manuel”
and “Fredolpho,” the wild romance—as interestimg as any of Mrs. Radcliffe’s—called
“ Melmoth, the Wanderer,” a novel. entitled “Woman, or Pour et Contre.” and a poem called
“The Universe.” He published three other novels, very popular in their day: “The Fatal
Revenge,” “The Wild lish Boy,” and “The Milesian Chief;”—these three appeared with the
name of Dennis Jasper Murphy on the title-page. In 1894, the year before, he died, Maturin
published six “Controversial Sermons,” which exhibit him as a well-read, scholar and an
acute reasoner. Poverty was ever at the heels of this giſted man, whose private character was
excellent.—M. {
t Lady Morgan's receipts from literature cannot have been less than £25,000. Besides this
for many years past, she had a pension of £300 a-year from the British Government.— M.
\
|
}.
“PEN ow?N.” - 193
Pen Owen. You are right. He is indeed a canny clever Scotch-
man. Entre mous THE RING was delighted with his book. You may
depend upon this. J heard him say so myself. -
Tickler. I have been much interested by your delightful descrip-
tion of a certaul beautiful creature, Mr. Owen'. Have you and Mrs.
O, any family, by-the-by ?
JPem, Owen. Three –
Odoherty. You mean volumes—and if so, I can tell you very
seriously, the third is the best of the batch. . -
Pen Owen. To be candid, what is your opinion of my book 2
Odoherty. Your book is a jewel; but if you had happened to be
a Scotsman, and writ such a book about Scotland, and Scots people,
you might just as well have leaped from the top of the Monument as
published it, - -
Pen Owen, Why? I assure you, I wrote the book in the greatest
possible good nature. -
Odoherty. Devil doubts you. I dare say Hogg was never in half
such a benign disposition, as he was when he wrote THE CHALDEE.
Pen Owen, Satire is upon the whole a good-humored vice, in my
opinion. .
Odoherty.'Tis in my estimation the most placid of virtues, Pick
me up some day with a face like a lemon rind—hazy—dumpish—
sulky—bitter—perhaps just escaped from a detestable dun of a
tailor, or a dozen of prating whiglings or the like—and take me into
the nearest tavern. Order a hot beef steak, a rummer of brandy and
water—bring out a good pen and a few sheets of hot-pressed paper,
and a bundle of segars, and say, “At it, Odoherty Up with your
back, Adjutant l” -
Pen Owen. What follows :
Odoherty. A calm a perfect Claude, the most beautiful, serene,
delightful, dewy atmosphere, spreads its wide embracing canopy over
all the troubled surface of my soul, My spirit, enshrined as it were
in the divine depths of contemplation, exerts her energies sweetly,
nobly, sublimely . It is then that I comprehend how true to mature
and to virtue is the exquisite apostrophe of the Epicurean bard—
“Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis,
Ex tuto alterius longum spectare laborem.”
On the whole, I consider Tom Cribb and myself as the two best-
natured men in Britain -
Pen Owen. Well, now, I confess 'twas not in that high-placed vein
I composed my most cutting chapters, I have sometimes wakened
of a morning, God knows how or why, in a strange mixed state of
feeling—ready to go any lengths, in short—up to any thing—utterly
reckless—that's all I can say about the matter—deuced good fun
WOL. I.-15 -
194 - NOCTES AMBROSLAN AF.
Odoherty. Ay, but how inferior that is to the chosen “moods of
My mind?” On such occasions, it may almost be said I would not
harm a fly. ^.
Pen Owen. The scope and tendency of some of your observations
perplex me. - - -
North. I hate this sort of committee business. We're all getting
into knots and corners. Owen and the Adjutant upon satire and
segars—Feldborg and the Odontist on the Czar of Muscovy's tooth-
powder—Tickler dozing—and Sir Andrew Wylie and myself left
quite alone to the great topic of things in general Why, this will
never do. -
Dr. Scott, (tapping his spoon against the side of the bowl, sings.)
- Jolly Tories, fill your glasses,
Odoherty (sings.) Hear the tinkle on the rim.
Tickler (sings.) All the Whigs are geese and asses.
North (sings.) Hollow heart and vision dim I
Chorus-Fal lal lal lal lal lal lal lal &c.
Feldborg, the Dane. Allow me to give you a little Scandinavian
solo. -
North. (Knocking with his hammer.) Silence 1 Feldborg's solo.
Feldborg (sings.)
Hvern morgin ser horna,
Hlock a tems—ar backa,
Skala hanga ma hungra,
Eſrae—shod litud blodi
Hre sigr—fickin Saekir,
Snarla borgar karla
Dynr a Brezkar bryniur
JBlod is Dana visi | | |
Dynr a Brezkar, &c.
North. Come, it suits you very well, after what happened not quite
fifty years ago, to sing such a ditty as this. - .*
Dr. Scott. Keep us a'! Do you ken what he was singing I
thought it was Danish or Dutch at the lowest penny. -
Worth. The last two lines, being interpreted, signify,
“The King of Denmark's bloody hail
Resounds against the British mail.”
Is it not so, Professor'. -
Feldborg. I suffer this no longer | Golt und Teufel ! I quit the
Nomber. [Erit FELDBORG.
North. Why, this is beyond all bearing ! Tickler, you are a new-
married man,—you are or ought to be nimble, -run after the Dane,
and recall him,
Tickler. Sir, do you suppose that because I'm a contributor, an
editor has a right to cast personal reflections upon me? to rend away
GETTING HUFFED. 195
the veil of my domestic concerns —Sir, I scorn your sneers 1—Sir,
your servant —Good night, gentlemen.
[Evit TICKLER, furiosus.
Odoherty. Ye gods ! How infernally drunk Tickler has been these
two hours Honest Tickler he too, to be up !
Timotheus placed on high,
Amid the sounding quire l!
I suppose the next thing will be Sir Andrew Wylie bolting upon
some absurd allusion to his autobiography.
Sir A. Wylie. Mr. Odoherty, I beg your pardon, Captain Odo-
herty! I crave leave to say, ance for a , that, although my life fill
three volumes, and yours but seven pages, mine does not contain any
narrative, either of seeking after a snuff-box in the midst of a battle,
or of marrying the mistress of a chop-house, and escaping as soon as
the till was sucked”—do you take me? -
Dr. Scotl. Life in a mussel ! Weel said, Sir Andrew—stick it
into him. A foul-mouthed creature | Clink down with sic clan-
jamphray ! -
Odoherty. (Showing a lemon cut into a caricature of SIR ANDREw.)
Do you know that phiz, Mr. Baronet 2
Sir A. Wylie, (Throwing down his card.) Mr. Ensign, there's
my address. Good night, gentlemen. [Evit SIR. A. WyLIE.
Dr. Scott, (Aside to North.) Od sauf us ! How Sir Andrew’s
staggering ! Your last bowl has clean done him I maun just see
him as far as Maclean's; for if he were to be ta'en up to the Police
Office, it would never answer—him an Elder, too, ye ken.
[Ecit DR. Scott.
Morth. So, Odoherty, we're left almost to ourselves. I think the
nature and effects of personality have been decently discussed this
evening, however. I hope nothing of what has. happened will ever
transpire. Pen Owen, I think, is asleep.
Odoherty. Snoring. But, Lord love ye, I’ve a short-hand writer
behind that screen yonder. Every word is down. 'Twill make a
prime article; and you knew it would, else we should not have dined
here to-day; but as LUTTRELL says, -
“O, that there might in England be
A duty on Hypocrisy,
* In the brief account of the Ilife and Writings of Odoherty, in Blackwood's Magazine,
which first introduced the Standard-bearer to the reading public, these two incidents were
mentioned, I confess. Odoherty, who was in the 44th infantry, in the battle of New Orleans,
unfortunately was prevented from participating in that contest, having been delayed in search
of a much valued snuff-box, which he had mislaid. What of that?–Colonel Mullins, com-
manding the 44th, was brought to a court-martial for like absence, (like Colonel, like Ensign)
and broke. The other little accident referred to by Sir Andrew, in which Mrs. MºWhirter, jaté
ºf Philadelphia, was a fair participant, was fully explaimed—as the reader of “Christopher in
The Tent,” in this volume, may have seen, and if the explanation satisfied the lady, why should
Šin Andrew Wylie cast a reproach in Odoherty's face?—M.
196 INOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
A tax on Humbug, an excise
On solemn plausibilities,
A stamp on every man that canted
No millions more, if these were granted,
Henceforward would be raised or wanted ;
But Van, with an o'erflowing chest,
Might soon forgive us all the rest.” -
North. Well, I think the reporter must be dry enough by this
time. Come forth, thou rat i' the arras | You shall have your share
of one bowl at the least;-and thou, heir of Cym Owen, rouse thee!
rouse thee for the field ! [Curtain falls.
.* 33 p i I Dº, it e.
Spoken by CHRISTOPHER NoFTH, Esquire, and SIR. A. WYLIE,
Baronet. -
Mr. Morth. “Something too much of this ſ” I hear you cry—
Ye canting creeping vermin! What care I ?
If Whigs there be (methinks there must be some)
Not in their secret souls the slaves of Hum,
Let them for once speak truly 1
Sir A. Wylie. —or be dumb.
Mr. North. Confess it, Jeffrey, (for you needs must know)
That Jest and Earnest hand in hand may go,
That sober truth may be inweaved with fun,
Philosophy be pointed in a pun,
Candor be calm beneath a forehead knit—
Keenly, yet kindly, flash the shafts of wit—
Sir A. Wylie. —And Tories round a harmless table sit.
Mr. North. Confess; speak out, man l
Sir A. Wylie. Once upon a time
You loved a joke yourself, if not a rhyme !
Mr. North. Confess quaint Quizzery, though it makes one wince
Sir A. Wylie. —I bar what wounds a LADY or a PRINCE:- ~
Mr. North. —Is, after all, not quite a hanging matter
—What, Jeffrey ! Not one word for poor deal Satire?
Sir A. Wylie. Well, well, I wish ye wiser, man, and fatter! -
Mr. Worth. I find I can make nothing of these Whigs.
Sir A. Wylie. We'll try to do without them, please the Pigs
Mr. North. To you, to you, ye Tories of the land I -
To you we turn, with you we take our stand!
Not you, ye “PLUCKLEss,” who, when things look blue,
Distrust a cause sublime in spite of you, &
Abandon those who bear the blazing brunt,
And fight, ye fools, your battle in your front—
No—ne'er to court your favor shall we stoop,
Nor fawn for shelter where your crestless eagles droop,
* See Letters to Julia, second edition, p. 104. By-the-by, these elegant letters are much im-
proved in the second edition. The book, is now quite a bijou.-C. N. [Luttrell, one of the
nug-i sparkling wits of his time, who may be reproached with not having written enough.—M.]
Sir A. Wylie.
Mr. North.
*Sir A. Wylie,
Mr. North.
Both.
FPILOGUE, 197
To shun the conflict but hold fast the spoil—
Clutch at the trophy, having shirk'd the toil— - *
—And gloat, while others sweat, on your snug roast and boil!
These are your maxims Venal vapid crew I
Low we may come, but ne'er so low as YOU I
“Low we may come 1” forgive the hasty phrase,
YE Tories true ! whose patronage IS praise I
High the good eminence we now possess,
Nor shall we e'er be lower down—
(looseming a fifth button.) Or less—
While YOU our trumpet hear, and round our banner press,
Though gourdish scions of the “Servum Pecus,” g
Rise as if glare should dim or weight should break us,
Like some tough tree these pithless boughs between,
Knotted and gnarled, appears THE Magazine !
Some last one summer; some, with much ado,
Spin out a speechless Life-in-Death through two;
But wanting depth of soil, and length of root,
Though buds a few and blossoms they may shoot,
One looks in vain to them for genuine juicy fruit,
Squeeze hard One painful mouthful they supply,
But thirsty wits must turn to US, or diel
No. IV. —JULY, 1822.
SCENE–Transferred (by poetic license) to Pisa.”
Odoherty, (solus.) Jupiter strike me! but that cabbage soup and
roasted raisins is an infernal mixture—Blow all Italian cookery, say
I. Every thing is over-done here—how inferior to the Carlingford ºf
The dishes done to rags.
Jønter WAITER,
Waiter. Milordo, here is questo grand Lord is come, for to have
the omore of kissing the manos for sua eccellenza.
Odoherty. Kissing my what? Show in the shaver—hand him in
upon a clean plate, [Evil Waiter.
- Enter LoRD BYRON.
Byron. Mr. Doherty,+I trust I —
Odoherty. Odoherty, if you please, sir.
Byron. Mr. Odoherty, I have to beg pardon for this intrusion—but
really, hearing you were to remain but this evening in Pisa, I could
not deny myself the pleasure of at least seeing a gentleman of
whom I have heard and read so much—I need scarcely add, that I
believe myself to be in the presence of THE Odoherty. *
Odoherty. You may say that ; but, may I take the liberty of
asking, who you are yourself?
* A large portion of the preceding Noctes were written by Magim m, but that which followeth
(to wit, No. IV.) is entirely from his pen. It has so many actual points of vraisemblance, that
even Byron himself is said to have exclaimed, after reading it, “By Jupiter' the fellow has
me down regularly, in black and , white.” The scene was laid in Pisa, whither Byrom had
removed in the autumn of 1821, and remained until September, IS22, when he went to Genoa,
and thence, in 1823, to Greece.—'The mention of this reminds me, by the way, of what tho
Guiccioli said, in her visit to London; when she was so lionized as having been the lady-lovo
of Byron. She was rather fond of speaking on the subject, desigmating herself by some Vene-
tian pet phrase which certainly was mot, to be found in any dictionary, but which she inter.
preted as meaning “Love-wife.” At Pisa, he had been sounded on the subject of going to
Greece, where it was believed he had immense wealth, where it was known that he loved the
country, and had written warmly in its favor. Ile was undecided. Again and again he was
solicited, each time more strongly. . At last, he sportively said to the Guiccioli, “Let fourteen
captains come and ask me to go, and go ſ will.” “Ah,” said the dauna, “there are not fourteen
Greek captains in ltaly; now I know that you will remain.” She mentioned, to show how
slight the chance was of his leaving Italy, what he said. As it was known that he strictly
adhered to his word, on all occasions, a letter was written to Greece, and fourteen captains
actually were sent out. They wanted on him, pressed him to go, backing their request with
letters from Prince Mavrocardato, (who offered to resign his leadership in favor of Byron.) and
the result was that, what he had playfully said, being taken for earnest, he believed he could
not honorably get out of it. The result was—his departure for Greece in August, 1823,-M.
1 A liotel in Dublin.—M.
LACRYMA. CHTRISTI. s 199
Byron, My name's Byron,
Odoherty, Byron l Lord Byron God bless you, my dear fellow.
Sure I was a blockhead not to know you at first sight. Waiter |
waiter waiter! I say, They don’t understand even plain English
In this house !
- Jºnfer WAITER.
Waiter, Milordo -
Odoherty. Instantaneously a clean glass—if you have any thing
clean in this filthy country—and, my lord, what will you drink ſº I
drink every thing bating water,
Pyron, W. Mr. Odoherty, to be plain with you—you will find
but poor accommodation in these Italian imns—and I should, there-
fore, recommend you to come with me to my villa.” You will meet
fellows there—asses of the first water—native, and stranger, whom
you can cut-up, quiz, and humbug without end,
Odoherty. With deference, my lord, I shall stay where I am—l
never knew any place where a man was so much at home as in a
tavern, no matter how shy. Ho! waiter.
Waiter. Milordo
Odoherty. What-a have-a you-a to drink-a, in this damned house-a
of yours ? (Aside.)—I suppose to make the fellow understand, I must
speak broken English.
[Lord Byron whispers waiter, who evit, and after a moment
returns with two flasks of Montifiascone.t *
Byron. Fill, Mr. Odoherty. Your health, sir; and welcome to Italy.
Odoherty, Your health, my lord; and I wish we both were out of
it. But this stuff is by no means so bad as I expected. What do
you call it?
Byron, Lacryma Christi.;
Odoherty. Lacryma Christi ! A pretty name to go to church with !
Very passable stingo—though Inishowen is, after all, rather stiffer
drinking.
Byron. Inishowen | What's that ?
Odoherty. Whisky, made in the hills about Inishowen, in the north,
* In July, 1822, Byron and Shelley had their town-residences at Pisa. Byron had a villeg-
giatara (or country house) at Mont Nero, near Leghorn—Shelley's was at Lerici. Byron's
Pisan dwelling was the Casa Lanfranchi, (on the river Arno, which runs through the city,)
and is said to have been built by Michael Angelo. lt was in this palace that Byron gave
º to Leigh Hunt and his family, and here the first number of The Liberal was pic-
ared.—M.
I f This I take to be a mistake. They were in the region of Mcntepulciano, which Rödi, (in
his “Bacco in Toscano”) has pronounced to be The King of Wines.—It is a pleasant tipple.
smelling like a fresh nosegay, but, unfortunately, does not bear transportation. It ruust be
drunk, not only in Italy, but in the very district where it is made.—M.
I. There are two wines bearing this name, One is light-colored, like Hock, with a flavor
something like aërated lemomade and sherry, weak and sweet. The other (chiefly made in
Sicily) has a ruby tint, is rough to the taste, being mothing more nor less than an Italian port-
wime This red Lacryma. Christi is much used in England to adulterate the Portuguese port-
wine The sweet, pale Iſacryma, mixed with an equal portion of good brandy, used to
make a passable libation.—M. -
|| Of Ireland.—M.
200 * NOCTES AMBROSTANAE,
General Hart patronizes it much, Indeed the Lord Chancellor, old
Manners, is a great hand at it, -
Byron. I cannot exactly say I recognize whom you speak of; nor
did I ever hear of the liquor.
Odoherty. Why, then, I wrote rather a meat song about it once on
a time, which I shall just twist off for the edification of your lordship.
Odoherty (sings.)
1.
1 care not a fig for a flagon of flip,
Or a whistling can of rumbo ;
But my tongue through whisky punch will slip
As nimble as Hurlothrumbo.
So put the spirits on the board, .
And give the lemons a squeezer,
And we'll mix a jorum, by the Lord
That will make your worship sneeze, sir.
2.
The French, no doubt, are famous souls,
I love them for their brandy;
In rum and sweet tobacco rolls,
Jamaica men are handy. .
The big-breech'd Dutch in juniper gin
I own, are very knowing ;
But are rum, gin, brandy, worth a pin,
Compared with Inishowen :
JEctempore verse additional.
Though here with a Lord, 'tis jolly and fine,
To tumble down Lacryma Christi,
And over a skin of Italy's wine
To get a little misty;
Yet not the blood of the Bourdeaux grape,
The finest grape-juice going,
Nor clammy Constantia, the pride of the Cape,
Prefer I to Inishowen.
Byron. Thank ye, Mr. Odoherty. Oh! by Jupiter, you have not
been flattered ; you are a prince of good-fellows; ay, and of good-
looking fellows.
Odoherty The same compliment I may pay you, my Lord. I
never saw you before. By-the-by, you look much older than the
print which Murray gave me when I was up at the Coronation.
Byron. Ah then you know Murray ? Murray is an excellent
fellow. Not such a bookseller between the Apennine and the
Grampian.
Odoherty. Always excepting Ebony, my Lord? o
Byron. How is Ebony ? I’m told he's been getting fat since I
saw him. - º
SAM ROGERS. 201
Odoherty. A porpoise. No wonder, my lord; let them fattel,
who win. As for laughing, that you know, we may all screw a
mouth to.
Byron. On the same principle, my old friend Jeffrey must be
thinning apace.
Odoherty. A perfect whipping-post. But I have not seen the little
man this some time. I don’t think he goes much into public—his
book I know does not.
Byron. Have you been in London lately, Mr. Odoherty 2
Odoherty. O yes, past through about a fortnight ago. But let me
request your Lordship to sink the mister entirely, and call me by my
name quite plain—Odoherty, as it is.
JByron. Certainly, Odoherty, as you wish it—but you in return
must sink the Lord, and let me be plain Byron.
Odoherty. To be sure, Byron. Hunt, you know, called you “Dear
Byron” some years ago in a dedication;% and if you would allow the
familiarity of a poor devil of a Cockney editor of a sneaking Sunday
paper, you would be squeamish indeed, if you wanted to be Lorded
by me. And yet, after all, Le Hunto is a cleverer fellow than most
of the Cockneys.
Byron. He's worth fifty Hoggs. These plebs occasionally write
good verses.
Odoherty. I shan’t give up IIogg. Have you seen his last work :
Byron. His last work I am glad to hear it has come at length.
Odoherty. It is quite a Chaldee. -
Byron. Oh that's his first work. Seriously, however, I have
heard nothing of him since your good-humored notice of his Life in
Blackwood.i
Odoherty. Thank you, Baron | I take you. By-the-by, what a
right good poem that was of yours, on old Bam Rogers. You and
I may leave off quizzing one another. We at least are too much
up to trap. But the old banker was as mad as blazes about it.
* The poem of “Rimini” was dedicated to Byrom, by Leigh Hunt, who commenced what he
had to say in proso with the words “My dear Byron.” Many years after, when Byron's books
came to be examined, after his death, it was found that the words “My dear Byron” had been
marked out, with ink, and “Impudent Varlet,” in his Lordship's own hand-writing, written
opposite —M.
r In the summer of 1821, there appeared in Edinburgh, a third edition of Hogg’s “Mountain
Bard,” with an auto-biography. In Blackwood, for August, 1821, appeared a critique upon
this Memoir, in which the Shepherd's adventures were greatly ridiculed—particularly one
sentence, on which he positively asserted that he had written The Chaldee Manuscript, and
amother in which he affirmed that Blackwood's Magazine was an original suggestion of his
own. It was a savage, slaughtering article, but Christopher North insisted (in Maga), that
Hogg himself had written it, to gain motoriety —M.
#A set of dogrel rhymes, in which Rogers was complimented as possessing, among other
personal advantages,
“Features that would shame a knocker.”
The story goes, that when Rogers visited Byron in Italy, the noble bard placed the satire, as
aforesaid, under the sofa-cushion on which the banker-bard reposed, and chuckled at the idea
of his sitting, as it were, on a sort of literary volcano!—M.
202 NOCTES AMBROSIAN A3.
Byron. Non mi ricordo. I was in a state of civilation* when I
wrote it—if indeed I did ever write such a thing.
Odoherty. 'Twas Wordsworth told me of it, and I doubt he's
given to humbugging much. e -
Byron. Oh the old Ponder . The great god Pan is he extant
still 2 y \
Odoherty. Alive and sulky. He has been delivered of two octavos
this spring. *
Byron. So have I, for that matter. Are his as heavy as mine 7
Odoherty. The Giants' Causeway to a two-year old paving-stone—
thundering fellows, about Roman Catholic Emancipation, which he
has dished into little sonnets. Yours, however, were lumpish enough,
in the mame of Nicholas. -
Byron. The sale, at least, was heavy.
Odoherty. Your tributary, his Majesty, the Emperor of the West,
grumbled like a pig in the fits, I suppose.
Byron. Come, come, no personalities on this side of the Alps.
Odoherty. Satan reproving sin. That's pretty from you—the
bottle's out—after what Jeffrey has said of you—call for another—
in the last number of the Edinburgh—fill your glass—of the Edin-
burgh Review. No bad bottle this.
Byron. Why, Odoherty, you and I may joke, but such fellows as
these to be preaching about Cain, and canting about Don Juan is too
bad. I once thought Jeffrey had a little brains, but now I see he is
quite an old woman. -
Odoherty. Nay, by the eternal frost, and that’s as great an oath
as if I swore by the holy bottle, I agree with Jeff on this point. I
don’t care a cracked jews-harp about him in general ; but here, faith,
I must say I think him quite right. Consider, my lord—consider, I
say, what a very immortal work Don Juan is—how you therein
sport with the holiest ties—the most sacred feelings—the purest
sentiments. In a word, with every thing—the bottle is with you—
with every thing which raises a man above a mere sensual being. I
say, consider this, and you will not wonder so much that all England
is in an outcry against it, as that Murray, surrounded with the rums
and buzzes of parsons as he is, should have the audacity to publish it
—or Sir Mungo Malagrowther — w
Byron. Who? - -
Odoherty. His editor—now-a-days commonly called Sir Mungo
* Magimm made a mistake in putting such a word as civilation into Byron’s mouth, as it
vras one which he (Maginn), j invented, and solely used for a long time. De Quincey
records Magimm's opinion “that no man, however much he might tend to civilization, was to
be regarded as having absolutely reached its apex until he was drunk ;” also the fact, that, after
1(, P. M., civilization being an odiously long word to utter, it might be abridged to civilation.
Therefore, in De Quincey’s neological dictionary of English, he entered it thus:–“Civilation
by ellipsis, or more properly by syncope, or vigorously speaking, by hic-cup, from civiliza-
tion.”—M.
DON JUAN. 203
Malagrowther. I say it is really astonishing that Murray should
print, or Sir Mungo have the face not to cut up, a book so destruc-
tive of every feeling which we have been taught to cherish.
Byron. Are you serious, Ensign?
Odoherty. Serious as the rock of Cashel.
Byron. I did not expect it. I thought this silly outcry about Don
Juan and Cain was confined to the underlings of literature; so much
So, that I was astonished to find even Jeffrey joining in it—but that
you, one of the first and most enlightened men of the age, should
adopt it—that Ensign and Adjutant Morgan Odoherty should be
found swelling in the war whoop of my antagonist Dr. Southey, is
indeed more than I expected. *
Odoherty. I am not an old quiz, like Malagrowther and the Laure-
ate: yet, my Lord Byron, I am a man, and an Englishman, (I mean
an Irishman,) and disapprove of Don Juan.
Byron. The devil ye do | Why, most illustrious rival of Dr.
Magnus Oglethorpe, why
Odoherty. I have already sufficiently explained myself.
Byron. You have uttered nothing, sir, but the common old hum-
bug. In Don Juan I meant to give a flowing, free satire on things as
they are. I meant to call people's attention to the realities of things.
I could make nothing of England or France. There every thing is
convention—surface—cant. I had recourse to the regions where
nature acts more vividly, more in the open light of day. I meant no
harm, upon my honor. I meant but to do what any other man
might have done with a more serious face, and had all the Hannah
Mores in Europe to answer his Plaudite.
Odoherty. I don’t follow your lordship.
Byron. Not follow me, sir? Why, what can be more plain than
my intention ? I drew a lively lad, neglected in his education, strong
in his passions, active in his body, and lively in his brains; would
ou have had me make him look as wise as a Quarterly Reviewer
#. boy must sow his wild oats; wait till Don Juan be turned of
fifty, and if I don’t represent him as one of the gravest and most
devout Tories in the world, may I be hanged. As yet he has only
been what Dr. Southey once was, “a clever boy, thinking upon poli-
tics (and other subjects) as those who are boys in mind, whatever
their age may be, do think.” Have patience. The Don may be
Lord Chancellor ere he dies.
Odoherty. The serious charge is your warmth of coloring.
Byron. Look at Homer, remember the cloud scene. Look at Vir-
gil, remember the cave-scene. Look at Milton, remember the bower-
scene, the scene of “nothing loth.” Why, sir, poets are like their
heroes, and poets represent such matters (which all poets do and
204 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
must represent) more or less warmly, just as they are more or less
Iſle]].
Odoherty. Well, but what do you say for Cain? 'Tis blas-
phemous. • . - .
Byron. Not intentionally, at least—but I cannot see that it is so at
all. You know—for I suppose you know theology as well as you
know everything else. j : -
Odoherty. Like Dr. Magee—an old friend of mine, who has lately
been made an Archbishop.” -
Byron. You know then that there is no question so puzzling in all
divinity—no matter under what light you view it—as the origin of
evil. There is no theory whatever—I say not one—and you may
take your countryman, Archbishop King's, among them, which is
not liable to great objection, if the objectors be determined to cavil.
Now I assert, and that fearlessly, that it is quite possible to reconcile
my scheme, bating a few poetical flights of no moment, with views
and feelings perfectly religious. 1 engage to write a commentary
on Cain, proving it beyond question a religious poem. *
Odoherty. Warburton did the same for the Essay on Man—but
convinced nobody. .
Byron. And yet Warburton was a Bishop—yea, more than a
bishop—one of your brightest, deepest, profoundest, most brilliant
theologians. I only ask you to extend to me the same indulgence
you extend to Milton—ay, even to Cumberland—if his Calvary be
still extant.
Odoherty. Nay, my lord, there is this difference. The intention
of Milton and Cumberland makes a vast distinction. They wrote
poems to promote religion—your lordship wrote -
Byron. Mr. Odoherty, I presume—may, I know—I am talking to
a gentleman. I have disclaimed irreligious intention, and I demand,
as a gentleman, to be believed. Cain is like all poems in which
spiritual matters are introduced. The antagonist of Heaven—of
whom the Prometheus of AEschylus is the prototype—cannot be
made to speak in such terms, as may not be perverted by those who
wish to pervert. I defy any man—I repeat it—I defy any man tº
show me a speech—a line in Cain, which is not defensible on th
* Dr. William Magee, author of “Discourses on the Scriptural Doctrines of the Atomer
and Sacrifice,” (directed against the tenets of the Unitarians,) after having been Deam o'
and Bishop of Raphoe, was made Archbishop of Dublin, in l822. He died in 1831,-\l.
f Dr. William King, Archbishop of I)ublin, born in 1650, died in 1729. In his treatise “L.
Origine Mali,” or the origin of evil, he undertook to show how all the several kinds of evil
with which the world abounds are consistent with the goodness of God, and may be accounted
for without the supposition of an evil principle.—M. . g
4. Dr. William Warburton, Bishop of Glocester, (author of the Divine Legation of Moses,)
ublished, in a periodical entitled The Works of the Learned, a vindication of Pope. who had
eem charged with having evimced a tendency to Spinocism and naturalism, in his Essay *.m.
Man. When this poem was translated into French, it had been skilfully attacked, on the abovo
grounds, by Professor Crousaz, of Switzerland. Pope eventually declared that he never had any
intention of propagating the principles of Bolingbroke, and that Warburton had made his
(Port's) views clearer even to himself —M. -
IIUMBUG of REVIEws. 205
same principle as the haughty speech of Satan, in the fifth book of
Milton—or the proud defiance of Moloch in the second. In both
poets—I beg pardon—in the poet, and in Cain, speeches torn from
the context, and misinterpreted by the malevolent or the weak-
minded, may be made to prove what was directly contrary to the
intention of the writer. - r -
Odoherty. To be sure, as Chief Baron O'Grady says, in his Letter
to Mr. Gregory, remove the words “the fool has said in his heart;”
and you can prove by Scripture that “there is no God.” es
Byron. I know nothing of your Chief Baron, but what he says
is true—and it is so, that I have been criticised. I don’t complain of
Lord Eldon. Perhaps it became his high station to deliver the judg-
ment he did—perhaps it was right he should bend to public opinion
—which opinion, however, I shall for ever assert, was stimulated by a
party of more noise than number. But I do confess—for I was born
an aristocrat—that I was a good deal pained when I saw my books,
in consequence of his decree, degraded to be published in sixpenny
numbers by Benbow, with Lawrence’s” Lectures—Southey's Wat
Tyler—Paine's Age of Reason——and the Chevalier de Faublas.
Odoherty. I am sorry I introduced the subject. If I thought I
should have in the slightest degree annoyed your lordship — -
Byron. I am not annoyed, bless your soul; there is nothing I like
better than free discussion. That, you know, can never be, except
between men of sense. As for all your humbug of Reviews, Maga-
zines, &c., why, you are, at least, as much as any man alive, up to
their nothingness.
Odoherty. 'Tis the proudest of my reflections, that I have some-
what contributed to make people see what complete stuff all that
affair is.
Byron, I admire your genius, Mr. Odoherty: but why do you
claim this particular merit
Odoherty. Merely as a great contributor to Blackwood. That work
has dome the business,
JByron. As how, friend Morgan -
Odoherty. Call another flask, and I’ll tell you—Ay, now fill a
bumper to old Christopher. .
Byron. With three times three with all my heart. The immortal
Kit North | | | | | | | | | (Bibunt ambo.)
Odoherty. Why, you see, what with utterly squabashing Jeffrey,
and what with giving Malagrowther an odd squeeze or so, but most
* Lawrence, a celebrated amatomist in London, whose published Lectures were so tinged with
materialism that, becoming so popular as to be printed, the law declined protecting him, on the
score of their irreligion. So, Wat Tyler, an early poem of Southey's, which he had never pub-
lished, having got into print, the law did not allow an injunction on its sale, inasmuch as it
was a republican poern. In 1836 Southey included Wat Tyler in his collected works, without
ultering a line of it, and it certainly does not appear so republican as was originally repre
sented.—M.
206 TNOCTES AMBROSIANAE,
of all, by doing all that ever these folks could do in one Number
and then undoing it in the next, puffing, deriding, sneering, jeering,
prosing, piping, and so forth, he has really taken the thing into his
own hands, and convinced the Brutum Pecus that 'tis all quackery
and humbug. ge . . -
J3/ron. Himself included ? f :
Odoherty. No–not quite that neither. As to two or three prin-
ciples—I mean religion, loyalty, and the like, he is always as stiff as
a poker; and although he now and then puts in puffs on mediocre
fellows, every body sees they’re put in merely to fill the pages; and
the moment he or any of his true men set pen to paper, the effect is
instantaneous. His book is just like the best book in the world—it
contains a certain portion of Balaam. -
Byron. And this sort of course, you think, has enlightened the
public? .
Odoherty. Certain and sure it has. People have learnt the great
lesson, that Reviews, and indeed all periodicals, merely quá such, are
nothing. They take in his book not as a Review, to pick up opinions-
of new books from it, nor as a periodical, to read themselves asleep
upon, but as a classical work which happens to be continued from
month to month;-a real Magazine of mirth, misanthropy, wit, wis-
dom, folly, fiction, fun, festivity, theology, bruising, and thingumbob.
He unites all the best materials of the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, and
the Sporting Magazine—the literature and good writing of the first
—the information and Orthodoxy of the second, and the flash and
trap of the third.
Byron. You speak con amore, sir: Why the devil am I cut up and
parodied in Ebony ? -
Odoherty. Come, come, pop such questions to the marines | Have
you ever been half so much cut up there as I have been 7 Fill your
glass! Here's to Humbug. Three times three, my lord | No two
men alive should fill higher to that toast than we that are here pre-
sent, thank God; and I’m very glad to be here, with my legs under
the same board with the author of Cain and Don Juan.
Byron. What, after abusing them both so savagely just this
Innonnent.
Odoherty. So I do still ;-but I had rather have written a page of
Juan than a ton of Childe Harold—that was too great a bore entirely.
Byron. Well,—waive my works in toto. How is Sir Walter
Scott? - $
Odoherty. I have not seen him for nearly six months; but he is
quite well, and writing Peveril of the Peak; that is, if he be the
Author of Waverley. g
Byron. Which he is.
Odoherty. I won’t swear to that, knowing what I do about Anasta-
THE PERIODICALS. 207
sius. Did you see how Hope bristled up in the back in Blackwood,
when somebody, I forget who, perhaps myself, said that you were
guilty of that most admirable book 2
Byron. Yes, but no matter. Could you give me any more infor-
mation de re periodicali, as the Baron of Bradwardine would have
said : * {
Odoherty. I shall sing a stave touchant that point—
I
O! gone are the days, when the censure or praise,
Of the Monthly was heard with devotion;
When the sight of the blue of old Griffith's Review,”
Set each heart in a pit-a-pat motion;
We care not a curse, now, for better or worse,
For the prate of the maundering old mumper;
And, since it is dead-why, no more can be said,
Than “Destruction to Cant” in a bumper.
2
When the sense of the town had the Monthly put down,
Mr. Jeffrey a new caper started:
Every fourth of a year he swore to appear,
To terrify all the faint-hearted.
Then with vigor and pith, Brougham, Jeffrey, and Smith,
JBegan to belabor the natives;
Who, bother'd at first by their bravo and burst,
Sunk under the scribblers like caitiffs.
8.
Quite vex'd at their blows, Johnny Murray arose,
Assisted by mild Billy Gifford—
The Edinburgh work he squabash'd like a Turk,
So that folks do not now care a whiff for't.
But soon such a gang, there grew up slap-bang,
Of scribblers and nibblers reviewing,
That people got sick of the horrible trick,
And it almost had set them a-sp—g.
4.
but a figure of light soon burst on their sight,
In Bill Ebony's beautiful pages—
The immortal Kit North in his glory came forth,
With his cycle of satellite sages.
He can cant, it is true—he can sport a review,
Now and then, when it suits his devices;
But who trusts to his prog is a bothersome dog,
If he says he is stingy of spices.
Byron. Not a bad song! Cazzo. I have quite lost the knack of
song-writing. Tom Moore is the best at it now alive. -
* Dr. Griffith was Editor of The Monthly Review for many years.--The Monthly Maga-
£ime was conducted by Sir Richard Phillips.--M.
208 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
Odoherty. The present company excepted, you mean ; but truly
my lord, I don’t care a tester for that piperly poet of Green Erin.
I don’t think he ever wrote one real good song in his days. He
wants pith, by Jericho I and simplicity, and straight-forward meaning.
He's always twining and whining. Give me your old stave.
Byron. You prefer Burns, perhaps, now you’ve been so long a
Scotchman, and heard all their eternal puffing of one another.
Odoherty. Poh poh I was too old a cat for that straw. Burns
wrote five or six good things; Tam o'Shanter, M'Pherson's Lament,
Farewell, thou fair Earth, Mary’s Dream, the Holy Fair, the Stanzas
to a Louse on a Lady's Bonnet, and perhaps a few more; but the
most of his verses are mere manufacture—the most perfect common-
place about love and bowers, and poverty, and so forth. And as for
his prose, why, Gad-a-mercy ’tis execrable. 'Tis worse than Hogg's
worst, or Allan Cunningham's best. His letters are enough to make
a dog sick. - ** -
Byron. Come, you are too severe; Burns was a noble fellow,
although Jeffrey abused him. But indeed that was nothing. After
praising the Cockneys, who cares what he reviles 7 -
Odoherty. Not I. -
Byron. No, no ; I don’t suspect you of any such folly. Pray,
have you seen any of our Italian Improvisatores as yet? What do
you think of their art?
Odoherty. That I can beat it.
Byron. In English or Irish -
Odoherty. In any language I know—Latin or Greek, if you like
them.
Byron. Try Latin, then.
Odoherty. Here's Ritson. Turn him over; I'll translate any song
you like off-hand. -
Byron. Here, take this one—“Back and side go bare.” 'Tis not
the worse for having a bishop for its father.” - -
Odoherty. Old Still must have been a hearty cock,-here goes.
Read you the English, and I’ll chaunt it in Latin.t .
BYRON READs. CANTAT DoRERTIADES.
- * 1. 1.
Backe and side go bare, go bare, Sint nuda dorsum, latera—
Both foot and hande go colde: Pes, manus, algens sit ;
But, bellye, God sende thee good ale yenough, Dum ventri veteris copia
Whether it be newe or olde. - Zythi novive fit.
* John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells, flourished in the reign of Elizabeth, and died in 1607.
He is the reputed author of “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” a dramatic piece of low humor, very
characteristic of the manners of the English in that day. The fine old chant, “Back and side
go bare,” is introduced into this drama.-M1.
i This Latin version has been considered one of Maginn’s best translations. It gives not only
the actual meaning, but the measure, witn rhymes and double rhymes.—M.
BISHOP STILL’s CHANT.
I cannot eat but lytle meate.
My stomacke is not good ;
But sure I thinke that I can drynke
With him that weares a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I am nothing a colde;
I stuff my skyn so full within,
Of jolly good ale and olde.
Backe and side go bare, go bare,
Both foote and hande go colde;
But, bellye, God sende thee good ale enoughe,
Whether it be newe or olde. , -
2.
I love no rost, but a nut-browne toste,
And a crab laid in the fyre;
A little breade shall do me stead,
Much breade I not desyre.
No frost nor snow, nor winde, I trowe,
Can hurt me if I wolde;
I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt,
Of jolly good ale and olde,
Backe and side go bare, &c.
3
And Tyb, my wyfe, that, as her lyfe,
Loveth well good ale to seeke;
Full oft drynkes shee, tyll ye may see
The teares run down her cheeke:
Then dowth she trowle to mee the boule,
Even as a mault-worme shuld; }
And sayth, “Sweete hart, I took my parte
Of this jolly good ale and olde.”
Back and side go bare, &c.
4
Now let them drynke, till they nod and wynke,
Even as good felowes should doe:
They shall not mysse to have the blysse
Good ale doth bringe men to.
And all poore soules that have scowr’d boules,
Or have them lustely trolde,
God save the lyves of them and their wyves,
Whether they be yonge or old.
IRacke and syde go bare, &c.
209
Non possum multum edere,
Quia stomachus est nullus;
Sed volo vel monacho bibere
Quanquam sit huic cucullus.
Et quamvis nudus ambulo,
De frigore non est metus;
Quia semper Zytho vetulo
Ventriculus est impletus.
Sint nuda dorsum, latera—
Pes, manus, algens sit;
Dum ventri veteris copia
Zythi novive fit.
2.
Assatum nolo——tostum volo—
Vel pomum igni situm ;
Nil pane careo—parvum habeo
Pro pane appetitum.
Me gelu, nix, vel ventus vix
Afficerent injuriá;
Haec sperno, ni adesset mi
Zythi veteris penuria.
Sint nuda, &c.
3.
Et uxor Tybie, qui semper sibi
Vult quaerere Zythum bene,
Ebibit haec persaepe, nec
Sistit, dum madeant genae.
Et mihi tum dat cantharum,
Sic mores sunt bibosi ;
Et dicit “Cor, en l impleor
Zythi dulcis et annosi.”
Sint nuda, &c.
4.
Nunc ebibant, donec nictant
Ut decet virum bonum
Felicitatis habebunt satis,
Nam Zythi hoc est donum.
Et omnes hi, qui canthari
Sunt haustibus lactati,
Atque uxores weljuniores
Vel senes, Diis sint grati.
Sint nuda, &c.
Byron. Bravo—bravissimo – why, you would beat old Camillo
Querno if you would only learn Italian.*
Odoherty. I intend to learn it between this and the end of the
Leo X. was much pleased with his
* Camillo Querno was a Neapolitan poet of the 15th century, who acquired great fame by
his faculty for externpore versification, and obtained the mame (first given him by some of his
convivial friends. while at Rome, in 1514) of Arch-Poet.
buſſoonery, and often admitted him to his table. He died in 1528–M. *
WOL. I.--16
210 NOCTES AMBROSLAN.A.
week. There is no language on the face of the earth I could not
learn in three days, except Sanscrit, which took me a week.” It
took Marsham of Serampore seven years. Would your lordship
wish to hear a Sanscrit ode I wrote to A. W. Schlegel ?
Byron. No, thank you, not just now. You are not doing the
Lacryma justice. / r
'Odoherty. Curse it, it is getting cold on my stomach. Is there
no more stout potation in the house?
Byron. Brandy, I presume, but the sugar is execrable.
Odoherty. No matter, it makes superb grog-almost as good as
rum—far better than whisky. Have you any objection, Byron 3
Byron. Not the least; whatever is agreeable to you. Hola!—
JEnter waiter—evits—and returns with a skin of brandy. . .
Odoherty. Ay, this skin is a pretty thing. It puts a man instinc-
tively in mind of a skinful. Gargle it most delicately. Flow, thou
regal amber stream. Talk of the Falls of the Rhone in comparison
with such a cascade as this Here—water—aqua pura. Ay, that
will do. You are putting too much water, my lord—it will rise on
your stomach, as old Doctor Rumsnout often told me,
Byron. Nay, mix as you please, and let me settle my own tipple.
Odoherty. Oh I of course, freedom of will. But this is far supe-
rior to the rascally quaff we have been drinking. By all accounts
your lordship leads a gay life here. ..
Byron. Not more gay than you have led elsewhere. But if you
allude to what you see in the papers, and the travels of impertinent
and underbred tourists;–underbred they must be, else they would
not publish anecdotes of the private life of any gentleman, to satisfy
the multitude, even if they were true—nothing can be more false or
ridiculous. I sedulously cut the English here, on purpose to avoid
being made food for journals, and Balaam to swell the pages of gab-
bling tourists. Indeed, I have not been in general treated well by
these people. Then there are my Memoirs, published by Colburn
Odoherty. A most audacious imposture | He had heard the report
of your having given your Life to Moore, and, accordingly, thinking
he might make a good thing of it, he hires at once Dictionary Watkins
to set about Memoirs, which, to give old Gropius credit for indus-
try, he touched up in a fortnight; and advertised it was, as the
Memoirs of Lord B., particularly in the country papers. -
Byron. Industry it was only the industry of the scissors, for half
the book is merely cut out of the Peerage, giving an account of my
* Maginn scarcely exaggerated his wondrous faculty in acquiring a knowledge of languages.
He was acquainted with nearly all the dead, and most of the living tongues.—M. ... .
f Dr. Watkins was a sort of general life-writer. He compiled Memoirs of Byrom, which
told very well, and wrote a Life of Sheridan, composed from newspaper paragraphs, play-books, .
and Parliamentary reports.--M. .
EYRON AND BLACKWOOD. 211
old grim ancestors—and newspapers, magazines, and other authentic
vehicles of intelligence supply the rest.
Odoherty. I can assure you, my lord, it imposed on many simple,
chuckleheaded, open-mouthed people, as your Autobiography.
Byron. Impossible. An idiot must have known that I had not
any thing to do with it, even from its style. -
Odoherty. Style—as to style, that, is all fudge. I myself have
written in all kind of styles from Burke to Jeremy Bentham. But
I assure your lordship the mob charge you with these Memoirs.
Byron. Why, really some people believe me capable of any kind
of stuff. You remember I was accused of writing puffs for Day and
Martin.
Odoherty. A calumny, I know, my dear Byron, for I am myself
author of them. By the way, have you heard the epigram on your
disclaimer ? *
Byron. No-tell it me—I hope it is good.
Odoherty. You shall judge. t
oN READING THE APPENDIX To LORD BYRON's TRAGEDY OF THE Two
FOSCAR.I.
Is Byron surprised that his enemies say
He makes puffing verses for Martin and Day ?
Why, what other task could his lordship take part in
More fit than the service of Day, and of Martin 3
So shining, so dark—all his writing displays
A type of this liquid of Martin and Day's—
Gouvernantes—Kings—laurel-crown'd Poets attacking—
Oh! he's master complete of the science of Blacking I
Byron. No great affair. But there are “many more too long” to
trouble you with, which the public give me credit for.
Odoherty. As for instance, the attack on Ebony. Give me a speci-
men of that—or give me the thing itself, and I shall make him
print it.
Byron. ſt is too stale now ; besides, I have quite forgotten it.
Murray has the only copy I know of and I shall write to him to
give it to you on your return.” 4
Odoherty. Thank you—and a copy of the Irish Advent, too !
Byron. Hush | Hush |
Odoherty. You need not be afraid of me, my lord, I have seen it;
there are a dozen copies in existence. -
Byron. Let's change the subject. Giving my Memoirs was not
the first trick Colburn served me. You remember the Vampire
affair.
.* The Letter to the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine was first printed in 1830, in Moore's
Byron.-M.
212 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Odoherty. Ah! poor Jack Polidori ! Lord rest him. Polidori
was bribed on the occasion.*
Pyron. I am sorry for it. I once thought him a fair fellow. But
you see in this catchpenny Life how Colburn's hack pretends to
censure the forgery, though his employer was the sole planner and
manager of the affair—and it was he who got some people in the
Row to father the published pamphlet—the separate one, you know.
Odoherty. Ay—and I heard, on authority which I believe, that
Colburn cancelled a disavowal of your being the author, which some
person had written and prefixed to the notice of the Vampire in the
New Monthly.
Byron. Hand me the brandy, that I may wash my mouth after
mentioning such things. How is the New Monthly 7
Odoherty. Dying hard. Nobody of talent about it except Camp.
bell himself, who is too lazy. As for ******* ***** *****
and other mere asses —
Byron. I have never heard of the worthies you mention.
Odoherty. By jingo, I am sure of that. **** is a great officer.
He sits in the theatre taking notes, as magisterially as a judge does
on a trial, and with as much dignity.
Byron. Transeat. Murray sends me shoals of periodicals. There
appears to be a swarm of them lately, and I find I am a popular
subject for all. Not a fellow takes pen in hand without criticising
II].0.
Odoherty. Oxoniensis gave you, or rather Murray, a good rib-
roasting. I trouble you for the bottle.
Byron. I think too harshly—but the Oxonians are great big-wigs.
Odoherty. Oh thundering tearers, in their own opinion. I
remember ****, who, n'importe—going into Covent Garden a few
years ago, simultaneously with the Prince Regent. The audience,
of course, rose out of respect to his Royal Highness, and remained
for some time standing; on which the delighted Tyro–hot from
Rhedycina, exclaimed—God bless my soul—these good people, who
mean well, I dare say, have been informed that I am in the first class,
and about to stand for Oriel.f
Byron. Ha! haſ haſ I shall, however, look back always with
pleasure to the days,
When smitten first with sacred love of song,
I roamed old Oxford's hoary piles among;f
* When Byron was in Switzerland, in 1816, the Shelleys and himself agreed that each
should write a prose story. Mrs. Shelley produced “Frankenstein,” Byron wrote a fragment,
and Dr. Polidori, (his physioian.) wrote a tale, called “The Vampire,” which has repeatedly
been dramatized, although very deficient in literary merit. ... When Polidori came to Eng-
land, he published this story as Byron's, which drew a disclaimer from the noble poet.
Polidori finally perished by his own hand.—M.
f For a Fellowship !—M.
.# Maginn has a lapsus penna, here, It was not “old Oxford's hoary piles among” which
Byron roamed. Ile was a member of Trinity College, Cambridge.—Aſ 4.
JOHN CLARE. 213
and forgive Oxoniensis, whom I know. But let us return. I do not
want information about the great magnates of your English literature
—or those reputed such—but I should wish to hear something
of the minors—the insect tribes. Who are your magazine, &c.,
scribblers ? º
Odoherty. Innumerable as the snipes in the bog of Allen. There
is Clare poetizing for the London.
Byron. An over-puffed youth, that plough-boy appears to be.
Odoherty. He may have written some pretty things, but he is
taken now to slum, Scissoring, namby-pamby, and is quite spoiled:
But it is a good thing to have a good conceit of one's self, and that's
the boy who has it. He has pitted himself against Hogg, whom he
considers as his inferior. , - . -
JByron. Quelle gloire they should have an amabean contention,
like the clowns in Virgil. Suggest this to North, with my compli
ImentS. -
Odoherty. Surely—it is a good hint. But Clare never will write
any thing like the “Dedication to Mr. Grieve,” or “The Flying
Tailor of Ettrick,” until he is boiled again.
Byron. I am told he is a delicate retiring young man. And that's
more than can be said of you, Ensign and Adjutant. You have beer.
always too much a lady's man.
Odoherty. Ay, and so has somebody else who shall be nameless.
I have had, I take it, somewhere about 144 pretty little bantlings—
God bless them—of all colors in various quarters of the globe. .
Byron. You would be a useful man in a new colony. Why don’t
you take the Quarterly hint, and settle in Shoulder of Mutton Bay,
Van Diemen’s Land 7 -
Odoherty. Thank you for the hint—as much as to say, I ought to be
sent across the water to Botany. But to the insects. Taylor, also,
its publisher, is a writer for the London. He continues Johnson's
Lives of the Poets' . . f
Byron, Surely you joke.* . It is as good a jest as if Hazlitt were
to take it into his head to continue Chesterfield.
Odoherty. Yet such is the fact. But don’t mention it; for Taylor,
who really is a decent fellow, wishes it to be kept secret, being
heartily sick of the concern. There are fifty other “Gentlemen of
the Press,” but really they are too obscure to bother your lordship
with. Some new periodical—name unknown—is supported by
Proctor, the great tragedian. -
Byron. Nay, I am jealous of Cornwall, as of a superior poet. His
Mirandola floated proudly through the theatre. My Faliero was
damned.
D. The §ºntinuation was written, not by John Taylor, but by Cary, the translator of
anto.—MI, -
…
214: NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
3.
Odoherty. I know it was d dungenteel in Elliston to put it in
the way of being so.” But there is no making a silk purse out of a
sow’s car. * -
Byron. How is my old friend, “My Grandmamma's Review, the
British Q” |
Odoherty. Just as merry and jocular as ever—but the British
Critic is dying. Rivington has started the Monthly Literary Censor,
it is said, to supersede it. -
Byron. And my old foe, the Literary Gazette‘.
Odoherty. Doing well. But what need you be so thin-skinned as
to mind such little flea-bites ? -
Byron. Flebit et insignis tota cantabitur urbe. Faith, I don’t like
to be pestered with impunity. Has it any rivals 3
Odoherty. Ilots. Valpy set up the Museum, a weekly paper, the
other day, against it. When I tell you that black-letter Tom
IFogrum Dibdinț is the chief hand, I need not add that it is dull and
harmless. - - { :
Byron. No–that's pretty evident. But truce with periodical
chit-chat. t -
Odoherty. Shall I give you news from Parnassus 2
J3yron. No-no–no—I am sick of that. Did you see my Wer-
ner and my New Mystery
Odoherty. Yes—Murray showed them to me in sheets.
Byron. Well, what did you think of them
Odoherty. Like every thing that comes from your lordship's pen,
they are tinged with the ethereal hues of genius, and perfumed with
fragrance of the flowers that grow upon the brink of Helicon.
Byron. Ho! I see, my friend, you have joined the Irish school of
oratory. But as that goes for nothing, what do you, without trope or
figure, think of them
Odoherty. Seriously, my lord, I admire them when they are good,
and dislike them when they are bad. (Aside.)—That is, I like five
pages, and dislike fifty. (To Lord B.)—But, my lord, why do you
not try your hand at your own old style—the tale—the occasional
poetry; you know what I mean?
* As the law them stood, once that a play was printed, a manager might put it om the stage,
without payment to the author, or even asking his permission. Elliston, when manager of
Drury Lame, in 1821, produced “Marino Faliero,” though Byron, in the preface, had said that
it was neither intended mor written for the stage. It did not succeed in representation.—M.
f The British Review, British Critic, Monthly Literary Censor, and Museum, have long
been of the past.—M.
f Thomas Frogmall Dibdin, mephew of the song-writer, was a zealous bibliographer.
Originally imtended for the law, he entered the church in 1804. His “Bibliomamia,” which
at once established his character as a writer, was published in 1809, and was followed by a
variety of books, on a great many subjects. Of these, the most remarkable is a “Biographical,
Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour,” (on the Continent, in 1818), and his “Reminiscences of
a Literary Life,” in 1836. He was one of the founders of the Roxburghe Club, in 1812, and
died in #, aged seventy-two. I knew him in his later years, and found him full of literary
information, and as eager to communicate as I was to receive it. He was small in stature,
with a countenance expressive of much firmness, and a profusion of gray hair.—M. -
*
. lSMALL FITZ-ADAM. 215
Byron. Because I am sick of being imitated. I revolt at the idea
of the lower orders making desperate attempts to climb the arduous
Imount. I have been publicly accused of seducing, by my example,
youths - ,’
Doom'd their fathers' hopes to cross,
To pen a stanza when they should engross.
And I shall not, at least just now I think I shall not—lead the way
for sentimental and poetical hard-handed and hard-headed good people
to follow. There is no danger of their following me into the lofty
region of tragedy.
Odoherty. Whew Why, you are playing the aristocrat with a
vengeance. There is, however, one lowly poet whom I would recom-
mend to your attention. -
Byron. Whom 2
Odoherty. He is so modest, that he does not wish his name to be
mentioned, and writes his “lays” under the title of Ismail Fitz-
Adam.* - . --
Byron. I never heard of him.
Odoherty. I did not imagine you did : and yet he has written some
things which would not have disgraced the pen of a Byron. I could
not say more of any man, (Lord B. bows and smiles.) Nay, my lord,
I am quite in earnest; and though very poor, and only a common
sailor, he has that spirit of independence which I hope will always
animate our navy, and refuses all direct pecuniary assistance.
Byron. What, in heroics again! But he is quite right. Do his
books sell ? -
Odoherty. Not as they ought—very slowly. *
Byron. I am sorry for it. On your return, bid Murray put my
name down for fifty copies. -
Odoherty. You were always a gentleman, my lord : but the bottle
is ont, and I am some hundred yards distant from civilation yet.
Byron. Pardon me—do as you like; but I shall not drink any
II] Ol’G. -
Odoherty. Not till the next time, you mean. Could I get a song
out of your lordship 7
Byron. On what subject 7 * - sº
Odoherty. On any. Parody one of your own serious humbugs
Suppose—“There's not a joy that life can give.”
Byron. Very well—here goes——accompany me on the pipes, which
I see you have brought with you to alarm the Italians.#
* In 1820, Ismail Fitz-Adam published a spirited poem called “The Harp of the Desert,”
descriptive of the battle of Algiers. In 1821, he brought out “Lays on Land,” which attracted
considerable motice. In June, 1823, he died. This author's real name was John Macken, and
he was a mative of Ireland. Although of respectable family ind classically educated, he
served as a common sailor in the Battle of Algiers, in 1816.-M.
t The bag-pipcs are nearly as well known, and as much played on, in the North of Italy, as
in Scotland.—M.
f
216 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
SONG.
THERE's NOT A Joy THAT LIFE CAN GIVE,” &c.
Tune—Grand March in Scipio.
1.
There's not a joy that wine can give like that it takes away,
When slight intoxication yields to drunkenness the sway,
'Tis not that youth's smooth cheek its blush surrenders to the nose,
But the stomach turns, the forehead burns, and all our pleasure goes.
2.
Then the few, who still can keep their chairs amid the smash'd decanters,
Who wanton still in witless jokes, and laugh at pointless banters—
The magnet of their course is gone—for, let them try to walk,
Their legs, they speedily will find as jointless as their talk.
3. w
Then the mortal hotness of the brain, like hell itself, is burning,
It cannot feel, nor dream, nor think—'tis whizzing, blazing, turning—
The heavy wet, or port, or rum, has mingled with our tears,
And if by chance we're weeping drunk, each drop our cheek-bone sears.
4. -
Though fun still flow from fluent lips, and jokes confuse our noddles
Through midnight hours, while punch our powers insidiously enfuddles,
'Tis but as ivy leaves were worn by Bacchanals of yore,
To make them still look fresh and gay while rolling on the floor.
5.
Oh! could I walk as I have walk'd, or see as I have seen ;
Or even roll as I have done on many a carpet green—
As port at Highland inn seems sound, all corkish though it be,
So would I the Borachio kiss, and get blind drunk with thee.
Odoherty. Excellent—most excellent.
Byron. Nay, I don’t shine in parody—Apropos, de bottes—Do
you know any thing of Bowles 2
Odoherty. Your antagonist 7
Byron. Yes.
Odoherty. I know he's a most excellent and elegant gentleman, who
gave your lordship some rubbers.f
Byron. I flatter myself he had not the game altogether in his own
*
* The actual title of these “Stanzas for Music,” (as they are called in Byron's Poems,) i
not correctly given here. The first stanza runs thus:
“There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.”
These lines bear date March, 1815.-M1.
+ The ipsisima verba are “Though wit may flash from fluent lips.”—M.
f Ome of Bowles's pamphlets, during the controversy with Byron, on the merits of Pope, as a
oet, had the motto “He who plays at Bond/es must expect rubbers.”—This was about the
est thing in the work.-M.
wittlAM L. Bowl.ES. 217.
hands. He, indeed, is a gentlemanlike man, and so was Ali Pacha
—but a heretic with respect to Pope. By-the-by, is not Murray
going to give a new edition of the great Ethic, the Bard of Twick-
enham 't r - -
Odoherty, No, not now. . He was, but in the mean time Roscoe,
the gillyflower of Liverpool, announced his intention of coming forth
—and Murray’s editor declined, His Western Majesty, however,
took the merit of declining it himself, and made a great matter of
his condescension to Roscoe, who swallowed it. In the meantime,
one of Murray's huff-caps cut Roscoe to pieces, in the review of
Washington Irving's Sketch Book, in the Quarterly.
Byron. Ha! ha / Well dome, Joannes de Moravia. But is Bowles
as thin-skinned as ever with respect to criticism 7
Odoherty, No-I should think not. Tickler, at Ambrose's, drew
rather a droll description of him the other night, painting him in a
shovel-hat, &c., which somehow or other got into print, and Bowles
was quite tickled by it.
Byron. The devil he was •
Odoherty, Ay, and accepted the office of bottle-holder to North, iſ
the expected turn-up between Christopher and Tom Moore,” in the
most handsome manner possible, chanting & la Pistol,
Thou hast produced me in a gown and band,
And shovel, oh sublimest Christopher,
And I shall now thy bottle holder be,
Betting my shovel to a 'prentice cap, -
That neither Tom nor Byron [meaning you, my lord] will stand up
A single moment 'gainst your powerful facers,
When you set to in fistic combat fairly.
* -
But now that I have told you so much about British literature, give
me something of the literature of this, I am sorry to say it, your
adopted country,
Byron. I might perhaps shock your political principles.
Odoherty. I have not any. So push on.
Byron. This poor country is so misgoverned —
Odoherty, Ay, so your man Hobhouse says —
Byron. What, Hobbio-mobbio—Psha . But really the Austrian
domination is so abom-- (Left speaking.) .
* Blackwood, for January. 1822, opened with a truculent Preface, in very large type, in which
Christopher North stated that he happened to know that Moore had written a satirical poem on
the Magazine and its contributors, and recommended him not to publish it; adding that, if he
did, North would republish it, so as to fill the right-hand columns of about a dozen pages of the
Magazine, and to fill the left-hand column with original verses, on the same measure, (what-
ever that might be) upon Moore. To have fair play in this set-to, Christopher suggested that
unmpires be appointed ſrom among the friends of the distinguished com balants, ºwe appoint
for ourselves Neat [the pugilist] and the Rev. William Lisle Bowles—and we suggest to Moore,
in the true spirit of British courage, Gas ſalso a bozer] and Mr. Montgomery, the “author of
the World before the Flood.” In the words of the Iting, I have to state that Moore did not
conne to the scratch l-M.
218. NOCTES AMBROS (ANAE.
filetricum jumposium 21mbrogianum.
SEU PROPINATIo PoETICA NoFTHI.*
CoME, Morgan, fill up my boy, handle the ladle,
The brat in old Ireland is sent to the cradle—
Get out of those dumps, man, they hurt soul and body—
Put a stick in the bowl, my boy, push round the toddy.
That's right, my brave Ensign, what spirit now lightens
From out your two eyes—how your brow it up-brightens—
You now look yourself, man, and not a la Werter, -
When you near blew your brains out for Mrs. M'Whirter.
And now since we're merry, come fill up the glasses—
We'll drink to our. Poets, (we’ve toasted our lasses,)
To all the high bards of our beautiful Islands,
From famed Connemara, all round to the Highlands.
A bumper, my boys, here's the profligate Baron”
Who his Pegasus broke to a Tragedy Garron.”
In carrying logs to the temple of Belus, - p
To burn that half man they call Sardanapalus.
His Lordship, who, in the dull play, the Foscări,
Wrote worse than e'er Cockneyland's regent, mild Barry,
And whose fame and whose genius came down to their Zero
In the robberies and wretchedness of Faliero.
He with folly inflated, with vanity reeling,
* And mocking at nature, at morals, and feeling,
At the pride of the brave, at the tears of the tender,
And who cares for them all and their ties not a bender.”
Who spouts out more venom than an Amphisboena
On the land of his birth; and, like laughing Hyena,
Mocks at the brave country, he scarce should dare dream on—
At whose blood and whose glory he sneer'd like a demon.
Who in Italy lives, and who babbles of slavery,
And who lately displayed his high mettle and bravery,
In hotly pursuing an old drunken sergeant—”
On his arms he should quarter a halbert in argent.
* This chant, too full of personalities not to be given, appeared in Blackwood, July, 1322,
and was originally intended (as a brief foot-mote indicated,) to be introduced in The Noctes,
No. III., of the preceding number. “This,” quoth North, “ was before the Adjutant went on
his ..] talian tour.” The Noctes, No. IV., had its locality transferred to Pisa, and the dialogue
was solely between Odoherty and Byron.—M.
lsº º eorge Gordon Byron, born 22d January, 1788, in London, died in Greece, April 19
2].-M1.
* A Poney—Hibern.—C. N. &
3 Alias, a tester—alias, a sixpence.—C. N.
* Byron, who had previously resided at Ravenna, removed to Pisa with the Gambas (father
and brother of the Countess Guiccioli, who accompanied them) in the autumn of 1821.
Here, as in other parts of Italy, he was suspected, and not without cause, of having secretly
jou.ed, the Carbonari. The result was, that the military attempted to arrest him, a fracas
8 §. jish ended in the removal of Byron and his friends, first to Leghorn, and finally to
6 Il Oa, ,- -
METRICUM SYMPOSIUM. 21:9
But, his health l—like ourselves, he is fond of a frolic,
May he ne'er die in child-bed, or faint with the colic I
May he die an old man, good, religious, and hoary,
And win and wear long the true wreath of his glory !
But would he were here—He could have wine and laughter,
And when wakened to-morrow—maybe the day after—
With head like sick lily—a lily of Hermon's,
We’d give him some soda, and Maturin's sermons.
Here, fill up for Sir Walter l—but stop, he's no poet,
When the Cockneys think meet, they will easily show it.”
Sir Walter a poet ! Faith, that's a misnomer,
But still, here's success to our Northern Homer.
Come, fill high for Tom Moore 1 would this bumper could gain us
A truce with the sweet little Pander of Venus !"
'Tis diamond cut diamond when he and we quarrel,
But we value his wrath as the dregs of that barrel.
Then Tommy, agra !“ if you fall out with Blackwood,
For dying luxuriously, purchase a Packwood—
Frank Jeffrey, and all that, was nothing for certain,
To us; but that's all in my eye, Betty Martin.
Then, here's to poor Tom, and his verses so sunny,
That made all our maids and young widows so funny;
Which sent half the spalpeens of Munster dragooning,
And sent all the punks in the kingdom salooning.
Now, the Minstrel of Gertrude"—Compiler of Colburn—
Once the bard of high Scotland—now that of High Holborn,
Whose jinglings the Cockney-lambs lead like a ram-bell,
And, after the toast, strike up “Ranting Tom Campbell.”
Now, here's to Will Wordsworth, so wise and so wordy,”
And the sweet simple hymns of his own hurdy-gurdy—
Who in vain blows the bellows of Milton's old organ,
While he thinks he could lull all the snakes on the Gorgon.
Now drain for mad Coleridge"—the mystical Lacon,
Who owt-cants Wild Kant, and out-Bacous old Bacon—
The vain, self-tormenting, and eloquent railer,
Who out of his tropes jerries Jeremy Taylor.
5 It sº laid down, in the Cockney canons of criticism, that Sir Walter Scott was—no
oet !—M.
p * To be promoumced Hibernically, Wa-mus, rhythmi gratia.-C. N.
. . ." Blackwood, before and after this day, was not only kind, but forbearing towards Thomas
Moore, whose genius was duly appreciated in its pages, but it had been stated that “the poet
of all circles and idol of his own,” had written a saucy pasquinade upon Wilson, and his
friends; hence, the tone of truculent defiance in the song.—M.
* Anglice, my darling.—C. N. -
* Thomas Campbell, at this time, and for some years later, was editor of Colburn's New
Monthly Magazine.—M -
*William Wordsworth, born in April, 1770, died in 1850. His Descriptive Sketches appeared
in 1793; Lyrical Ballads, in 1798; Poems in 1807; The Excursion, in 1814; White Doe of
Rylstome, in 1815; Peter Bell, in 1819; Sonnets, in 1820; Memorials of a Tour on the Continent,
in 1822, and Poems of Early Years, in 1842.-M. ... •
11 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in 1770, died in 1834.—M.
223) NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Success to the Bard of the Bay !—may he wear it
Till we see from his temples one worthy to tear it—
And, though his hexameters are somewhat mouthy,
This glass will make greener the laurel of Southey.”
And, after the Minstrel of Roderic and Madoc,
We'll be pardon'd to give our poetical Sadoc,
Mad Shelly,” the wild atheist Coryphaeus, /
Whose Poems and Thoughts are a “Curse and a Chaos.” .
Now, here's Billy Bowles,” both for epic and sonnet,
Who Lord Byron has bother'd, I lay my life on it—
And here's our best wish to the long-sodden'd flummery,
So thick and so slab, of mild Jemmy Montgomery.”
And here's the Poetical Bank of Sam Rogers—
Firm still by the aid of old England's old Codgers,
Whose notes are as good as those given by Lord Fanny,”
Or Lord Byron, who puffs them—a critical zany.”
Here's Milman, the Idol of Square-caps at Oxford,
Though his verses will scarce ever travel to Foxford;”
His Pegasus broken, Io longer is skittish,
Though he's puff'd in the Quarterly, puff'd in the British.
Though his verse stately be as the dance call'd the Pyrrhic,
And his high harp be tuned to the epic and lyric, .
Yet we fear that his glory but stubble is built on,
And his hymns we scarce fancy quite equal to Milton.
For of late we remember of nothing grown tamer,
Than the steed that bore “Fazio,” and paced under “Samor;”
And the “Martyr,” “Belshazzar,” and “Fall of Jerusalem,”
We think will scarce live to the age of Methusalem.”
Here's to splendid John Wilson,” and John Wilson Croker.”
Whose satire's as dreadful as Jarvie's red poker,
12 Robert Southey, born 1774, died 1843. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1813. A mere
recapitulation of his writings would fill a page.—M.
§. Bysshe Shelley, born in 1792, drowned in the Gulf of Lerici, on the Italian : oast,
July 8, 1823. No man, in his life, more thoroughly opposed the conventionalities of society.
Few have exhibited higher poetic genius.—M.
14 William Lisle Bowles, (born in 1762, died in 1850), whose son nets, published in 1789, first
drew Coleridge's attention to poetry:-M:
15 James Montgomery, born in ti'71; died in 1854. He belonged to what nas been called the
Evangelical School of Poetry, and such of his compositions as are not religious, are serious and
moral. His “World before the Flood,” “The Pelican Island,” and some sacred songs and
lyrics will preserve his reputation, as a second-rate poet.—Al.
15 This can surely require no explanation.--C. N.
17 Samuel Rogers, born in 1760, published an Ode to Superstition, in 1787; Pleasures of
Memory, in 1792; Epistle to a Friend, in 1798; Vision of Columbus, and Jacqueline, in 1814;
Human Liſe, in 1819 ; and Italy, in 1822. It is by his Pleasures of Memory, that Rogers will
best be remembered as a poet of great taste and skill,—the workmanship being better than the
materials, as in Ovid’s Palace of the Sun.—M.
18 West of Ireland, mi fallor—or elsewhere, inter barbaros.--C. N.
19 Henry Hart Milman, now Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, author of many dramatic
poems, (of which “Fazio” alone is acted or actable,) a variety of prose histories, and many
critical articles in the Quarterly Review.—M. -
20 A full memoir of “Splendid John Wilson,” is given in the second volume of this edition
of 'The Noctes: “For particulars, inquire within.”—M.
1 John Wilson Croker, born in Ireland, in 1780, Secretary of the Admiralty from 1809 to
METRICUM syMPOSIUM. 221
Who cut up poor Joe, and that booby-the other—”
As Joe for economy cut up his brother.
Now fill up a bumper for Catiline Croly.”
The compeer of Massinger, Fletcher, and Rowley,
And confusion to Elliston, Kemble, and Harris,
Who were blind to the beams of the author of “Paris.”
Now, the bards of the drama—from Treland-Fall tragic—.
Here's first Nosy Maturin, the mild and the Magic,
Who into a ball-room as gracefully twitches,
As Bertram—-fourth act—enters buttoning his breeches,
May his stays never crack while quadrilling” or preaching
May his wig ne'er grow grey, nor his cravat want bleaching
May his muse of her quinzy be cured by a gargle ;
May he faint at Miss Wilson, and dream in the Dargle.”
May he send out a dozen more heroes from Trinity,
And for that be made Provost, its prop of divinity—
We wish Melmoth well, for he is a true Tory,
Whate'er Coleridge may say, and let that be his glory.”
Here's to poor Skinny Sheil, whose entire occupation
Is gone, since O'Neil ceased delighting the nation;s.
Who.e head's much more empty than Maturin's wig, sirs,
But, nevertheless, we'll give Sheelahnagig,” sirs.”
1S30,-author of some satirical verse, editor of Boswell's Johnson, and other works, and, from its
cornmencement to the present time, [July, 1554], one of the Inost frequent, powerful, and
sarcastic contributors to the Quarterly Review. The individual familiarly mentioned as “Joo,
that booby,” was Joseph Hume, now oldest in ember, or Father of the House of Commons, who
by no means merited the title, being a shrewd Scotchman with much common sense and a
good deal of perseverance.—Al.
22 See mote (3. - .
23 The Rev. George Croly, now rector of a Metropolitan parish, in London, author of Paris,
in 1815; 'The Angel of the World; Life of Burke; the prose romances of Salathiel and Marston;
the comedy of Pride Shall have a Fall, and a variety of political, theological. and controversial
works, is a mative of Ireland, born about 1788. His Catiline, a tragedy in five acts, appeared
in 1822. It is founded on what Horace Walpole has called “ the most brilliant episode in the
History of Rome.” It was offered to Elliston, Kemble, and Harris, then managers of Drury
Lane and Covent Garden Theatres. . In reviewing, it (Blackwood, June, 1822), Wilson said,
“We never read any first tragedy, by any dramatist whatever, abounding so much in happy
dramatic situations.” The character of Catiline is one which, perhaps, at this moment could
be properly personated by only one great actor—Edwin Forrest.—M.
24. The Reverend Mr. Maturin is one of the first quadrillers now extant. He also is a great
grinder—and a true 'Tory.--C. N.
25 A beautiful pass in the Co. Wicklow. You ought to go and see it. Ams. We are too old
to go touring.—C. N.
25 Coleridge, who was an unsuccessful dramatist, devoted a portion of Biographia Literaria
to the ridicule of Robert Charles Maturin, whose play of Bertram had succeeded. [This last
word reminds me, en passant, of a play-wright who produced a play, in which the acknow-
ledged humorist of the company had not even the ghost of fun to bring before the audience.
The curtain fell “im solemn silence.” It was again played, with like result, and them with-
drawn. A friendly critic, wishing to break the play-wright's fall, went out of his way to
show why “ it had failed,”—which he ingeniously attributed to every cause, except the true
one, want of dramatic ability. The play-wright's gratitude was expressed in one sentence,
in which he stated himself aggrieved at its being said that the trifle had failed. The critic,
who rather expected thanks, said that it certainly had not succeeded. “Sir,” responded the
sensitive author, “it does not follow that ti play has failed, because it did not succeed P’]
Maturin, who was much of a dandy in his attire, added to the narrow income derived from a
poor curacy in Dublin, by reading with (or grinſling), Y c ung men who wished to pass cre-
ditably through Trinity College. He died in 1825.-M. *
27 A nickname bestowed on Sheil, by the late Right Honora.c.e, John Philpot Curran. Master
of the Rolls in Ireland, much to the satisſaction of the poet. Sheetahmagig, is tho marne of a
popular tune in the Sister Island, but, we are sorry to say, to words of rather an immoral
tendency.—C. N. .
28 Sheil's three plays, (of which Evadne was the most successful), were written for the
222 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
And, now, Mr. Knowles—who with feelings once vented.”
While our living bards HE so well represented;”
And with him we'll couple a man they call Banim,”
Though a bard, we scarce think him—a bard we scarce feign him.”
Here's Haynes' “Bridal Night”—in five acts—'tis no wonder
He kill'd the poor maiden—yet, faith, 'twas a blunder
To christen that “conscience”—'twas very ironical : *
But he floats down tº fame through the sink of the “Chronicle.”
And here's the last bard of the buskin, poor Bertridge,
Whom Miss Wilson was near blowing up like a Cartridge—
Simple Clarke 1 in the tragic you're yet but a tyro,
Though, faith, there was something not bad in “Ramiro.”
Here's Charley from Sligo,” whose finical verses,
Each bog-trotter on black Benbulben rehearses,
As flimzy and sloppish as waiting-maid's washes,
Or a speech of his own, or Sir James M'Intosh's.”
And while we pass over the Cockneyish dastards,
We must drink to the poet of beggary and bastards;
For there's something so strong in his old-fashioned gab, sirs,
We'll empty a glass to the Veteran Crabbe,” sirs.
Here's to Mitchell, restorer of dear Aristophanes,
Who has made all his fun, and his fire, and his scoffing his.
purpºse of giving new characters for embodiment by Miss O'Neil, the Irish Tragedienne, born
in 1793. Sheil died in 1851.-M. - -
29 This is a great undervaluation of James Sheridan Knowles, whose Caius Gracchus and
Virginius had been successfully performed in London. William Tell followed, and, a few
years later, The Hunchback, The Wife, and other dramas which have placed him high among
the dramatists of England. Knowles was born at Cork, in Ireland, in August, 1784.—M.
30 A Poet mentioned by Cornelius Webb, under the title of “Green Knowles.” Rather
personal this of Corney. At a public dinner of the Literary Fund, Mr. Knowles, we read in
the papers, on the health of the Poets of England being proposed, returned thanks! Air, “How
prettily we apples swim.” On the same occasion an Alderman, (we never mention mannes.)
Captain of Train bands, returned thanks on the health of the Duke of Wellington and the
British Army being given. We have an obscure remembrance of Sir Ronald Ferguson doing
the same thing on a similar occasion. Air, “See the conquering hero.”—C. N.
31 John Bamirn, an Irishman, author of “Damon and Pythias,” a drama, and of a considerable
portion of the prose fictions which appeared as if written “By the O'Hara Family.”—M.
32 Bamim 1 Quaere. Is it possible there is such a name 7––C. N.
* Mr. Haimes, an Irishman, was a writer on the London press, and published a play called
“Comscience, or The Bridal Night,” which was successful.-M.
º J. Bertridge Clerk, Esq., Sch. T. C. D., wrote a play called Ramiro—a perfect tragedy, all
being killed in it except the servants, who were judiciously employed to carry off the dead.
Harris, the manager of the Dublin theatre, and he, had some rumpus about it;-so had Miss
Wilson—the Miss Stephens of Dublin, a very pretty woman, and a very pretty actress. The
house was nearly demolished by his brother students—a peaceful body of ingenuous youth.
tº Charles Phillips, had not only come out, as a “celebrated Irish Orator,” but published a
prose romance, and a great many verses.—M.
* Late recorder of Bombay—and father of the pretty bantling of which Mrs. Divan is not yet
delivered. [Mrs. Divan was the sobriquet of the London publishing firm of Longman, Härt,
Rees, Orine, & Brown.]—Al.
97 Crabbe-Mr. North, why do I not ever see an article in your Magazine doing justice to the
powerful talents of this powerful poet? Ans. There's a braw.tirne coming.—C. N. [A pretty
close examination of Blackwood enables me to say, that any motice of the Rev. George Crabbé,
“Nature's sternest painter, but her best.”
was not made until after his death. Then, the merits of the author of The Library, The Village,
The Borough, Tales of the Hall, &c., were mentioned and acknowledged. Crabbe was born in
1754, and died in 1832.-M. -
METRICUM SYMPOSIUM, 223
Here's to Frere, who some time since wrote Dan Whistlecraft,
And to Rose, who is busy with Roland the Daft.*
And here's to the lady-like, lisping, sweet fellow
Who thinks he can write in the vein of Othello,
Without plot or passion—Alas! Peter Proctor—
But it scandals the muse that makes him need a Doctor.”
But still he has written some stanzas of merit,
And caught a fine spark of the delicate spirit
Of the rich Bards of old—and might be an apology
For a Minstrel—wer’t not for Cockaigne and Mythology,40
And now to the dames of the sky-color'd stocking,
Who side-saddle Pegasus, his long switch-tail docking,
Who tatter fine cambrics in rythmical labors,
And dream to the lullings of hautboys and tabors. .
Here's first Mother Morgan, akin to morality
As near as she is to a woman of quality—
And the sweet Sapphic verses of Maidenly Sydney,
That so tickle the fancy and touch up the kidney.
Those verses so mawkish, so fat, and so gawdy,
A girlish first fire of the bold and the –
Which give a fair promise all wisely and wittily
Of the Jacobin cant of her “France” and her “Italy.”
But in spite of Canidia and her doughty cavalier,
At her follies full often we purpose to have a leer—
Unless to Algiers she fly off, as we task her,
Or become the she-Solon” of mad Madagascar.”
Here's Lucy,” in whom wit and wisdom are blended,
By whom everything's seen, felt, and comprehended—
S8 Thomas Mitchell, translator of the plays of Aristophanes into English verse, was born in
1783, and died in 1845, John Hookham Frere, the friend of Scott and Southey, will principaliy
be recollected by his facetious poem written under the mom de plume of Whistlecraft (and
called The Monks and the Giants), which suggested to Lord Byron the stanza, in which
he aſterwards wrote Beppo and Don Juan. Frere, born in 1769, died in 1846. William
Steward Rose, the translator of Ariosto, Letters from the North of Italy, and other works, was
intimate with Byron, Davy, Scott, Southcy, and, in short, with all eminent literary men
during the whole period of his liſe. He survived Scott.—Ml.
39 Alias Barry Cornwall. A young gentleman most unjustifiably treated by Blackwood.
What a shame it is, that a rising young man cannot be allowed to kill his people in fine
tragedies, without the sneer of envy, and the murmuring of malice : Take that, Christopherſ
See how differently he is appreciated in Londom—where he, author of Mirandola, is made one
of a committee to erect a monument to his congenial spirit, William Shakspeare, author of
Hamlet, and other agreeable dramas, Ans. We defy any one to point out a passage in which
we have not extoiled Mr. Cornwaii. In fact, he is one of our own pets; and if we do sometimes
give him a little gentle and benignant correction, it is only because we remember the precept
of Solomon, “He that spareth the rod, spoileth the child.”—C. N.
40. Bryan William Procter, author of the tragedy of Mirandola ; concerning which, he
published a solemn statement that one of the characters was not the double of Othello Under
the name of Barry Cornwall, he has won high repute as a writer of short Dramatic Scenes, and
a variety of popular songs.--M.
41 Observe, not a Solan goose.—C. N.
** Sydney Owenson, afterwards Lady Morgan—by marriage. It is somewhat impertinent to
allude to a lady's age, but she was born not later than 1770.-M
* Lucy Aikon, author of Biographies of Queen Elizabeth and James I.-M.
294 NOOTES AMBROSIANA,
And here's to the genius of Helen Maria,
Of all that is frothy the Entelecheia.”
Here's to Opie the sweet—Here's to high-minded Hannah-
Here's to Shakspeare in Petticoats, noble Joanna-
Here's to all from soft Hemans as rich as a ruby,”
To the brogue and the blarney of pretty Miss Lubě."
Now here are four bards, to whom genius is pater,
Who newer suck'd poetry from Alma Mater—
Who just knew so much of the great Aristotle, i
As they got from the fields, from their feelings, and bottle,
Till first for the Chaldee—the shepherd of Ettrick,
Who stole from the Hills' hums his musical rhet'rick—
For Hogg's rhyme is no grunting—and here's a libation.
To Bloomfield, the simplest stgeet Bard of the nation.”
&
Here's to Clare and his verses, so simple and pleasant,
The London one's Bard—The Northamptonshire peasant :
And here's to the Galloway boy and his lyrics,
That have put all the Bards of Cockaigne in hysterics." -
Here's to Luttrell and Dale, and the Dante of Carey;
Here's to Lloyd, the preserver of great Alfieri;
And this bumper to Lamb we send gratefully greeting,
For we love his deep baning and beautiful bleating.”
Here's Thurlow half-witted, and Spencer half-attic,
Yet not lame in the light and the epigrammatic ;
44 Helen Maria. Williams, certainly one of the English “strong-minded women,” born in
1762. died in 1827; author of Letters of France, during the first Revolution, in which she assisted
and recommended the principles of the Girondists. On their fall she was arrested, and
surrowly escaped the guillotine. She also published a Narrative of lºvents in France in
1815.-MI.
49 Amelia Opie, widow of the painter, and an authoress of some note. She died in 1853,
Hammah More, (born in 1744, died in 1833,) an eminent writer.—Joum na Baillie, author of
Plays on the Passions, and other dramas and poerns She diru . n 1851, Felicia Hemans, the
best of the female lyrists of England, born in 1794, died in 1835 –Of Miss Lu by I only know
that she published, but was unable to sell a volume on poems - M. -
49 Pretty, indeed, and very pretty—but no brogue, or no tº a ney, Mr. Paddy, -C. N. * ,
47 Full particulars about James Hogg,(born 1772. died 1835) are to be found in my Memoir of
him, in this edition. Robert Bloomfield, author of The Fairner s Boy, and other poems of great
merit ; born 1766, died 1S23.—M.
48 John Caro, the Northampton Peasant and Poet, now [1854], in a lunatin asylum. Allam
Cunningham, a Scottish poet, novelist, critic, and biographor, born in 1785, died in 1842.-M.
49 Luttrell, author of Advice to Julia, an epistle in verse, will long be traditionally remem-
bered as one of the wits of the regency and reign of George IV.-The Rev. Doctor Dale, author
of 'The Widow of Nain, Irad and Adah, and other poems, is now prebendary of St. Paul's and
Rector of St. Pancras, the largest lº, in Londom.–Charles Lloyd, translator of Alfieri, and
an early friend of Southey and Coleridge.—Charles Launb, the gentle Elia, was born in 1775,
and died in 1831. Few authors have won more sincere and gonial regard from “hosts of
friends.” II is lºssays form one of the most popular works in the language. A great deal of
good pity has been expended on the fact that }. was “doomed to the cruel desk in daily
toil.” Iſo was a clerk in the accountant's office in the Last India. House, commencing on a
respectable and rising salary, his solo labors being to º papers into books of record. %.
he retired, after thirty-five years' service, his income had increased to £700 a-year, and he was
then allowed a retiring life-allowance of £150 a year. ...Great consideration was shown him by
his superiors. On one occasion, however, (the usual office-hours being nominally from 10 to 4),
he ontered his office at moon. The principal said, “Mr. Lanib, you really do come so late.”
Isamb paused, and said, with the arch simplicity which dist’ nguished him, “True, sir, but
them—ſ go away so early l’"–M -
METRICUM syMPOSIUM. 225
Herbert, tasteless and black, as a glass of bad negus " ..
And Strangford, who gather'd some gold from the Tagus.”
And now to the bards of the famed silent sister;”
We own for some seasons or so, we have miss'd her.
And the prize-winning poets of Isis and Cam, , ,
Very fine—very learned—and scarce worth a d-. * ,
And now into dozens the poets we'll trundle:
We must drink to them now at least twelve in the bundle.
Here's Williams and Darley, Bartóu and Fitzgerald,
Who might shine in a page of the “Times” or the “Herald.””
Here's to all the rest, both esquired and anonymous,
May they all in their times find their own Hieronymus;
Though their verses may live until Saturday se’mmight,
Or as long as the speeches of Brougham or of Bennett.
We can give no more names—faith, we ne'er could be able
If we did, we would soon be, laid under the table.
Then one glass to them all, male and female together,
Who recite in the dog-days, in spite of the weather.
This last three times three, boys.-Hip, hip, hurra!
The Poets of England—by jingol 'tis day.
Can. Alaric" save them ?–No ; our personality
And Maga alone can give them immortality.
60 Hibernice Nagus. See note 4.—C. N.
5.1 This is the Lord 'Thurlow, whose volume of middling rhymes, in 1813, so much excited the
ridicule of Byron, that he perpetrated son, a satires on them, which are to be found in his
poems, and place some of Thurlow's lines, therein quoted, in a situation akin to that of flies in
arnber.—William Robert Spencer, a lively poet of the Regency, born in 1770, died in 1834,--Dr.
Herbert, som of the lºarl of Carnaervon, dean of Manchiester, author of Attila, and other poems
of marked merit, and also of Mr. Henry William Ilerbert, the best sporting writer in America, .
(“Frank Forrester”), distinguished as poet, movelist, critic, historian, and artist.—The
translator of Carnoems' was addressed in Byrom's lºnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers, as
ILibernian Strning ford ' with thine eyes of blue
Amd boasted locks of red or auburn hue.
with a declaration, by way of annotation. that “ The things given to the public as the poem of
Camoems, are no more to bo found in the original *:::::... than in the Song of
Solomon.”—M. -
32 By “Silent Sister,” is meant Trinity College, Dublin—A most unfounded and ridiculous
calumny, as we shall havo the pleasure of proving ore long.—C. N. [Which was mever
dome.--M.] ū -
* Darley eventually became critical preface-writer to.Cumberland's British Drama.—Bernard
Burton, the Quaker poet, died in 1849,-Fitzgerald, called “The Small-beer Poet,” by Cobbett,
used annually to deliver a poetical address at the Literary Fund Dimner,-M.
* Alaric A. Watts, lºsq., who is employed about what we doubt not will be a most interesting
work, Specimens of the British Poets. Of course, he must exhibit Us in full ſig.—C. N. [The
work appeared, in two volumes, but was not a good collection of poems.—M.]
Vol. I.-17
No. v.–SEPTEMBER, 1822. -
ACT I.—SCENE–Back Parlor—Cold Supper just set.
Manet MR. AMBROSE solus.
Mr. Ambrose. I think it will do. That plate of lobsters is a little
too near the edge. Softly, softly, the round of beef casts too deep
a shadow over these pickles. There—that's right. Old Kit will be
unable to criticise — -
Jºhnter MR. NoFTH. -
Mr. Worth. Old Kit ! will be unable to criticise !!—Why, upon
my honor, Mr. Ambrose, you are rather irreverent in your lingo.
Mr. Ambrose, (much confused.) I really, sir, had not the least idea.
you were at hand. You know, sir, with what profound respect —
Mr. Worth. Come, Ambrose, put down the pots of porter. The
King has left the Theatre, and we shall be all here in a few seconds.
I made my escape from the manager's box, just before the row and
the rush began. Hark! that is the clank of the Adjutant.
Enter ODOHERTY, TICKLER, SEWARD, BULLER, HIGHLAND CHIEFTAIN,
and MR. BLACKWOOD.
Odoherty. Allow me, my dear North, to introduce to you my
friend, the Chief of the Clan —
Mr. North. No need of a name. I know him by his father's face.
Sir, I will love you for the sake of as noble a Gael as ever slaughtered
a Sassenach. Sit down, sir, if you please.
(Highland Chieftain sits down at Mr. Worth's right hand.)
Mr. Seward. Well, did he not look every inch a King,” this even-
ing 2 A King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, ought, if possi
ble, be a man worth looking at. His subjects expect it, and it is
but reasonable they should.
Mr. North. Fame does no more than justice to his bow. It is
most princely—so-or rather so. Is that like him 7 -
* In August, 1822, George IV. visited Scotland. He had visited Ireland and Iſanover in the
preceding year. He reinained in the vicinity of Edinburgh (the guest of the Duke of Buc-
cleugh, at Dalkeith Palace, within six miles of the capital.) for fifteen days, and his return
was hastened by the intelligence that the Marquis of Londonderry, Foreign Secretary, had
committed suicide in London. When he was proceeding, amid tens of thousands, to the
Palace of Holyrood, the ancient abode of the Scottish Kings, the demeanor of the multitude
was so quiet and respectful (very unlike the wild enthusiasm which greeted him at Dublin)
that he said “This is a nation of gentlemen.” This compliment is referred to, over and over
again, in the following Noctes.—M.
THE ROYAL VISIT. 227
Odoherty. No more than a hop-pole is like a palm-tree, or the
Editor of the Edinburgh Review like him of Blackwood's Magazine.
The King's bow shows him to be a man of genius; for, mark me, he
has no model to go by.” He must not bow like the Duke of Argyll,
or Lord Fife, well as they bow, but like a King. And he does so.
The King is a man of genius. . t
Mr. Blackwood. Do you think, sirs, that the King would become a
contributor to the Magazine 7 I have sent his Majesty a set splen-
didly bound by -
Mr. North. Hush, Ebony, leave that to me. You must not inter-
fere with the Editorial department.
Mr. Buller. What do you Scotch mean by calling yourselves a
grave people; and by saying that you are not, like the Irish, absurd
in the expression of your loyalty I never heard such thunder in a
Theatre before. - .
Odoherty. I would have given twenty ten-pennies that some of the
young ladies in the pit had remembered that a pocket handkerchief
should not be used longer than a couple of days. Some of the lite-
rary gentlemen too, showed snuffy signals. But the coup d'éeil was
Imposing. - -
Buller. I hate all invidious national distinctions. Let every
people hail their King in their own way. - .
Odoherty. To be sure.they should. But then the Scotch are “a
nation of Gentlemen;” and the Irish “a nation of ragamuffins;” and
the English “a nation of shopkeepers.” THow then 2 -
Mr. North. His Majesty knows better than to satirize us. We
are not a nation of gentlemen—thank God;—but the greater part of
our population is vulgar, intelligent, high-cheeked, raw-boned, and
religious. -
Mr. Seward. I could not help smiling, when I looked across the pit
and along the boxes this evening, at the compliment towards your-
selves as a nation, which some self-sufficient soul put into his Majesty's
mouth. I never saw a more vulgar pit in my life. The women
looked as if:
Odoherty. One and all of them could have kissed the King. But,
Seward, my boy, you are mistaken in calling the pit vulgar. Your
taste has been vitiated, Seward, by Oxford Milliners, and
Mr. North. The conversation is wandering. (Turning to the Chief.
* Byron admits the fascination of this bow. In Don Juan we have
“There, too, he saw (whate'er he may be now)
A Prince, the primce of princes at the time,
With ſascination in his very bow
And full of promise, as the spring of prime.
Though royalty was written on his brow,
He É. them the grace, too rare in every clime,
Of being, without alloy of fop or beau,
A finished gentleman from top to toe.”—M.
228 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
tain.) I saw you talking to the Thane in the Theatre." Would to
heaven you had brought him here ! * -
Chieftain. He is gone to Dalkeith or he would have come.
Mr. Worth. How popular the Thane is all over Scotland. Depend
upon it, gentlemen, that the best man is, in general, the most popular.
Nothing but generosity and goodness will make peasants love peers.
Mr. Blackwood. His Lordship never comes to town without calling
at the shop.
Enter MR. AMDROSE and Waiters with rizzard haddocks, cut of warm
salmon, ºn wilfowl, and haggis. -
Mr. Tickler. Adjutant, I will drink a pot of porter with you—
THE KING, (three times three—surgunt omnes)—Hurra, hurra,
hurra—Hurra, hurra, hurra—Hurra, hurra, hurra ! (Conticuere
O7)??? (?S.
Mr. North. Odoherty, be pleased to act as croupier.
Odoherty. More porter. º -
Mr. Tickler. Did you see how the whole pit fixed its face on the
King's—till the play began It was grand, North. His eye met
that loyal “glower” with mild and dignified composure. The King,
North, was happy. I’ll swear he was. He saw that he had our
hearts. Every note of “God save the King” went dirling though
my very soul-strings. I’m as hoarse as a howlet.
Mr. North. I think the people feel proud of their King. As he
past the platform where I stood, on his entrance into Edinburgh, I
heard a countryman say to his neighbor, “Look, Jock; look, Jock,
—isna, he an homest-looking chiel ? Gude faith, Jock, he's just like
my ain father.”
Mr. Seward. Curse the Radicals | A king must abhor even a
single hiss from the vilest of his subjects. The King, Mr. North, is
with us as popular a King as ever reigned in England. He has only
to show himself oftener, and —
Mr. JBuller. I have seen the king in public often ; but I never saw
him insulted except in the newspapers. The “Scotsman in London”
is a common character. • *
Odoherty. Mr. Seward, a little haggis. See “its hurdies like twa
distant hills.”
Mr. Seward. What are hurdies 2
Mr. Tickler. See Dr. Jamieson.
Chieftain. Mr. North, I am delighted. I hope I may say so with-
out flattery. I never drank better Glenlivet.—Why, gentlemen, not
come and pay me a visit this autumn ! No occasion for a tent, I
am a bachelor, and have few children.
Odoherty. Settled.—Name your day.
* The Earl of Fife —he has already been introduced to the reader in “The Tont.”—M.
LAY OF THIE IXILT. 229
Chieftain. 14th of September. I cannot be home sooner. Is it
a promise 7
Omnes. 14th of September. WE swear ! !
Odoherty, Well done, old Mole, in the cellarage.—Hamlet—see
Shakspeare.
Enter MR. AMBROSE.
Mr. Ambrose. Mr. North, a communication.
Tickler. Read—read. -
Mr. Worth, I cannot say I am quite able to do so. My eyes are a
little hazy or so. But there is the letter, Tickler.—Up with it.
Tickler, (reads.)
De'il tak the kilts! For fifty year, nae honest soon of Reikie's
Wad ever think to walk the streets, denuded o' his breekies.
And ony kilted drover lad, wi' kyloes or a letter,
Was pitied, or was glower'd at, “Puir chiel, he kens nae better;”
And apple-wives look'd sidelins, and thocht he came to steal or beg,
Whene'er they saw a callant wi' his hurdies in a philabeg.”
...And even chiefs o' clans themselves, whene'er they ran to towns, man,
Were fain to clothe their hairy knees in breeks, or pantaloons, man.
But now I Lord bless your soulſ there's no a Lawland writer laddie
Can wheedle a pund note or twa frae his auld cankered daddie,
But aff he sets, (though born betwixt St. Leonard's an Drumsheugh) an
He fits himsel' wi' bannet, plaid, and hose, and kilt, and spleuchan.*
Ye'se ken the cause o' a' the steer —the Heeland Dhuine Wassals;
Began to tire o' wearin' breeks whene'er they left their castles;
So they coaxed the honest citizens to join in a convention
To tak’ the corduroy from off the pairt I daurnamention;
That, like the tod! that tint his tail, they mightna cause derision,
And find their faces in a flame, while elsewhere they were freezin.
The town's-lads Snappit at the plan, and thus began the Celtic,
A medley strange frae every land, frae off the shores o' Baltic ;
Frae England, Ireland, Scotland; Border lairds and ancient British,
There were Dutchmen, Danes, and Portuguese, and French and Otaheitish;
And a' professions, frae the lad that's only just apprenticed,
To the grent hero of the west—e'en Doctor Scott the Dentist—
And they wad dine, and drink, and strut, as big's Macallum More, sir,
And skraigh attempts at Gaelic words, until their throats were sore, sir.
An' a' was canty for a while, for these were still their gay days,
An' a' could lend a hand to pay for balls gi'en to the ladies;
And there they danc'd the Highland fling, and kick'd their kilts and toes up,
Tho' whiles their ruler-shapit legs refused to keep their hose up.
Tłut when the pawky Highland lairds had fairly set the fashion,
Up gets an angry Chief o' Chiefs in a prodigious passion:
“Fat Teilhae you to do wi' kilts, gae wa and get your claes on,
Get out, ye nasty Lowland poys, and put your preeks and stays on;
* Hurdics in a philabeg, his buttocks in a kilt.—M.
tSpleuchtum ;—tobacco-pouch.-M.
† Dunnie-wassal.—A Highland gentleman, generally the cadet of a family of rank, who
received his title ſlom £he land he occupied, though held at the will of his chieftain.—M.
|| Tod.—A Fox.-M, * *
230 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
Ye shanna wear your claes like me, I look on you as fermin,
Ye hae nae mair o' Highland pluid than if you were a Chermau.”
This sets them up, “Chairman indeed Ye never shall be ours, sir!
Except it be to carry us when we go out of doors, sir! . . .
Like ithers o' your kintra men.” And thus they flyte thegither,
And haud the hail town in a steer, expellin'ane arither.
And how the business is to end, is mair than I can tell, sir,
Indeed it seems to fickle and perplex the Sheriff's sell, sir;
But this I ken, that folk that's wise think they maun be nae witches,
Wha ever let a Highland Kernſ entice them out o' breeches. .
Highland Chief Come, gentlemen, if you please, I will propose a
toast,--" Glengarry !” His Majesty would not have sent the mes-
sage he did to the chiefs, if he had not been pleased with them and
their highlanders.j. -
Omnes. Glengarry. Iłurra, hurra, hurra ! . -
Odoherty. What does Glengarry mean by saying that few mem-
bers of the Celtic Society could shoot an eagle . It is easier, a
dammed deal easier, to shoot an eagle than a peacock. But the
easiest way of any is to knock an eagle down with a shillelah. aº-
Mr. Seward. Do you shy the shillelah at his head from a distance?
Odoherty. No. I refer to the Chieftain. You must walk slowly
up to him at the rate of about four miles an hour, (Townsend, the
pedestrian, would do it half backwards and half forwards,) and hit
him over the periwig with your sapling. - .
Chieftain. Perfectly true. When an eagle has eat a sheep or a
roe, he sits as heavy as a Dutchman—cannot take wing—and you
may bag him alive if you choose. The shepherds often fling their
plaids over him. But let him take wing, and he darkens the sun-
disk like an eclipse. - -
Mr. Blackwood. I beg your pardon, sir, but I should wish much to
have a sound, sensible Article on the State of the Highlands of Scot-
land. I suspect there is much misrepresentation as to the alleged
cruelty and impolicy of large farms. Dog on it, will any man
tell me, sir, that — - -
* German.—C. N. f Kerne,—A freebooter,<-M, .
f Every one seemed to have gone mad on the subject of Highland costume, the use of which
had been prohibited by the 19th, George II. The late Sir John Sinclair, in the early part of
the present century, had this act repealed ; and although this took place in mid-winter, all the
Highlanders north of Stirling threw off the hated breeches, and adopted the cooler and more
ventilatory kilt. Even at his first levee, George IV. appeared in full Highland garb—which
no royal Stuart, Prince Charles excepted, had ever worn in Holyrood. General Stewart, of
Garth, assisted at this Celtic toilet, and saw that the king was correctly attired. There, too,
in the same costume, appeared the bulky frame of the London alderman and banker, Sir Wil.
liam Curtis, (immortalized in Don Juan, as - -
“The witless Falstaff to a hoary Hal,”) - - -
Whose appearance, in such a garb, was very iudicrous. When the King was about leaving
Scotland, an official letter was addressed by the late Sir Robert Peel, then Home Secretary, in
which, after thanking Scott, for his own immense and successful eſſorts to make the royal visit
a pleasant one, he added, “The king wishes to make you the channel of conveying to the
Highland Chiefs and their followers, who have given to the varied scene, which we have wit.
nessed, so peculiar and romantic a character, his particular thanks for their attendance, and
his warm approbation of their uniform deportment.”—M. - - .
OSSIAN. 23ſ
Chieftain. Mr. Blackwood, I wish I could write an article of the
kind you mention. You are a gentleman of liberal sentiments. In
twenty years the Highlands will be happier than they ever, have
been since the days of Ossian. Lowland lairds have no right to
abuse us for departing from the Savage state.
Blackwood. Could you let us have it for next Number, sir? We
stand in need of such articles prodigiously—sound, sensible, statisti-
cal articles, full of useful information. We have wit, fun, fancy,
and feeling, and all that sort of thing in abundance, but we are short
of useful information. We want facts—a Number now and then,
with less fun and more facts, would take, and promote the sale with
dull people. Yes, it is a fact, that we want facts.
Odoherty. Damn your Magazine, Ebonyl You gave Napoleon
no rest at St. Helena till he became a contributor. You are begin-
ning to send sly hints to the King. And here we have you smelling
as strong of the shop as a bale of brown paper, dunning the Chieftain
the very first time he has come among us. -
Mr. Seward. Chieftain, you mentioned Ossian—may I ask if his
Poems are authentic? . . . . . . - - -
Chieftain. As authentic as the heather and the hail on our misty
mountains.” - - . . . . ' - -
Mr. Seward. Wordsworth the poet says, that in Ossian's Poems,
every thing is looked at as if it were one, but that nothing in nature
is so looked at by a great poet. Therefore, Ossian's poetry is bad,
and written by Macpherson. - . . . .
Chieftain. I have not the pleasure of being familiar with Mr.
Wordsworth's name or writings. Neither do I understand one syl-
lable of what you have now said. Ossian's poetry is not bad..! Did
the gentleman you speak of ever see a lake or a mountain 7
Buller. He lives on the banks of a tarn about a mile round
about. - . r . . . . . . . .
Chieftain. I am sorry for him.
Mr. Worth. He also says, if I recollect rightly, that Ossian
speaks of car-borne chiefs in Morven—but that Morven is inacces-
sible to cars. - - - • * -
Odoherty. So it is to jaunting cars. Wordsworth was in a sort
of mongrel shandrydan, a cross between a gig and a tax-cart; and
* Sir Walter Scott's opinion on the authenticity of Ossian's Poems ought to be conclusive.
Scott was a man so Hºly national; that he would almost strain a point rather than part
with any belief likely to do credit to Scotland. His deliberate opinion was this:—“After
making every allowance for the disadvantages of a literal translation, and the possible debase-
ment which those now collected may have suffered, on the great and violent change which the
Highlands have undergone, since the researches of Macpherson, I am compelled to admit that,
incalculably the greater part of the English Ossian must be ascribed to Macpherson himself,
and that his whole introductions, notes, &c. &c., are an absolute tissue of forgeries.”—M.
f So thought Napoleon, who was quite Ossian-struck at one period of his life, before he wore
the imperial purple. It was by way of compliment to this fancy, and with the tact of a cour-
tier, (rough soldier as he affected to be,) that Bernadotte gave his eldest son the name of one ºf
Ossian s heroes. Since 1844, he has been Oscar, king of Sweden.—M.
**
232 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
no wonder he was shy of Morven. But unless he had been a most
ignorant person indeed, (all poets are ignorant,) he would have
known that there are cars in Morven to this day.
Chieftain. There are—and scientifically constructed, though of old
date. I have scen the Highlanders coming down the steep and rocky
hills with them, full of peats, with a rapidity that would have pleased
Fingal himself. Besides there are many straths and level places in
Morven. - - -
Mr. Worth. Pray, were not all the Highlands once called “Mor-
ven Q” *
Chieftain. They were, not unfrequently, nor by a few. -
Odoherty. So goes the flummery of the water-drinking laker about
Ossian,—the bard who brewed his own whisky, and drank like a
whale. *
Mr. Tickler. Tell Wordsworth to let other people's poetry alone,
from Ossian to Pope, and make his own a little better. Who pre-
fers Alice Fell to Malvina 7 or Peter Bell to Abelard 2 Oh I that
the English lakes were all connected by canals | A few steamboats
from Glasgow would soon blow up their poetry. Wishy-washy
stuff indeed
Mr. North. Our conversation, gentlemen, is degenerating into lite-
rature. I will fine the first of you that tattles in a bumper.
Odoherty. The Paradise Lost of Milton has ever ap
Mr. Tickler. He blabs for a bumper. But in with the salt.
Mr. Blackwood. One of the great merits of The Magazine is that
it has less literature
Odoherty. Than libels.
Mr. Blackwood, (rising.) Mr. Odoherty, I have lately seen you
walking on all occasions with the enemy Did you review O’Meara
in the Edinburgh
Odoherty. No, no, my good fellow ; they throw out their bait, but
I won’t mibble. *
Mr. Blackwood. All I know is, that it is at once more honorable
and more lucrative to write in our Maga, than in any other existing
work. *
Mr. Tickler, (ringing the bell.) What cackling, as of geese, is that
we hear through the partition ?—Mr. Ambrose, remove that side-
board, and throw open these folding-doors.
Mr. Ambrose. There is a small party in the next room, Mr. Tickler.
Mr. Tickler. I want to count them. -
(Sideboard is removed, and doors flung open.)
SCOTTISEI POLITICS. 233
SCENE II.
Odoherty. Whigs—Whigs—a nest of Whigs. A conspiracy
against our lord the King. How do you, Mr. Bunting
Mr. Bunting. I scarcely understand this, Mr. Odoherty. But,
during the King's Visit, all party distinctions should be forgotten. I
hope you did not cry, Whigs, Whigs, Whigs, offensively.
Mr. Worth. Young gentleman, we have been all Whigs in our day.
It is a disease of the constitution. Will you and your friends join
our table'. Help Mr. Bunting to some haggis.
Buller. This is a formidable coalition. It is as bad as Mr. Fox
joining Lord North.* - g
Mr. Blackwood. Mr. Bunting, I seldom see you or any of your
friends about the shop now-a-days. I hope, now that the King comes
to see us, you will step up the front-steps. (Aside to Mr. Bunting.)—
Are not these three of the Seven Young Men Q
Mr. Bunting. I was glad to see the King, and I trust he will not
be misinformed of our sentiments towards him. I respect him as the
chief magistrate. --
Mr. Tickler. That is infernal nonsense, Master Bunting, begging
your pardom. Have you no feeling, no fancy, no imagination, Master
Bunting. Your heart ought to leap at the word King, as at the sound
of a trumpet. Chief magistrate —humbug. Do you love your
own father, because he was once Provost of Crail 7 No, no, Master
Bunting, that won’t pass at Ambrose's.
Young Man. I hope that the King's Visit will be productive of
some substantial and lasting benefit to this portion of the united
empire.
Mr. North. What do you mean? Mention what ought to be done,
and I will give a hint to Mr. Peel. w
Young Man. In my opinion the question of borough reform —
Odoherty. Sheep's head or trotters, sir?
Mr. Bunting. Unless his majesty’s ministers assist the Greeks, and
ransom the young women ravished from their nativeScio into Turkish
harems, the inhabitants of modern Athens will
Odoherty. What will they do?—But I agree with you, Mr. Bunt-
ing, in thinking the Greek girls deucedly handsome. Were you
ever in Scio ! .
Mr. Bunting. No. But I attended a meeting tºother day, at which
* Fox and Lord North had been in the habit of grossly abusing each other, in public and in
private. In April, 1782, they formed a Coalition, and entered the Cabinet together, much
against the King’s will. In the following December, Fox's India Bill was rejected by the
House of Lords. The same evening, Fox and Lord North were literally turned out of office by
the King. Lord North never again entered it, and it was nearly 23 years, before—for the last
few months of his life —Fox again was in place.—M. ; -
234 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
the affairs in general of Greece were admirably discussed. And are
we to countenance rape, robbery, and murder ?
Odoherty. Why, I don’t know. As an Irishman, I am scarcely
entitled to answer in the negative. But what has all this blarney (o
do with King George the Fourth’s Visit to Scotland 2 *. -
Mr. Blackwood. I will be very happy to give Mr. Bunting, or
any of his Whig friends, five guineas for an article of moderate size,
containing a few facts about the Greeks. Pray, Mr. Bunting, what
may be the population of the isle of Scio !
Mr. Bunting, (after a pause.) Well—well—I shall not push the
conversation any farther in that direction. The haggis is most excel-
lent. Mr. North, may I have the honor to pledge you in a pot of
porter ? - -
Odoherty, (ringing the bell.) Pipes. (They are brought in.)
Mr. Tickler. No spitting-boxes. They are filthy.
Mr. Worth. Where art thou, Odoherty 7 I discern thee not
through this dense cloud of smoke. } ~
Odoherty. We may all come and go without being missed. I have
an appointment at one o'clock.
Voice, as of one of the Young Men. I have just been perusing the
fresh number of the Edinburgh Review. I scarcely think that the
Duke of Wellington will go to the Congress—after it.
Mr. Tickler. Has Frank Jeffrey stultified the Duke of Wel-
lington 7
Yoice, as of one of the Young Men. Bonaparte, Benjamin Con-
stant, Madame de Stael, John Allen, Esq., Sir James Mackintosh,
and Jeffrey himself, all think him un homme borné.
Mr. Seward. Pray, sir—I beg your pardon, but I do not see you
very distinctly ; what do you mean by un homme borné! How do
you translate the words :
Voice, as of one of the Young Men. I am no French scholar; but
it sounds like French. It is an epithet of opprobrium. The precise
meaning is of no consequence to our argument.
Odoherty. O ! the Duke of Wellington is an ass! what a pity!—
Who is that sick in that corner'ſ—Waiter, waiter. Throw open the
window—down pipes, till it clears off a little. Soho it is my
eloquent young Man of the Mist"—Carry him out, Ambrose—there
he is wºn homme borné.
Mr. Bunting. We, all of us, hate smoking. But, Mr. North—
gentlemen—good night.
(Eveunt Mr. BUNTING and the Young Men.)
Mr. Buller. Are these a fair specimen of your young Edinburgh
Whigs 3
Mr. Worth. I fear they are. Their feebleness quite distresses us.
Jeffrey himself, I am told, is unhappy about it. What am I doing?
“welcom E THE RING.” 235
lighting my pipe with an article that I have not read. There, (fling.
ing it over to Buller) read it aloud for the general edification and
delight.
Buller reads.
* To CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ.,
From an occasiºnal Contributor, living at Cape Clear, who was applied
to jor an article about the King in Edinburgh.
l
, Chief of scribblers | Wondrous Editor |
Why dye seek assistance here ?
Little you'd gain of praise, or credit, or
Any thing else by me, my dear.
Those who, like Boreas,
Greeted uproarious,
Visit so glorious, loudly should sing,
How Miss Edina,
Looking so fine-a,
Smart and divine-a, welcomed the King,
2.
One would think it only rational,
That you had poets there on the spot :
Stir up your own Bard truly national,
Pirst of all Minstrels, Sir Walter Scott:
High o'er Fahrenheit,
Our hearts are in heat,
When that Baronet thrums the string.
Can he refuse us
Aid from his muses :
No, no, he chooses to welcome the King.
3.
Have you not there, too, Crabbe, the veteran;
Ask that old poet to do the job.
For describing, show me a better one,
Bailies or beggarmen, flunkies or mob:
Hubbub, bobbery,
Crowd and mobbery,
For all such jobbery he's the thing.
. So then for a bard,
List the Borough Bard,
Being a thorough bard to welcome the King.”
* In 1891, at John Murray's, in London, Sir Walter Scott was introduced to Crabbe, the poet,
who promis-d to visit him. He arrived in August, 1822, when Scott was immersed in what
has truly briem called “the tumultuous preparations” for the King’s visit. Scott could give
little of his time to Crabbe, who was astonished (as it were), at the fulness and freshmess of
Scottish loyalty. Lockhart had just cause for lamenting (in his Life of Scott), that the
English bard had not seen the Scottish, “at Abbotsford among his books, his trees, and his own
good simple peasants.” In fact, Scott had little time for private matters. Scott's family,
says his son-in-law, were more fortunate than himself in this respect. They had from infancy
been taught to reverence Crabbe's genius, and they now saw enough of him to make them
think of him ever afterwards with tender affection. At this time, Crabbe was 68 years old, and
Scott 51, Crabbe died in 1834; aged eighty ; Scott in 1832, aged sixty-one,—M. -
236 NOOTES AMBROSLANAE.
4.
Mr. Croly, my brother Irishman,
Was there with you, as I am told ;
Eſe, I think, could give you a flourish, man,
In verses bright of gems and gold.
Soho, Cataline !
Prime hand at a line !
Hasāe, and rattle in your verse to bring;
Singing so gorgeous,
How knight and burgess,
Throng'd round Great Georgius, welcomed the King.
5.
Then, there's another to do it cleverly,
He the great poet who writes in prose;
Sure I mean the Author of Waverley,
Whoe'er he be, if any one knows.
Truce to Peverill
There are several
People who never will miss the thing, .
If he will vapor
On hot-press'd paper,
And cut a caper to welcome the King.
6. . .
Or ask Wilson, the grave and serious
Poet, who sung of the Palmy Isle;
Or the sweet fellow who wrote Valerius
(Pray, what's his name 3) would do it in style.
Could you get once
Some of these great ones,
Tender or sweet ones for you to sing,
We’d think the lasses
Eſad left Parnassus, -
To sing trebles and basses, to welcome the King.
Mr. Seward. I have had enough of “tobacco reek.” O, for a gulp
of fresh air ] - - -
Chieftain. The barge of the Duke of Atholl is now lying near the
Chain Pier? It is under my orders. Might I propose a water-party?
I can have her manned with ten oars in ten minutes.
Mr. North. With all my heart. I am fond of aquatics.
Omnes, (crowding around the Editor.) Take my box-coat–No, no,
my cloak—here is my wrap-rascal. Tie my Barcelona round your
neat neck.” Ring for a coach and six.
(Exeunt Mr. NoRTH, leaning on the arm of the Highland Chief—
and MR. AMBROSE with a flaming branch of wax-lights in each
hand.)
EN ID OF A C T FIRST.
* The line occurs in the song of “The Sprig of Shillelah,” in which an Irishman, at Donny-
brook Fair, is described as wearing “a new Barcelona tied round his nate neck.” The
Barcelona was a thick silk handkerchief, boasting of many bright hues, among which mustard-
color was predominant. It was “meat but not gaudy.”—M. g
*
MODERN ATHENS. 237.
ACT II.
SCENE I.—Duke of Atholl's Barge off the Chain Pier, Newhaven.
Chieftain. She pulls ten oars. Mr. North, will you take the helm ?
I ask no better Palinurus.
Mr. North. I am but a fresh-water sailor; yet in my day J have
sailed a few thousand leagues. Byron says he has swam more
leagues than all the living poets of Great Britain have sailed, with
One or two exceptions. Had he said the living critics, he had grossly
erred. w.
Odoherty. Coxswain, give North the tiller. Now, lads, down with
your oars—splash—splash. Are we all on board 2
Omnes. All–all—all—pull away.
Mr. Worth. For the King's yacht. Beautifully feathered 1 Remem-
ber whom you have on board
Buller. Seward this beats Brazen-nose. Yet I wish one of old
Davis's wherries were here, to show how an arrow whizzes from a
bow. v
Mr. Worth. Seward—Buller, behold the Queen of the North !
What think you of the Castle, with the crescent moon hung over her
for a banner ? The city lights are not afraid to confront the stars.
I hope Arthur's Ghost is on his mountain-throne to-night. Yonder
goes a fire-balloon. See how the stationary stars mock that transient
flight of rockets. Yonder crown of gas-light burns brightly to-night,
—now it is half veiled in cloud-drapery, now it is gone. Hurra !
Again it blazes forth, and tinges Nelson's Pillar with its ruddy ,
splendor. - - -
Odoherty. By the powers, North, you are poetical
Mr. Tickler. Nelson's Pillar—ay—may it stand there for ever !
Did they not talk of pulling it down for the Parthenon 2 We held
it up. Pull down a Monument to the greatest of British admirals |
Fie—fie.
Mr. Buller. We Englishmen thought the proposal an odd one.
But the Pillar, it was said, was in bad taste, and disfigured the
modern Athens. -
Mr. North. It is in bad taste. What then 2 Are Monuments to
the illustrious dead to lie at the mercy of Dilletanti ? But, as Mr.
Tickler said, we preserved that Monument.
Mr. Seward. I admire the Parthenon. Most of you will recollect
my poem on that subject. I am glad the foundation-stone has been
laid. -
Mr. Worth. So am I. Let Scotland show now that she has
liberality as well as taste, and not suffer the walls to be dilapidated
by time before they have been raised to their perfect height.
238 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Odoherty. The Parthenon will be an elegant testimonial. Is it
not, too, a national testimonial? Why then should not the Scottish
nation pay the masons 2 Why sue for Parliamentary grants? Are
you not “a nation of Gentlemen º' Put your hands then into your
breeches-pockets, (I beg your pardon, Chieftain), and pay for what
you build.
Mr. Tickler. The Standard-Bearer speaks nobly. We admire the
Parthenon. We resolve to build it. We call ourselves Athenians,
and then implore Parliament to pay the piper. Poor devils we
ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
Mr. Buller. Mr. Odoherty, I agree with you. A rich nation does
well to be magnificent. Up with towers, temples, baths, porticos,
and what not ; but for one nation to build splendid structures, and
then call on another for their praises and their purses, is, in my
opinion, not exactly after the fashion of the Athenians.
Mr. Blackwood. I have no objection to publish an additional
Number any month in behoof of the Parthenon. I think Mr.
Linning deserves the highest praise for his zeal and perseverance.
Odo/verty. And I hope you will also publish an additional Number
the month following for behoof of the Foundling Hospital, Dublin,
which is generally overstocked. There is not milk for half the brats.
Mr. North. Shall I steer under her stern, or across her bows 7
Coastwain. Under her great clumsy stern, and be damned to her
—Jung-frau ! Dung-cart | She can’t keep her backside out of the
Water.
Mr. Seward. Whom are you speaking of? Not a female, I hope.
Odoherty. Sir William Curtis's yacht—a female, to be sure. Look,
you may read her name on her bottom by moonlight.
Mr. Blackwood. How many guns does she carry
Coastwain. Twenty stew-pans.
Chieftain. Lord bless the worthy Baronet, however ; he wins the
hearts of us Highlanders by mounting a kilt. I hope he will wear it
occasionally in Guildhall. I believe he is an honorary member of
the Celtic Society.
Mr. Seward. Are turtles ever caught on the coast of Scotland 7
Chieftain. Occasionally—but they are found in greatest numbers
in the inland lochs. They were originally fresh-water fish.
Mr. Seward. You surprise me. Have these inland lochs no com-
munication with the Sea '.
Chieftain. Many of them only by means of torrents precipitous,
several miles high, and inaccessible, I suspect, to turtles.
Coxswain. Old gentleman, helm a-lee, or we run foul of that
hawser. Helm a lee, old gentleman, helm a-lee, or we all take our
grog in Davy's locker. e -
Mr. Blackwood. Dog on it, Mr. North, you would steer, and you
Y CHEAP TRAVſ. LLING, 239
would steer, and a pretty kettle of fish you are making of it—I wish
I were safe at Newington ſº . These boating expeditions never
answer. My brother Thomas told me not to —
Coaswain. All's well. Unship oars.
SCENE II.-State-cabin Royal Yacht.
Mr. North. Admirable simplicity nothing gorgeous and gaudy,
one feels at sea in such a cabin as this. The King, who designed it,
knows the spirit of the British navy.
Mr. Tickler. No broad glittering gilding; there is no smell of
gingerbread ; one can think of grog and sea-biscuit. A man might
be sick in squally weather here, without fear of the furniture.
Odoherty. Would it not be a pretty pastime to spend a honey-
moon now and then in such a floating heaven as this 2 Calm weather
and a clear conscience, soft sofa, liberty and love.
Buller. Nay, confound it, the prettiest girl looks forbidding when
she is squeamish. The dim orange hue of sea-sickness is an antidote
to all foolish fondness. Terra firma for me.
Tickler. Unquestionably. I gave Mrs. Tickler, a few days after
our union, a voyage on the New Canal. The track-boat of this Cut
was appropriately called The Lady of the Lake. We were hauled
along, at the rate of three miles an hour, by a couple of horses,
“lean, and lank, and brown, as is the ribbed sea-sand.” Yet, even
then, Mrs. Tickler felt queer, and we had to disembarge before
changing cattle.
The Adjutant. One may travel now for twenty pounds all over
Great Britain. Go it toe and heel in cool weather—take a lift occa-
sionally in cart, buggy, or shandrydan, by the side of a fat farmer—
tip the guard of Heavies a sly wink, and get up behind in the basket,
thirty miles for a couple of shillings; now for a cheap circuitous cut
by a canal, when you live cheap with the chaw-bacons, and, see a fine
flat country—into a steamboat before the mast, and smoke it away
fifty leagues for six and eight pence—da capo–and in about six weeks
you return to your wife and family, with a perfect geographical
and hydrographical knowledge of this Island, and with a five pound
note, out of the twenty, for a nest-egg.
Mr. Blackwood. That looks all very well upon paper.
Odoherty. On paper, Mr. Blackwood |
Mr. Blackwood. I say it is a mere theory, and cannot be reduced
to practice. I cannot go to London, to stay a fortnight, sce my
friends, and return under fifty guineas.
Odoherty. But then you indulge in luxuries, extraneous expenses
—works of supererogation.
* Blackwood's country residence was at Newington, near Edinburgh.-M.
240 NOOTES AMIBIROSIAN AF.
Mr. Blackwood. Not at all, Adjutant. To be sure hunting costs a
good deal. -
Buller. Hunting ! Are you a sportsman 7 Do you join the
Surrey ! and conspire with your friend, Leigh Hunt, to worry hares
in the dog-days - - .
Mr. Blackwood. No, no. It is hunting contributors. For example,
I hear of a clever young man having been at a tea-and-turn-out in the
city. I lay on a few idle dogs to scent him out—I trace him to
Temple Bar—there he is lost, and the chase may be repeated for
several days before we secure him. Then I have to dinner him
divers times, and, before leaving town, to advance money on his
articles. Perhaps I never hear more of him, till I read the identical
article, promised and paid for, in the London or New Monthly.
Odoherty. There is a melancholy want of principle, indeed, almong
literary men. Nobody will accuse me of being straight-laced ; but
while the love-fit lasts, I am true as steel to one mistress arid to one
Magazine. I look upon an attachment to either, quite as an affair of the
heart. When mutually tired of each other, then part with a kiss, a
squeeze of the hand, a courtesy, and a bow. But no infidelity during
the attachment. What sort of a heart can that man have, while he is
openly living with the New Monthly, insidiously pays his addresses
to the modest and too unsuspecting Maga " It is a shocking system
of promiscuous Cockney concubinage, that must at no distant period
vitiate, the taste, harden the sensibility, vulgarize the manners, and
deprave the morals of the people of Great Britain. It ought to be
put down. --
Buller. Do you seriously opine, Mr. North, that much money is
made by periodical literature in London tº
Mr. Worth. Assuredly not. There is little available talent there.
The really good men are all over head and ears in wigs and work.
There do not seem to be above a dozen idlers in all London who can
get up a decent article ; these are all known, and their intellects are
measured as exactly as their bodies by a tailor;-each man has his
measure lying at Colburn’s, &c., and is paid accordingly. When a
spare young man quarrels with one employer, he attempts another;
but his wares are known in the market, and “he drags at each
remove a heavier chain.”
Odoherty. The contributors are all as well known as the pugilists
—height, weight, length, bottom, and science. Mr. F. can hit hard,
but is a cur, like Jack the butcher. Mr. R. can spar prettily, like
Williams the swell, with the gloves, but can neither give nor take
with the naked mauleys. Mr. T. is like the Birmingham Youth, and
“falls off unaccountably.” And Mr. is a palpaple cross—fights
booty, and it ends in a Wrangle or a draw.
Mr. Blackwood. TXog on it, Adjutant, why don’t you give us some
more Boxiana articles?
180XIANA, 241
* Odoherty, I do not wish to interfere with old in the “Fancy
Gazette.” He is a rum one to go—a most pawky and prophetic
pugilist. He knows the whole business of the ring better than any
man alive, and writes scholastically and like a gemman; but he was
rather out there about Barlow and Josh, Hudson, Ebony, you
should exchange Magazines. The prime object of the “Pancy
Gazette” is to kick curs and crosses out of the ring.” It is full of
the true English spirit. Why, I gave a few numbers of it to my
friend the Rev. Dr. Wodrow, who was once, as you know, Moderator
of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, and nothing would
satisfy the old divine but a couple of pairs of gloves. I sent them
out from Christie's; and on my next visit, there were he and Saun-
ders Howie, one of the elders, ruffianing it away like old Tom Owens
and Mendoza. “That's a chatterer,” quoth the elder, as I entered
the study, he having hit Wodrow on his box of ivories. “There's a
floorer,” responded the ex-Moderator, and straightway the Covenanter
was on the carpet.
Chieftain. Is not this a somewhat singular conversation for the
state-cabin of our most gracious Sovereign's yacht 7
Odoherty. Not at all. I saw Randal welt Macarthy in a room
about this size, and Jack Scroggins serve out Holt —
Mr. Seward. Where is North 2 I hope he has not leapt out of the
cabin window. -
Omnes, (rising from the King's sofa.) North—North—Editor—
Christopher—Kit, where the devil are you ? ->
Mr. North, (from within his Majesty's bed-room.) Come hither,
my dear boys, and behold your father reposing on the bed of royalty!
(They all rush in.) & ---
Buller. Behold him lying alive in state | Let us kneel down by
the bed-side. (They all kneel down.)
Omnes. Hail, King of Editors | Long mayest thou reign over
us, thy faithful subjects. Salve, Pater /
Mr. Worth, Oh! my children, little do you know what a weary
weight is in a crown Alas, for us Monarchs Oh! that I could
fall asleep, and never more awake Posterity will do me justice.
Mr. Blackwood, (in tears.) Oh! my good sir—my good sir—it is
quite a mistake, I assure you—every living Soul loves and admires
you. You must not talk of dying, sir—(handing over the gemſ to
* At this time, Mr. George Kent was editor of The Fancy Gazette. I mention (for the infor-
mation of the ladies,) that “The Fancy” included not only sporting men, but was understood
sometimes to take in the members of the swell mob.-M. -
f The Gem. The Chaldee manuscript (chap. 1, v. 34) had thus described Blackwood’s snuff-
box ;—“And he took from under his girdle a gem of curious workmanship of silver, made by
the hand of a cunning artificer, and overlaid within with pure gold; and he took from
thence something in colorike unto the dust of the earth, or the ashes that remain of a ſurnace
aud he snuffed it up like the east wind, and returned the gem again in to its place.”—M.
WOL. I.-18
242 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE,
Mr. Worth)—The world can ill spare you at this crisis. Here is
Canning, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,” With yourself,
in the Home Department, things will go on gloriously; and I calcu-
late on 1000 additional subscribers to our next Number.
Odoherty. Let me smooth this pillow.
Mr. North. How many of my poorest subjects are now asleep.
Chieftain, (aside to Mr. Tickler.) Is he subject to moody fits of
this kind 7 Is he liable to the blue devils'
Mr. Tickler. Only to printers' devils, Chieftain; but let him alone
for a few minutes. Strong imagination is working within him, as he
lies on the King's couch. See, he is recovering—what a gray pierc-
ing eye the old cock turns up ! He is game to the back-bone.
Mr. North. Would I had a bowl of punch-royal
Young Midshipman. That you shall have, Mr. North, in the
twinkling of a bed-post. We drink nothing else on board, on a trip
of this kind. Hollo, Jenkins, bring the crater. (Enter Jenkins with
punch royal.) We call this the crater.
Mr. Worth (drinks.) Punch-royal indeed!
Odoherty. Fair play is a jewel, North. Leave a cheerer to the
Chieftain. *
Mr. North, (rising.) Gentlemen, let us re-embark. My soul is
full.—Adjutant, lend me your arm up the gangway. Kings lie on
down—but, oh, oh, oh! (Striking his forehead.) -
Mr. Blackwood. This will end in an article.
SCENE III.-The Deck of Mr. Smith's Cutler, the Orion.
Chieftain. Bargemen, there are five guineas for you to drink the
King's health, from Mr. North and his friends.
JBargemen. KIT and the KING ! Huzza—North for ever !
Mr. Seward. Let us beat up the Frith; the breeze is freshening.
I only wish the worthy Commander had been on board. He can lay
a bowsprit in the wind's eye with any man that ever touched a tiller.
Odoherty. Where the devil is the moon ? Well tumbled porpus.
A sea-mew—lend me a musket. There, madam, some pepper for
your tail—roundabouts like a whirligig–up like an arrow—and then
off “right slick away,” and down upon the billow, safe and sound, as
dapper as a daisy. I always miss, except with single ball. I recol-
lect killing Corney Maguire at the first fire, like winking, and hardly
ever an aim at all at all.
Mr. Buller. She will lie nearer the wind, Seward, thereabouts—
thereabouts—her mainsail has the true Ramsey cut. She looks quite
snakish.
Odoherty. Put her about. The breeze is snoring from the king.
* Canning, on the eve of embarking to fill the office of Governor-General of India, was
appointed to succeod Lord W.ondonderry, as Foreign Secretary.-M.
NAPOLEON. 243
dom of Fife. See now, Seward, that you don’t let her miss stays.
She goes round within her own length as on a pivot. Well done,
Orion -
Mr. Tickler. I vote we set off for the Western Isles.
Odoherty. I have too much regard for Mrs. Tickler to allow her
husband to leave her in her present interesting situation. Besides, it
would not be civil to the absent, commander of the cutter, to over-
power the crew, and carry her off, like pirates.
Mr. Seward. Demme—there's a schooner, about our own tonnage,
beating up in ballast to Alloa for table beer—let us race her. I will
lay the Orion on her quarter. There, lads—all tight—now she feels
it—gunwale in—grand bearings—I could steer her with my little
finger. We are eating him out of the wind.
Odoherty, (through his hands as a speaking trumpet.) Whither
bound 7–What cargo —Timber and fruit, staves and potatoes 7
Son of a sea-cow, you are drifting to leeward. • .
Mr. Worth. I have been glancing over O’Meara. Bonaparte's
tone, when speaking of the intended invasion of this country, did
not a little amuse me. He laid his account with conquering Great
Britain. * -
Mr. Buller. Great insolence. Did his troops conquer divided and
degenerate Spain? The British nation would have trampled him
under foot. O’Meara records his ravings, as if he went along with
them. I hate the French for Smivelling so through their noses. No
nasal nation could conquer a great guttural people.
Mr. North. Good. It is quite laughable to hear him telling the
surgeon what he intended to have done with the Bank of England,
and what sort of a constitution he had cut and dried for us...} .
Odoherty. Bonaparte says sneeringly, that Wellington could not
have left the field of battle, if he had been defeated at Waterloo.
Does he mean, that his position was a bad one, in case of retreat 7
I ask, was his own a good one º Was not his army cut to pieces as
it fled ſº t
Mr. Tickler. Odoherty, did you read tºother day, in the newspa.
pers, of a Liverpool barber, shaving eighty chins, in a workmanlike
style, within the hour ! -
Odoherty. I did; but a Manchester shaver has since done a
hundred.
Mr. Tickler. It must have been a serious affair for the last score
of shavées. When the betting became loud, 6 to 4 on time, I am
surprised the barber got his patients to sit.
* Napoleon's own statements on this head (they are too lengthy to be quoted here,) will be
found in volume I., p. 215, and volume Iſ., p. 223, of O'Meara’s “Voice from St. Helena.”—M.
f He intended proclaiming a republic, abolishing the peerage, setting Burdett to re-model the
i...ºut." and dividing the property of the mobility among the partisans of this new revo-
ution.—M. .
244 g NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Mr. Worth. Was he allowed to draw blood?
Odoherty. Only from pimples. I like these sort of bets. They
encourage the useful arts. I won a cool hundred last winter, as you
may have heard, by eating a thousand eggs in a thousand hours,
, Mr. Tickler. Hard or soft . -
Odoherty. Both—raw, roasted, and poached. It was a sickening
business. I ate a few rotten ones, for the sake of variety. -
Chieftain. One of my Tail drank a thousand glasses of whisky in.
a thousand hours; and we had great difficulty in keeping him to a
single glass an hour. He did it without turning a hair.
Mr. North. Suppose we take a look at the Dollar Academy?
Mr. Tickler. Tennant's in town ; he dimed with me Jast week.
I have a copy of Anster Fair in my pocket. I took it to Holland
with me on my last trip, and read it in the Zuyder Zee. It is a
* thing, North, full of life, and glee, and glamour.” So is Don
J Ulall. 3.
Mr. Worth. I shall not permit any more poetry to be published
before the year 1830, except by fresh ones. The known hands are
all stale. Poetry is the language of passion. But no strong deep
passion is in the mind of the age. If it be, where 2 Henceforth I
patronize prose.
Mr. Tickler. So does Mr. Blackwood. Confound him, he is inun-
dating the public. I wish to God Galt was dead!
Mr. Blackwood. You are so fond of saying strong things. Gra-
cious me ! before he has finished the Lairds of Grippy :
Mr. Tickler. Well, well, let him live till then, and then die.
Yet better is a soil, like that of Scotland, that produces a good,
strong, rough, coarse crop, than the meagre and mangy barrenness
of England. - *
Mr. Seward. Buller, take the helm. The meagre and mangy bar-
renness of England Do you speak, sir, of the soil or soul of Eng-
land? You Scotch do wonders both in agriculture and education;
but you cannot contend against climate.
Mr. North. Come, come—you don’t thoroughly understand Tick-
ler yet. But the moon is sunk, the stars are paling their ineffectual
fires,-and what is worse, the tide is ebbing. So let us put about,
and back to the Chain Pier. Or shall we make a descent on the
coast? See, we are off Hopetoun House.f
Odoherty. Hark! the sound of the fiddle from that snug farm-
* In 1810, William Temnant, author of “Amster Fair,” and other poems, was elected classical
teacher of the academy at Dollar, in Fifeshire. In 1837, he was made Professor of Oriental
Languages in the University of St. Andrews. He died in 1843.-M.
f Thº ntail, or the Lairds of Grippy, one of John Galt's best novels, was in the press at this
time.—M. -
f Hopetoun House, in Linlithgow-shire, was the seat of the gallant Earl of Hopetoun
with whom George IV. breakfasted on the morning of his leaving Scotland.
TEIB. DANCE. 245
house amidst a grove of trees Pity the should be Scotch firs, a
damnable tree, and a grove of them is too bad. Let us land.
Boatswain. The water is deep close to the water's edge. Down
helm, master. There, her gunwale is on the granite
(MR. NoFTH leaps out, followed by the Standard Bearer, Chief.
tain, dºc. ; and the Orion, her sails soon filling, wears, and
goes down the Frith, goose-winged, before the wind. -
END OF ACT S E COND.
ACT III. *
SCENE I.—Kitchen of the Farm-house of Girnaway. Gudeman in
his arm-chair, by the ingle—MR. NoFTH on his right hand—
Gudewife in her arm-chair, opposite—ODOHERTY on her right—
Lads and lasses all around.
* Reel of Tullochgorum.
Gudeman. Ma faith, but the Highlander handles his heels well.
You were saying he is a Chieftain—Has he his tail in the town wi'
him 7
Mr. Worth. He has a tail twenty gentlemen long.”
Gudeman. I’m thinkin’ it wad be mae jeest to cast saut on his tail.
He's a proud, fierce-lookin’ fallow. He's bringing the red into Meg's
face yonner, with his kilt flaff flaffing afore her, wi' that great rough
pouch. Hear till him, hoo he's snappin’ his fingers, and crying out,
just wi' perfect wudness. The fiver o' his young Hieland bluid
wumma let him rest. Safe us! look at him whirling Meg about like
a tee-totum. • •
Gudewife. Gudeman, this gentleman here, he is an Irisher, is prig-
gin on me to tak the floor. I fin’ as gin I couldna refuse. * — -
Gudeman. Do as thou likes, Tibbie, thou’rt auld enough to take
care o’ thyself. -
Mr. Blackwood, (to a pretty young Girl in a white gown and pink
ribbons.) My dear, it's to be a foursome reel. May I have the
pleasure of standing before you? Fiddlers, play “I’ll gang nae mair
to yon town,”—it's the King's favorite.
Chieftain, (to his Partner, after a kiss.) Let me hand you to the
dresser.
Meg. I'm a' in a drench o' sweat, see it's just pooran down. My
Sark’s as wat's muck. • -
Chieftain. You had better step out to the door for a few minutes,
and take the benefit of the fresh air. -
Meg. Wi’ a my heart, sir. (Eveunt Chieftain and Meg.)
Odoherty. Madam, you cannot go wrong, it is just the eight
figure—so—S. Jig, or common time !
* The personal importance of a Scottish Chieftain was estimated by his Tail, or number of
immediato followers.-M.
246 NOOTES AMBROSLANAE.
Gudewife, Oh! Jig–jig. - -
A Foursome Reel by the Standard-bearer, the Gude-
wife, Mr. Blackwood, and Maiden.) -
Gudeman. Mr. North, you hae brocht a band o' rare swankies wi'
you. I’m thinking you’re no sae auld's you look like. .
Mr. Worth. I’m quite a young man, just the age of the King,” God
bless him. I hope we'll both live thirty years yet. -
Mr. Tickler, (to Mr. North.) Look how busy Buller is yonder in
the corner, at the end of the kitchen dresser. -
Mr. Worth. Laird," the gudewife foots it away with admirable
agility. I never saw a reel better danced in my life. -
Gºwdeman. She's a gay, canny body; see hoo the jade puts her twa
neives to the sides o’her, and hauds up her chim wi' a prie-my-mou
sort o' a cock. Tibby, ye jade, the ee o' your auld gudeman's on
you. What ca'ye that lang land-louper that's wallopping afore, her?
said you, the Stawner-bearer? Is he a Flag-Staff Lieutenant on half
ay ?. ."
p Mr. Tickler. Fiddler, my boy, you with that infernal squint, I
beg your pardon, with the slight cast of your eye, will you lend me
your fiddle for a few seconds !
(Takes the fiddle and plays with prodigious birr.)
Gudewife. Stap him—stap him, that’s no the same tune. I canna
keep the step. That's Maggy Lauder he's strumming at ; they’re
playing different tunes. (Dance is stopped.)
Mr. Blackwood. I beg your pardon, Mr. Tickler; but you have
put us all out; I was just beginning to get into the way of it.
Mr. Tickler. Come, I volunteer a solo. The Bush aboon Traquair.
(Plays.)
Odoherty. The Hen’s March, by jingo. w
One Fiddler, (to another.) He fingers bonny, bonny, but he has a
Cramp bow-hand. He's shouther-bum'. I like to see the bow gaun
like a flail back and forward. -
Gudewife. Mr. Odoherty, sit down aside me again, and let's hear
something about the King.
Odoherty. Mrs. Girnaway, you are quite a woman to please the
King—fat, fair, and forty. And I assure you that the King is quite
a man to please any woman. The expression of the under part of
his face is particularly pleasing; his mouth, madam, is not unlike
your own, especially when you both smile.
Gudewife. Do you hear that, gudeman? Mr. Odocterme says,
that I am like the King about the mouth, when I smile.
Gudeman. When you smile, gudewife? Whan's that ? Your
mouth, ony time I see’t, is either wide open, wi' a' its buck-teeth in
a guffaw, or as fast as a vice, in a dour fit of the sourocks.
* Rather an error. According to North's own showing subsequently, he was many years older
than Geulge IV., who was sixty in August, 1822.-M.
~) NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 247
Mr. North. May I ask, sir, who is that maiden with the silken
snood, whose conversation is now enjoyed by my young Friend, Mr.
Buller of Brazen-nose 7
Gudeman. That's our auldest dochter, Girzzy Girnaway; she'll be
out o' her teens by Halloween ; and she's as gude's she's bonny,
sir, she never gied her parents an ill word, nor a sair heart,
Mr. North. The dancing is kept up with wonderful spirit, and you
and I now have all the conversation to ourselves. A country-dance,
I declarel See, the gudewife, sir, is coming over to join us. We
shall just have a three-handed crack. -
Gudewife, Ae reel's eneugh for me. My daft days are ower; but
I couldna thole his fleeching—that ame you ca’ the Adjutant. Look
at yon lang deevil how he is gaun down the middle wi' Mysie below
his oxter. Ca' ye him Tickler ? Hech, sirs, but he's well named.
He's kittlin her a’ the way down. -
Mr. North. There is much happiness, Laird, now before us, My
heart enjoys their homely hilarity. We must take human life as we
find it.
Gudeman. What for did ye say that Mr. Buller had a brazen
nose? I think him a very douce, quate, blate callan, an’ less o’ the
brass nose than ony single ane o' your forbears. -
Mr. Worth. He belongs to an English college called Brazen-nose.
Gudeman. Na, na, Mr. North, that’ll no gang down with Gibby
Girnaway. An English college called Brazen-nose ! Na, na.
Gudewife. He's gane fain on our Girzzy. But he can mean mae
ill. He wadna be a man, to come down frae England and say aught
amiss to our bairn, Oh! Gibby, but he's a neat dancer, and has
sma’sma' ankles, but gude strong calves. I thocht the English had
been a’ wee bit fat bodies. Aiblins his mither may hae been frae
Scotland.
Mr. Worth. Laird Girnaway, I fear the times are extremely bad.
Gudeman. They are so. But if the landlords will let down their
rents, and indeed they must, and if the crops are as good next year
as they are this, and if, and if, and if–then, Mr. North, I say the
times will not be bad. They will be better for poor people than I
ever remember them. And let rich people take care of themselves.
Mr. North. Can the landlords afford to do so Will it not ruin
them 7 -
Gudeman. I cannot tell what they can afford, or wha may be
ruined. But what I say must happen; and the warld will not be
warse off than before. They must draw less, and spend less. That's
the hail affair.
Gudewife. I’m a wee dull o' hearing, and thae fiddles mak sic a
din—and there is sic a hirdum dirdum on the floor, I canna hear
either my gudeman or you, sir. But I’m awa’ into the Spence to
mak some plotty, and baste the guse. [Evit.
248 TNOOTES AMBROSTANAE,
Mr. North. It does my heart good to see such a scene as this.
hope our dancers are all loyal subjects, Or do they care nothing
about their King' - f •
Gudeman. I daresay, sir, not ane o' them is thinking o' his Majesty .
at this minute. But why should they a time for a things. But
they’ve been maist o' them in to Embro’ to hae a keek o' him.
There's no chiel on the floor that wadna fecht for the King till his
heart's blood flooded the grass aneath his tottering feet.
Mr. North. Have you any sons, Mr. Girnaway ? -
Gudeman. Twa—that's ame o' them, the big chiel wi' the curly
pow clapping his hauns, and the ither is a schoolmaster in Ayrshire
—a douce laddie, that may ae day be a minister. Davie there is a
yeoman, and a fearfu' fallow with the sword. And then he wad ride
the Deevil himsel’.
Mr. Worth. Have you yourself seen his Majesty, Mr. Girnaway ?
Gudeman. Not yet : but I will see him, God willing, when he
takes his leave o' his aim Scotland, frae Hopetoun House. The auld
royal bluid o' Scotland, I ken, is in his veins; and there is some
thing, sir, in the thocht o' far-back times that's grand and fearsome,
and suits the head o' a crowned Monarch. The folk in this parish
dinna respeck me the less, that I am ane o’ the Girnaways, whoso
family has lived here for generations and generations; and it maun
be just the same wi'a King, whose ancestors hae lang ruled the land.
If we hae a feeling o' sic a thing, sae maun he and Davie said, “O,
father, but he was a proud man when he looked up to the Calton,
and doun on auld Holyrood. I couldna help greeting.”
Mr. North. I trust, Mr. Girnaway, that your enlightened senti-
ments are general.
Gudeman. Wha doubts 't'. Now and then, ye hear a dauner'd
body telling ye that the King is just like ither men; and that Kings
care maething for puir people; and that the twa Houses o' Parlia-
ment should haud him in wi' baith snaffle and curb ; but that doc-
trine doesna gang doun just the now ; and the very women-folk, who,
in a general way are rather sillyish, you ken, laugh at it, and praise
the King up to the very ee-brees.” -
Mr. North. Never beheld I so much mirth, happiness, and inno-
cence. I have often thought, Mr. Girnaway, of becoming a farmer
in the evening of life.
Gudeman. There's mirth eneugh and happiness eneugh, and, as the
world goes, innocence eneugh, too, on the floor, Mr. North. But you
maumna deceive yoursel’ wi' fine words. Mirth isna for every day
in the year; and we are often a sulky and dour, and at times raging
like tigers. Happiness is a kittle verb to conjugate, as our dominie
says; and as to innocence, while lads and lasses are lads and lasses;
* Jºe-brees,<-eyebrows.—M.
NORTH UNVEILED. . . 349
there'll be baith sin and sorrow. But there's ae thing, sir, keepit
sacred amang us, and that is religion, Mr. North. We attend the
kirk and read the Bible.
Mr. Worth. I hope, Mr. Girnaway, that when you come to Edin-
burgh, you will take potluck with me. -
Gudeman. Dinna Mr. me ony mair, sir; call me just Girnaway.
I'll do’t. Now, sir, may I ask, cannily, what trade ye may be when
you are at hame? - - e
Mr. North. I am Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, of which you
may have heard. - º
Gudeman. Gude safe us ! are you a loupin', livin', flesh and bluid
man, with real rudiments and a wooden crutch, just as gien out in
that ance-a-month peerioddical ? Whan will wonders cease ? Gies
your haun. Come awa’ into the spence; the wife maun hae made
the plotty by this time. Come into the spence. Come awa—come
away. This is maist as gude's a visit frae the King himsel.
[Eveunt North and GIRNAWAY into the Spence.
SCENE II.-The Spence.
Gudewife (sola.) It's no every ane can set down a bit supper like
Tibbie Girnaway. Had that guše been langer on the stubble, he
might hae been a hantle fatter about the doup. But he'll do as he
is, wi' the apple sauce. -
Jºhler GIRNAWAY and NoFTII.
Girnaway. Gudewife, you ken that build our son sends us every
month, wi' the face of Geordie Buchanan on’t. Would ye believe
that we hae under our roof tree the very lads that write it. Here's
the cock o’ the company, Mr. North himself.
Gºudewife. I jaloused something wonderfu', whene'er I saw the face
of him, and that Adjutant ane. Siccan a built I never read afore.
It gars ame laugh they canna tell how ; and a' the time ye ken what
ye'r reading, is serious, too—Naething ill in't, but a' gude—support-
ing the kintra, and the King, and the kirk. -
Girnaway. Mr. North, I hae not much time to read, but I like fine
to put my specs ºn to a sensible or droll builº, and your Magazine is
baith. I’m a friend to general education.
Mr. Worth. Girraway, do you think that there are many profane
or seditious books hawked about the Country It seems to be the
opinion of the General Assembly. -
Girnaway. 'Deed, sir, I can only speak o' my ain experience.
Doubtless, there are some, but no great feck; and I hae seen my aim
weans and servants, after glowring at them a while on the dresser or
the bunker, fling them frae them, like rowans, and meist time I see
them it's on the midden. Hawkers come mair speed wi' ribbons,

250 NOOTES AMBROSLANAE.
and shears, and knives, and bits o' funny ballads, than profanity and
sedition. But the General Assembly should ken best. g’ ..
Gudewife. Now, ma man, Gibbie, the guse is getting cauld. I
maun inveet the lave o’ them in. The fiddles and the skirling is
baith quate. -
(Erit the Gudewife, and enters with the STANDARD BEARER,
CHIEFTAIN, BULLER, SEWARD, TICKLER, and MR. BLACK-
wooD.)
Mr. Worth. Might I take the liberty of requesting the pleasure of
your daughter's company, maām. Mr. Buller will go for his part-
EleI’. (BULLER darts off.)
Gudewife. I like to see my bairns respecket, sir, and Grace can
show her face ony where, sae can her cousin Mysie. (TICKLER
ãarts off.) And her friend, Miss Susy, the only dochter o’ the Anti-
purgher minister, wha was dancing wi' Mr. Blackwood. (MR.
BLACKwood darts off.) And Meg herself, though she hasma ta'en
on muckle o' a polish, sin’ she came from about Glasgow, is a decent
hizzie. (Chieftain darts off.) Yon bit white-faced lassie, wi' the
jimp waist, and genteel carriage, is the butcher's only bairn, and a
great heiress. (SEWARD darts off.) Preserve us, are they a' coming
to soop 2 Weel, weel, we maun sit close. Where's Mr. Odoc-
terme 3
Adjutant. Here, maām.
(Gudeman says grace, and the Company fall to.)
Gudewife. I fear, Mr. Adjutant, that you fin’ that spawl o' the
gusy rather teuch 3 . g
Odoherty. As tender as a chicken, I assure you, ma'am. If it
were as tough as timber I care not. I never made a better supper
in all my life, than I did one might in Spain, on the tail of an old
Erench artillery horse. It was short, but sweet.
Gudewife. Let me lay some more rumble-te-thumps on your
plate, Colonel Odocterime. The tail o' a horse! What some brave
Sodgers hae gone through in foreign parts, for our sakes at hame! I
could greet to think on’t.
Mr. North. Mrs. Girnaway, I propose to drink the health of your
absent son, Mr. Gilbert Girnaway, student of divinity, and teacher
at Torbolton. -
Gudeman. He couldma leave his scholars, or he would hae been to
Embro’ to see the King, like the lave. I’se drink the callan's health
wi' richt good will. “Here's our Gilbert.” Hoots, Tibbie, you
silly thing, what for are you greeting 3
Odoherty. “Oh Beauty’s tear is lovelier than her smile.” But
gentlemen, Miss Grace Girnaway will give us a song. Mr. Buller,
will you prevail upon Miss Girnaway for a song—something plain-
tive and pathetic, if you please. : Y-
COUNTRY SONGS. 251
Miss Crace (sings)
Oh! white is thy bosom, and blue is thine eye,
The light is a tear, and the sound is a sigh
Thy love is like friendship, thy friendship like love,
And that is the reason I call thee—my Dove. .
Oh sweet to my soul is the balm of thy breath,
As a dew-laden gale from the rich-blossom'd heath;
Can it be that all beauty doth fade in an hour?
Then let that be the reason I call thee—my Flower.
On the wide sea of life shines one unclouded light,
And still it burns softest and clearest by night;
But its lustre, though lovely, alas, is afar,
And that is the reason I call thee—my Star.
But the dove seeks her nest in the forest so green,
And the flower in its fragrance is fading unseen ;
The star in its brightness the sea-mist will hide,
So come to my heart, while I call thee—my Bride.
Gudeman. She's no a taucht singer, our Grace; but neither is a
lintwhite nor a laverock. Her father, Mr. North, likes to hear her
singing by the ingle—and he likes to hear her singing in the kirk.
Mr. Buller, you English winna like the hamely lilt o' a Scottish
farmer's dochter ?
Mr. Buller. Liveliness, modesty, cheerfulness, innocence, and
beauty; I hope can be felt by an English heart, loved and respected,
wherever they smile before his eye, or melt upon his ear. “Your
fair and good daughter's health and song—and may she long live to
be a blessing and a prida to her parents.” .
Gºudewife. Ay, ay, a blessing, but no a pride. Pride's no for
human creatures, but gratitude is ; and we thank God, Gilbert and
I, for maething mair than for gieing us weel-liked and dutiful bairns.
Mr. Tickler. If ever I saw a singing face in my life, it is that of
my sweet Mysie's. My dear, will you sing, now that your fair
cousin has broken the ice Q -
Gudewife. Will she sing? We'll gar her sing. We maun a’ con-
tribute.
Mr. Blackwood, (starting.) We maun a’ contribute | Whose
voice was that promising an article 3
Gºudewife. I say, sir, we maun a’ contribute. Mysie's gaun to gie
you a sang. Aiblins it may get into print. Come, Mysie, clear
your plpes. w
Miss Mysie. Grace, let us sing THE SHEPHERDESs AND THE
SAILOR. I shall be the Sailor this time.
Sailor, When lightning parts the thunder-cloud
That blackens all the sea, -”
And tempests sough through sail and shroud,
Even then I think on thee, Mary.
252 .* NOGTES AMBROSLAN.E.
Shepherdess. I wrap me in that keepsake plaid,
And lie doun 'mang the Snaw;
While frozen are the tears I shed
For him that's far awa', Willy l
Sailor. We sail past mony a bonny isle,
Wi maids the shores are thrang;
Before my ee there's but ae smile,
Within my ear ae sang, Mary.
Shepherdess. In kirk, on every Sabbath day,
For ane on the great deep
Unto my God I humbly pray—
And as I pray, I weep, Willy.
Sailor. The sands are bright-wi' golden shells.
The groves wi' blossoms fair:
And I think upon the heather-bells
That deck thy glossy hair, Mary.
Shepherdess. I read thy letters sent from far,
And aft I kiss thy name, -
And ask my Maker, frae the war
If ever thou’lt come hame, Willy.
Sailor. What though your father's hut be lown
Aneath the green-hill side 3
The ship that Willy sails in, blown
Like chaff by wind and tide, Mary?
Shepherdess. Oh weel I ken the raging sea,
And a' the steadfast land,
Are held, wi' specks like thee and me,
In the hollow of his hand, Willy.
Sailor. He sees thee sitting on the brae,
Me hanging on the mast;
And o'er us baith, in dew or spray
His saving shield is cast, Mary.
(Song interrupted by loud cries of murder heard from the
A&tchen, and a crash of chairs, and tumbling of tables. Omnes
*ush out.)
SCENE III—The Kitchen.
Saunders M'Murdo—Smith. I’ll no tak a blow frae the haun o'
ony leevin' man.—Kate Craigie, I say, ma woman, tak away your
grips. He may be the miller, but I awe him nae thirlage; and mak
room, and I’ll gie him the floor, like a sack o’ his ain meal.
Pate Muter. He wud rug Kate aff my knee, so I gied him a clour
On his harn-pan. I’m no for fechtin’. I haena fochten since Falkirk
Tryst, when I brak the ribs o' that Hieland drover. Peace is best.
But stan’ back, Burniwin', or you may as weel rim into the fanners
or the mill-wheel at ance. -
NoFTH's SPEECH. 253
Davie Girnaway. I’ll hae nae fechtin’ in my father's house.—
Mysie, bring my sword.—Saunders M'Murdo, you’re an unhappy
man when you get a drap-drink—Lowsen his neckcloth, he’s getting
‘black i' the face. -
Mr. Worth. Saunders M'Murdo, Pate Muter, I speak to you both
as a peace-maker. Why this outrage in the family of the Girna-
ways? Has party instigated this unbecoming, this shameful brawk?
Party and the King in Scotland 7 Smith, Miller, you are both
honorable men. Your professions are indispensable. Without you,
what is this agricultural parish 7 Will you shake hands, and be
friends? I see you will. Advance towards each other like men.
There, there. Go where I will I am a peace-maker. - .
(Smith and Miller shake hands, and quiet is restored.)
Gudewife. Weel, weel; little dune’s soonest mended. But I never
saw a kirn yet without a fecht, sometimes half-a-dozen. After a
storm comes a calm ; ye may say that. There ye a' sit, every lad
beside his lass, as douce as gin the Gudeman were gaun to tak the
Book. It's a curious world.
Gudeman. Haud your tongue, Tibbie. Bring ben the plotty and
a' the spirits into the Kitchen; and a' bad bluid shall be at an end,
*. ilka ane, lad and lass, wife and widow, drinks a glass to the
KING.
Davie Girnaway. Here's the plotty; put out the tables.—Thank
ye, Mr. Odoherty.—Tak tent ye dinna lame yourself, Mr. North,
Hooly and fairly—hooly and fairly. .
(The tables are set out, and quaichs and coups laid.)
Gudeman. Now, Mr. North, we're a' looking to you. Ye maun
.gie us twa or three words to the king's health: I canna speechify;-
but I can roar. And I'se do that wi' a vengeance at the hip, hip.–
Fill a’ your quaichs till they’re sooming ower. * -
Mr. Worth. MR. AND MRs. GIRNAway, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
We are now assembled round the table of a Scottish yeoman, to
drink to the health of his Most Gracious Majesty King George the
Fourth. He is within about twelve miles, as the crow flies, of where
we now stand. Is it not almost the same thing as if he were actually
here, in this very room, standing there beside the Laird himself, and
with the light of that very fire shining upon his royal visage? I
speak now to you, who have, most of you, seen the King. You saw
him surrounded with hundreds of thousands of his shouting subjects,
who had then but one great heart, whose looks were lightning, and
whose voice was thunder. You had all heard, read, thought of your
King. But he was to you but the image of a dream—a shadowy
phantom on a far-off throne. Even then you were leal and loyal,
as Scotsmen have ever been, who in peace prove their faith by the
sweat of their brows, and in war by the blood of their hearts. Now,
254 NOCTES AMBROSTANAE,
do not the elder among you feel like the brethren, and the younger
like the children, of your King? He has breathed our free northern
air—he has felt one of our easterly haars upon his brows—he has
heard our dialect—he has trodden our soil—he has eaten our bread,
and drunk our water—he has hailed, and been hailed, by countless
multitudes, on the ramparts of our unconquered citadel—and he has
prayed to the God of his, and our fathers, in our ancient and holy
temple. Therefore, by our pride, by our glory, and by our faith, do
we now love great George our King. What if he had not known
the character of the people over whom he reigned ? Their patience,
their fortitude—their courage—their unquaking confidence in their
own right arms—and their sacred trust in God? What if he had
trembled on his throne, and imagined in that terror that its founda-
tions were shaken by that great earthquake that shook to pieces the
powers on the Continent 2 We had then been lost. England, Scot.
land, would, at this hour, have been peopled by slaves.—Our har-
vests would not have been reaped, as they now are, by the hands of
freemen—the stack-yard would not have belonged to him who built
it—we should not have been assembled round this ingle—nor would
there have been on the earth these faces, fair and bright with beauty,
intelligence and virtue. The British monarchy would have been
destroyed—equal liberties and equal laws abrogated, effaced, and
obliterated, for ever—our parish schools and our kirks levelled with
the dust, religion scorned, and education proscribed—the light of
knowledge and of love equally extinguished, and darkness on the
hearth, and on the altar. It was he, George the Fourth, who, under
God, saved us and our country from j evils, and who has pre-
served to us, unscathed by the fire through which they have passed,
our liberties and our laws. He saw into our hearts, and knew of
what stuff they were made. He saw that to us death was nothing—
but that disgrace and degradation was more than we could—more
than we would bear. Toil, taxes, tears and blood, were demanded of
us, not by the voice of our own King, but by the voice of all our
kings and heroes speaking through him—by the voices of our own
Wallace and our own Bruce. We fought, and we conquered—and
we are free. Therefore, now let each maiden smile upon her friend
or lover—fill your cups to the brim—join hands—take a kiss, my
lads, if you will—THE KING. g
Hip, hip, hip—hurra, hurra, hurra—Hip, hip, hip—hurra, hurra,
hurra—Hip, hip, hip—hurra, hurra, hurra—Hip, hip, hip—hurra,
hurra, hurra !
The Smith. I was in the wrang, I was in the wrang—I acknow.
ledge’t. Gies your haun again, Miller. If ever need be, we'll fecht
thegither, baith on ae side, for the King. -
The Miller. There's floºr of speech for you. Gif he were but in
INORTH A FARMER. 255
Parliament, he would lay his flail about him till the chaff flew into
the een o’ the Opposition frae the threshing-floor. Will ye stan’ for
the borough, Mr. North ? I'll secure you the brewer's vote o'er bye
yonder; or would you prefer the county ? Ye'se hae either for the
asking.
Mr. North. My highest ambition, Mr. Muter, is to retire into the
rural shades, and become a farmer.
The Miller. Come out, then, near the Ferry. Take a lease frae
Ilord Hopetoun. I’ll grin' a' your meal, wheat, aits, and barley for
naething. A’ the time you were speaking, I felt as if I could hae
made a speech mysel. When you stopt, it was like the stopping
of a band o' music on the street, when the sodgers are marching by.
It was like the stopping o' the happer o’ the mill.
Gudewife. Mysie, Girzzy, Meg, or some o' you, open the wun
nock-shutters. * - (They do so.)
Mr. Worth. A burst of day ! The sun has been up for hours.
What a bright and beautiful harvest morning ! The sea is rolling in
gold. See, there is the Orion beating up—close hauled. The best
of friends must part.
- (The whole party breaks up, and accompany NoFTH, dºg.
to the beach.
E N D OF A C T T H I R D .
No. VI.-DECEMBER, 1822.
DIE VENERIs, Wocte 15ta Mensis Decemb.
PRESENT—THE EDITOR’s MosT ExCELLENT MAGAZINITY IN CouncIL.
North, (proloquitur.) Mr. Odoherty, it is to be hoped you have
not come to such an affair as this, to eat the flesh of the wild boar
of the forest, and the red deer of the hills, at the expense of our
noble friend, without preparing a small canticle in honor of his gifts—
something in the occasional way, as it were 7
Odoherty. If the Hogg will take the Boar, I will venture on the
Deer. -
Eſogg. Done for a saxpence—here's my thumb : sing ye awa,
Captain, and I’ll be casting for an eděeo, in the meantime.
Odoherty. Look sharp, if you get a nibble, Shepherd—I nunc et
versus, -here goes then. - -
Odoherty (sings.)
1.
There's a Spanish grandee on the banks of the Dee,”
A fine fellow is be—a finer is none;
For though he is so great, and high in estate,
He is also first-rate in the peerage of fun.
Then fill to Lord Fife, in condiments rife
To the end of this life his career may he run;
And his tree that hath stood, at the least since the Flood,
Oh! may’t flourish and bud till our Planet's undone l
2,
When our Monarch was here, this munificent peer
Did in glory, 'tis clear, make the famousest show,
With his swapping gray fillies, and “naked-feet” gillies;
Their Set-Outs look'd like Dillies—but his was the go.
Even the King took delight, in that equipage bright,
Through Auld Reekie, by night, for to ride to and fro;
When I look'd through the pane, I saw Him and the Thane:
Ere I die, once again let me look on them so.
3.
How genteel were his looks—not at all like some dukes,
Who stood shivering like rooks in a pluvious day—
* The Earl of Fife holds a Spanish title of º and is also a General officer in the
Spanish army. He obtained these honors during the Peninsular War.-M.
LORD FIFE's COUNTRY. 257
Sure his graceship of Brandon has but little to stand on,”
When he doth abandon the Gothic array. -
If a man of that rank must sport such a shank,
My Maker I thank for my humble degree ;
But I'd rather by half, have the Thane's rousing calf,
And enjoy a good laugh, with fine trews to my knee.
4. -
Fill a glass to the brim, and down pour it to Him
Who our grave Sanhedrim doth so love and revere;
Who hath given his command, that the fat of his land
Be bestowed on the band of philosophers here.
The Boar of the wood hath ſº been our food,
And some slices we’ve chewed of a very fine Deer;
Till expires life's last ember, I’m sure we'll remember
The fifteenth of December—the chiefest of cheer.
5.
Let us hope he'll produce such affairs for the use
Of our gastric juice, merry years not a few ;
Our bountiful friend may on one thing depend—
Such a feast shall not end sans disturbing the screw,
No 1 by jingo, each throttle shall imbibe the sum-tottle”
Of a tappit-hen bottle of Chateau-margaux,−
Excepting old Hogg, who must stick to his grog,
Or else speedily jog to give Satan his due.
North. Very well, Adjutant. You are all filled; take the time
from me—The THANE –(Here the roof is nearly brought down with
a three-times-three.) -
Hogg. But wha ever heard o' wild boars in Scotland at this time
o’ day ! x,
- %h. Why, I believe the Thane has introduced the breed .
among the remains of the old Caledonian forest on his Mar estate.
Bogg. What a grand country that is o' the Thane's Did you
never see it, Mr. North
North. Only a slight view when I was at Deeside, for our famous
12th of August—but I’m sure 'tis not for want of invitations I don’t
see more of it. Here is a letter I had from the Thane this morning,
in answer to my acknowledgment of the hamper which has just been
contributing to your comforts.
Rempferhausen. I believe it is acknowledged, that the Thane has
as fine estates as any nobleman in Scotland, and has done a vast deal
for them.
Hogg. Oh ! nothing like that magnificent country—nothing in all
the North ; and anybody may see it, for there are most noble roads
through woods extremely valuable and important to the country,
being now almost the only remains of the Caledonian Forests;
* The Hereditary Keeper of Holyrood Palace, head of the Douglas family, is the Duke of
Flamilton in Scotland, and Brandon on the peerage of England.—M
t Wide Hume passiºn.—C. N. -
WOL. I.-19
258 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
and if you will look at Barlow on the Strength of Timber and his
Experiments, you will see that the timber there beats the Riga red
pine. The Thane is careful to preserve it for the use of the country,
whenever it may be wanted. The roads extend over mountains, the
sides of some are defended by great dykes, and all planted to join
the old wood, and to preserve the young natural plants. I assure
you, Mr. North, that the place is well worth your attention whenever
you can find time to see it. : - }
North. I shall go next year, I think. …
Tickler. What is best of all is, that the comfort of the people is
attended to, and I do not believe there is a Highland district where
the poor are so well provided. There is one side of the country
kept for sheep, and the other for deer. Some of the highest moun-
tains in the kingdom are to be seen. One of them is considered to
be as high or higher than Ben Nevis—the Dee also rises in the
Eorest. All through Lord Fife's country great improvements are
taking place. The Abbey of Pluscardine, near Elgin, has been
restored. f
Odoherty. Hogg, you’ve been “glowring frae you,” and preaching
long enough ; incipe nunc, musa /
JHogg. I canna sing yet, Captain : just bear wi' me till I’ve had
another tumbler or twa—that’s a good fellow, now—I’ll gie ye fangs
anew or the morn’s morning.
North. No compulsion here; this is Liberty Hall: but you must
tell a story, Shepherd, or drink the forfeit.
Hogg. Ae braw simmer day I was sitting wi' my corbie-craw
piking at my taes: and auld Hector, puir chield, him that’s awa—
and wha should step in to tak his morning wi' me but Tammy Braid-
shaw, ye ken—
Tickler. Come, come, Chaldean sage; we’ve all heard that a
hundred times. -
Hogg. Weel, try your haund yoursell. I’m to tell a’ my new.
stories here forsooth, and what would come of my new Winter
|Fvening Tales, think ye.
Tickler. To be sure mutton's a drug at present, What news
from Germany, Meinheer Kempferhausen
Rempferhausen. The celebrated professor of Ingolstadt, Doctor
Blumensucker, is about to put forth his long-expected work “De Re
Chaldea,”—full notes, capital portraits of every body.
North. Bravo! Vir Clariss.-I wonder no London bookseller gets
up an illustrated edition of the Chaldee—Barker for Editor.”
Tickler. The Constitutional would be at it.}
* Edmund Henry Barker (born 1788, died 1830.) was one of the most eminent of modern
Scholars. He edited Stephens’ “Thesaurus Lingua Graeca,” a gigantic performance. Besides
this, he edited Prolegomena to Homer, Lempriere, and other school books. He contributed
largely to the Classical Journals, the British Critic, and other periodicals.-M.
t The Constitutional Society, in London, prosecuted Small vendors of sedition and irreligion,
but wero too well bred to trouble offenders of rank or wealth.-M.
SOUTHEY AND BY RON. 259
Odoherty. A fig for the Constitutional—you see they don’t dare
to meddle with Lord Byron
Aſogg. What has Byron been doing in their line 7
Odoherty. The Liberal, you know. … - &
Tickler. Poo, poo, Odoherty, you know as well as I that he had
very little to do with that humbug.
Odoherty. To be sure I do—There's nothing of his in it but the
Vision of Judgment, and the Letter to Granny Roberts.
North. What do you think of those compositions, Timotheus
Tickler, I have never thought much about them. But it strikes
me that the VISION is vastly inferior to BEPPo, to say nothing of the
exquisite DoN JUAN. It contains a dozen capital stanzas or so, but
on the whole 'tis washy,
Odoherty. What a shame it is to banter such a respectable man as
Dr. Southey at this rate—so uncalled for—so out of taste—so inde-
fensible—so scurrilous !
Hogg. Hear till him He has face for ony thing,
Tickler. I think Dr, Southey is the fairest of all subjects, for my
part. The man’s arrogance and dogmatical airs are worthy of much
severer castigation than they have ever yet met with. Just open
one of his articles in the Quarterly—what slow, solemn, pompous,
self-conceit runs through all he writes. Do you remember the con-
clusion of his Brazil Balaam 7
Worth, I am ashamed to say I never saw the work.
Tickler. Who ever did but at the end of those two thumping
leaden quartos about Caziques, hieroglyphical pictures, and so forth,
thus saith the Doctor—“Thus have I finished one of those great and
lasting works, to which, in the full vigor of manhood, I looked for-
ward as the objects of a life of literature.”—'Tis something like that,
however—did you ever hear such like stuff?
Odoherty. Often from the Lakers. They’re a high speaking set
of boys, - -
Kempferhausen. Oh, Mr. North, Mr. North ! that I should live to
hear such words spoken at your table. I’m sure you respect Southey,
and adore Wordsworth in your heart. Mein gott mein gott
Morth. I respect Southey as one of the most accomplished scho-
tars of the age; but I no more dream of mentioning him in the
same day with the god Pan, than I should of classing a Jeffrey with
a Hogg.
Tickler, Allow me to utter a few mouthfuls of common sense.
Omnes. Out with them, Timothy.
Tickler. The fact of the matter is this—Lord Byron overdoes his
satire. People won’t suffer a Dunciad now-a-days with but one
T)unce in it. And the world were not thinking of Mouthy Southey
or his hexameters.
260 NOCTES AMBROSIAN A3,
Worth. There's some truth there. Nothing should be parodied
but what is well known.
Tickler. Is the old song of An Hundred Years Hence well
known 7 - - - -
JWorth. Come, away with your parody then, if you have it in your
pocket. *
(TICKLER sings, accompanying himself on the fiddle.)

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say it, And give no offence, Few more will be bet - ter An hundred years hence.
2.
In this year eighteen hundred
And twenty and two,
There are plenty of false ones
And plenty of true.
There are brave men and cowards;
And bright men and asses;
There are lemon-faced prudes;
There are kind-hearted lasses,
He who quarrels with this
Is a man of no sense,
For so 'twill continue
An hundred years hence.
3.
There are people who rave
Of the national debt,
Let them pay off their own,
And the nation's forget;
Others bawl for reform,
Which were easily done,
If each would resolve
To reform Number One :
For my part to wisdom
I make no pretence,
I'll be as wise as my neighbors
An hundred years hence,
4.
I only rejoice, that
My life has been cast
On the gallant and glorious
Bright days which we've past;
When the flag of Old England
Waved lordly in pride,
Wherever green Ocean
Spreads his murmuring tide :
And I pray that unbroken
Her watery fence
May still keep off invaders,
An hundred years hence.
5.
I rejoice that I saw her
Triumphant in war,
At sublime Waterloo,
At dear-bought Trafalgar;
On sea and on ind,
Wheresoever she fought,
Trampling Jacobin tyrants
And slaves as she ought:
Of CHURCH and of KING
Still the firmest defence:–
So may she continue
An hundred years hence.
BYRON. •, 261
6. . . 7.
Whey then need I grieve, if So let us be jolly,
Some people there, be, Why need we repine;
Who, foes to their country, If grief is a folly, -
Rejoice not with me ; Let's drown it in wine !
Sure I know in my heart, As they scared away fiends
That Whigs ever have been By the ring of a bell,
Tyrannic, or turnspit, So the ring of the glass
Malignant, or mean: Shall blue devils expel:
THEY WERE AND ARE scoundRELs With a bumper before us
IN EVERY SENSE, The night we'll commence
AND SCOUNDRELS THEY WILL BE . By toasting true Tories
AN HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. An hundred years hence.
JHogg. It is glorious ! it is perfectly glorious, as Gray would say.
Rempferhausen (sings.) -
Stille, hersch’, andacht, und der seel'erhebung,
Rings umber 1, Fern sei was befleckt von sundist,
Was dem Staub anhaftet zu klein der mencheit
Hoperen aufschwung ! .
Tilly leeri, oiko, hioiko, hi oikol
Tillee oiko, oiko. Tilli oi-i-oi-i-oiko!
North. Your voice is much improved. You really begin to sing
now, Meinheer. 3 * - . -
Aempferhausen. Give me a flash of the Rudelsheimer—(i-oiko
i-oko— - *
*} Wheesht, wheesht, callant—you're deafening Mr. Tickler.
Tickler. Let me tip ye another bit of sense, will ye, lads 7
Odoherty. Indulge the quizz.
Tickler. That song of Privy Counsellor Kempferhausen is as bad
as “Naked feet, naked feet.” -
Omnes. No, no, no, Tickler—don't dish the Privy Counsellor.
Tickler. Well, then, I won’t for this once. But, after all, what do
you think, General Christophe, of this production of Pisa'ſ
North. I think, Colonel Timothy, that it is naught. Not that I
an in any danger of joining in the vulgar cries that ring in one's
ears, but really Lord Byron should remember that he is now a man
towards forty” —and that if he passes that era without taking up, the
whole world will pronounce him an incurable.
Płogg. Lord keep us! whatfor an incurable —he's just ame of the
finest, cleverest chiels of the age, and if he was here just now, he
would be a delight to us all. -
Odoherty. Evperto crede. The odd fish is only just trying how far
he may go; give him line, he'll soon come in. -
Tickler. He must cut the Cockney.
Odoherty. I lay a tester he has cut him already. Did you look at
that rascally specimen of the Cockneyfied Orlando Furioso | -
* In December, 1822, he was within a month of being 35.-M.
262 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
North. I did. But what was there to surprise you? He had
already done Theocritus into the psalm measure (long metre)—was
there any farther march in the kingdom of absurdity ? f
Tickler. No, no; but one really cannot suffer such a fellow to be
choppifying and patchifying at the Orlando Furioso, without bring-
ing a whip across his withers. Why, the whole concern is abomina-
bly, nauseous, filthy, base, gingerbread, Cockney stuff. One might
read him for a mile without knowing it was Ariosto he was after, if
he did not clap old Ludovico's name and surname at the top of his
pages! What impudence -
Odoherty. Do you see me now, I think you are hard on King
Leigh. His description of Pisa affected me.
Tickler. What affectation —
Odoherty. Well, I was seriously pleased with him. There is a
merit in such candor. The man tells you plainly, without going
round about the bush, that he had never seen a hill or a clear stream
before, and that both of them are fine things in their way. The
Cockney is candid. I love the King. Viva Le Hunto Signior di
Cocagna /
JWorth. What an abortion is that tale of the Florentine Lovers tº
IIow unavoidably the Bel Ludgato peeps out ! Suffer any given
Cockney to write three sentences on end in any book in the world,
and if I don’t pick them out ad aperturam, dethrone me.
Hogg. That’s a stretcher, my man.
North. No ; for example, just the other day, my friend little Frank
Jeffrey, in one of those good-humored moments of utter silliness that
now and then obscure his general respectability, permitted Lecturer
IHazlitt to assist him in doing a review of Byron's tragedies for the
Edinburgh. If any one here has brought the blue and yellow with
him for the lighting of his tube, I engage, under pain of drinking
double tides till moon, to mark every paragraph that Billy dipped his
ugly paw in.
Odoherty. By Jove, here's a libel for you ! Jeffrey and Hazlitt
working at the same identical article, like two girls both sewing of
one flower, upon one sampler Tell that to the marines.
Hempferhausen. You will at least admit that Mr. Shelley’s version
of the Mayday-night scene has its merits. I assure you 'tis goot,
very goot.
North. Yes, yes, I had forgot it. 'Tis indeed an admirable mor-
geau, full of life, truth, and splendor. I think it must be very like
Goethe’s affair.
Rempferhausen. Oh, very like, only the Cockney Editors did not
know a word of the original, and they’ve blundered awfully now and
then, in their printing, for example, there is a wizard call of “Come
* A prose tale in The Liberal, by Leigh Hunt, severely reviewed in Maga-M.
TEIE CEIALDEE. 263
to me from the Sea of rocks,” which is in my father-tongue felsensee.
The Her Shelley, I suppose, had noted the German word on his
paper, not having an English one just ready. But the Hunts print
in English “Come to me from felumee,”—which is no meaning at all,
any more than if they had said, “Come to me from philabeg.”
JHogg. Oh, what ignoramuses—But, I dare say, yon German chiels
sometimes make as braw blunders themsels, when they’re yerking
awa at the Queen's Wake, or the Three Perils of Man, ower bye
yonder -
Odoherty. 'Tis like they may, I don’t doubt many of your little
exquisite touches of elegance evaporate under the hands of your
translators. Kempferhausen, himself, has mauled you at a time, if
he would but own it. . -
Kempferhausen. Comfiteor. Miserere Domine / I wrote a trans-
lation of Kenilworth, you know, when I was at Hamburgh. Well,
I had forgot that you English spell the beast with an a, and the tipple
with an e, so I made mine host of Cumnor sport, the Beer and the
broken ladle, instead of the Bear and the Ragged Staff, for his sign-
post. All Germany, at this moment, believes that that was the real
sign. Indeed, it is now a favorite one among Our Teutonic Tintos.
Hogg. Dinna lose a night's rest for that, my man: ae thing's just
a good as anither. It's nae matter what ane pits in a book; my
warst things aye sell best, I think. I’m resolved, I’ll try and write
some awfu' ill thing this winter.
Odoherty. Do, the Agriculturists really must exert themselves in
these hard times." -
Tickler. You were always a diligent fellow, Hogg; of course The
Three Perils have a fine run. -
Hogg. That's civil
Odoherty. One of your principal objects appears to have been
The Vindication of the Chaldee of Hogg, (ut cum Glengarry
loquar)—for I see one of your characters is yourself, always sport.
ing that venerable lingo. -
Hogg. Hoot! It was just the ither five chapters of the Chaldee ;
them that Ebony would not print: they were lying moulding in my
drawers, and I thought I would put them into the Novel for Balaam;
maebody fand me out, - I kent that would be the way o't.
Odoherty. After all, Hogg, what devil possessed you to own the
Chaldee ? - -
Hegg. I wish ye would let me eat my victuals, and drink my
liquor in peace; I’ve been up since four in the morning among the
drovers, and I’m no able to warstle wi' you the might. t
North. Don't mind these scamps, Hogg. Why, there's not one .
of 'em but would give his ears to write any thing half so fine as the
opening chapters of the second volume of your PERILs.
264 NOCTES AMBROSLANE.
Tickler. Has Hogg heard or seen the Epigrams by Mr. Webb,
and Mr. Hazlitt, on General North's arms 2 - - - •,
Flogg. Deil a bit o' me. Od there's nae wale o' Epigrams on
Yarrow water. * .
Tickler. Then listen. William Hazlitt, in the first place, being
asked by Leigh Hunt, why North's crest is a Rose, a Thistle, and a
Shamrock, made these lines by way of answer. At least they are
attributed to him by the Whigs here. But, to be sure, he must
have been in a sweet humor : •
“You ask me, kind Hunt, why does Christopher North
For his crest, Thistle, Shamrock, and Rose blazen forth ?
The answer is easy : his pages disclose
The splendor, the fragrance, the grace of the Rose ;
Yet so humble, that he, though of writers the chief,
In modesty vies with the Shamrock's sweet leaf;
Like the Thistle l—Ah ! Leigh, you and I must confess it,
NEMO ME (is his motto) IMPUNE LACESSET.” ". .
Hogg. Very weel, very weel, indeed; the lad's on the mending
hand I think, sirs. -
Tickler. Yet I think Corny Webb's verses are neater:
“Each leaf which we see over Christopher's helm
Is an emblem of part of our insular realm :
The well-fought-for Rose, is of England the bearing,
The Thistle of Scotland, the Shamrock of Erin :
And they therefore are borne by the Star of the Forth,
FoR KIT North LovES ALL THREE, AND ALL THREE LOVE KIT NoFTH.”
Odoherty. Rather jaw-breaking that last line, like Cornelius's
sonnets; but truth may well compensate for want of melody.”
JHogg. It often surprises me when I think on't. But, after a’,
there's but few of the First-raters, except Christopher himself here,
that really excels in periodical writing; I confess I never thought
I myself for ame was omy great dab in that department.
Tickler. Let me see—this is an ingenious start of the Shepherd's.
But, after all, is there truth in what he says 7 Is not he himself a
goodish periodicaller - -
Rempferhausen. Donner and blitzen do you talk so of the author
of the Chaldee 2 - - -
Tickler. Aye, that, to be sure, is one chef-d'oeuvre; but on the
-whole, I, though I love and admire Hogg as much as any one, must
honestly and fairly say, that I consider him as inferior to Jeffrey in
re periodicali. -
North. No doubt he is. In fact, Hogg has always had his eyes on
other affairs—perhaps on higher. ... •
Hogg. Na, ma—name o' youa jeers, auld man
* Cornelius Webbe, a London writer, author of Glances at Life, Sonnets, &c.—M.
CAMPBELL, 265
North. I don’t so much wonder at Hogg ; but what do you say to
Tom Campbell? . - -
Tickler, Why, I don’t know that we have any proper data yet
to judge of Tommy. His magazine is a very queer book. It is
almost all (I mean the large print) very decently written, There is
a certain sort of elegance in many papers, and a certain sort of very
meatish information in others; but the chief, and indeed the damni-
fying defect, is a total want of gist, Is there any one can tell me at
this moment of any one purpose that work appears to keep in
view 7 . ." -
A'empferhausen, Mr. North, did you not like the letters of Don
Leucadio Doblado 2° >
North. To be sure I did, and did I not like the Confessions of the
Opium Eater, too !—but I do no more think of judging of the two Lon-
don Magazines by these things, than I would think of estimating the
Edinburgh Review, as a book, by the few occasional pages of the
old Arch-libeller's own penmanship, which now and then adorn it in
these its degenerate days. -
Tickler. The real defect is in my friend Tom. He is lazy, and he
is timorous, -are not these qualities enough for your problem?
Odoherty. Let them pass, Lord Byron is neither lazy nor timo-
rous, and yet, you see, he is also a failure in this line. -
North. Not at all—he is a man made for that sort of fun. But
what would the Duke of Wellington himself do, if he were obliged
to consult Jeremy Bentham about his movements? Knock off his
handcuffs—I mean the Cockneys—and you’ll see Byron is a sweet
fellow yet. * - . -
Tickler. I was distressed to see John Bull abusing The Liberal as
he did. John should be above such palaver; but I see he, with all his
wit, makes a few sacrifices to humbug. What now can be more ex-
quisitely ludicrous than the anti-Catholic zeal of such a chap as Bull?
Odoherty, (laying finger on nose, and eyeing Mr. Editor.) Poo!
poo! we could match that elsewhere.
North, with an agreeable knitting ºf brows, Silence, Standard-
bearer - . - -
Hogg, I’ll no hear Lord Byron abused, for he has ay been a kind
friend to me. But, oh, sirs what could gar him put in yon awfu'
words about the gude auld King; and now that the worthy sant’s in
heaven, too ! or whare did ever ony body see ony thing like yon
epigrams; on Lord Castlereagh's death
* By Rev. J. Blanco White, a Spaniard.—MI. .
t The “Vision of Judgment,” (a burlesque on a very pretentious poem of the same name,
by Southey,) appeared in The liberal, edited by Byron and Leigh Hunt. The three epigrams
on Castlereagh's death appeared in the same periodical. They were worth little. The best
run thus :
“So, He has cut his throat at last !—IIe Who?
The man who cut his country’s long ago.”—M.
266 NOCTES A MBROSTANAE,
Tickler. Shocking trash shocking, shocking ! * - - -
Odoherty. I suppose Byron thought, since The Courier abused.
dead Shelley, The Liberal had a right to abuse dead Castlereagh.
North. Sir, Lord Byron thought no such thing. Lord Byron
could never have thought that he had a right to insult all England,
merely because one poor drivelling hypocrite had insulted his friend's
memory in a newspaper. No, no, there is no defending these
things. z -
Odoherty. Particularly as they happen to be utterly dull and
helpless, and as devoid of point as the Ettrick Shepherd's own
gaucy under-quarter, which, by the way, I wish he would give over
scratching.
North. Once more, Hogg, never mind them. Your affection for
Lord Byron, and concern to see him acting amiss, do you much
honor. Whatever examples other people may set or follow, I hope
you will always continue to be of opinion, that the few men of
genius in the world ought to respect each other, rejoice in each
other's triumphs, and be cast down by each other's misfortunes.
Such a way of thinking is generous, and worthy of your kind heart,
my good worthy friend.
Odoherty. Sir Richard Phillips is another great genius, and yet he
does not write a good Magazine.
Tickler. Why, Pythagoras, my dear fellow, is one of the most
contemptible Magaziners in the world. He is a dirty little jacobin,
that thinks there is more merit in making some dirty little improve.
ment on a threshing machine, than in composing an Iliad. He is a
mere plodding, thick-skulled, prosing dunderpate; and every thing
he puts forth seems as if it had been written by the stink of gas in
the fifth story of a cotton-mill—a filthy jacobinical dog, sir.
JVorth. Poor idiot he is hammering at Napoleon still ; now, in-
deed, he has taken to exhibiting a two-penny-halfpenny bust of him,
in his house in Bridge-street. Gentlemen and ladies one shilling—
children and servants sixpence only
Hogg. Speaking about Bonaparte, I wad like if ye wad lend me
that lad Barry O’Meara’s book out wi' me for a week. I’ll return
it by the next carrier.
North. Don’t read it, Hogg. It’s a piece of mere trash.
Hogg. Od! I thought I saw some commendation o’t in the Maga.
Zl]] (2.
North. Yes—but Mr. Croker's letter of 1818 had not been pub
lished then—at least I had not seen it, else I would have scored out
the paragraph.”
* Copy of the official Letter which motified to Mr. O’Meara his removal from the situation
of a Surgeon in the Navy:
“ADMIRALTY OFFICE, Nov. 2, 1818.
“SIR-I have received and laid before my Lords Commisioners of the Admiralty your letter
BARRY O’MEARA. - 267
Hogg. What does Crocker say about him 'Tis like he might
ken something about him in Erland. -
Morth. Why, you see, Mr. Hogg, the story was just this :—Mr.
O’Meara— . -
Odoherty. O’Māra, if you please, North. -
North. Well, Mr. O’Marra writes to the Admiralty in 1818, say-
ing that Sir Hudson Lowe had asked him to poison Bonaparte for
him in 1816. Stop there, my friend, says Mr. Croker, either you
are telling a bit of a bouncer, and Sir Hudson never made any such
proposals to you at all ; or you are a pretty behaved lad, (are you
not ?) to keep the thing in your pocket for two years, and bring it
out now, not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of gratifying
your own spleen. In short, “Le Docteur O’Meara” was dismissed
his Majesty's service for this affair, and that's all.
Rempferhausen. Has he never made any answer to all this 2
Tickler. Answer –Poo ! poo!—The dilemma is inevitable—he
can only make his choice on which horn he is to ride.
Odoherty. We shall see what he says for himself in due time. He
is a cleverish kind of fellow, is O’Meara, and we must, at least,
admit that he has dish’d old Walter of the Times. -
(and its enclosure) of the 28th ult., in which you state several particulars of your conduct in
the situation you lately held at St. Helena, and request 'that their Lordships would, as soon as
their important duties should allow, communicate to you their judgment, thereupon."
“Their Lordships have lost mo time in considering your statement ; and they command me
to inform you, that (even without reference to the complaints made against you by Lieut.
General Sir H. Lowe) they find in your own admissions ample grounds for marking your pro-
ceedings with their severest displeasure.
“But there is one passage in your said letter of such a mature as to supersede the necessity
of animadverting upon any other part of it.
“This passage is as follows:– In the third interview which Sir Hudson Lowe had with
Napoleon Bonaparte in the month of May, 1816, he proposed to the latter to send me away,
and to replace me by Mr. Baxter, who had been several years surgeon in the Corsican Rangers.
This proposition was rejected with indignation by Napoleon Bonaparte, upon the grounds of
the indelicacy of a proposal to substitute an army surgeon for the private surgeon of his own
choice. Failing in this attempt, Sir Hudson Lowe adopted the resolution of manifestin
reat confidence in me by loading me with civilities, inviting me constantly to dinner wit
him, conversing for hours together with me alome, both in his own house and grounds and at
Longwood, either in my own room, or under the trees and elsewhere. On some of these occa-
sions he made to me observations upon the benefit which would result to Europe from the
death of Napoleon Bonaparte, of which event he spoke in a manner which, considering his
situation and mime, was peculiarly distressing to me.”
“It is impossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was intended to convey, and my
Lords cam as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood; but, iſ it were true,
and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you, directly or indirectly, it was your boundem
duty mot to have lost a moment in communicating it to the Admiral on the spot, or to the
Secretary of State, or to their Lordships. -
“Am overture so monstrous in itself, and so deeply involving not merely the personal
character of the Governor, but the honor of the nation, and to the important interests com-
mitted to his charge, should not have been reserved in your own breast for two years, to be
produced at last, not (as it would appear) from a sense of public duty, but in furtherance of
your personal hostility against the Governor.
“Either the charge is in the last degree false and calumnious, or you can have no possible
excuse for having hitherto suppressed it.
“In either case, and without adverting to the general tenor of your conduct, as stated in
your letter, my Lords consider you to be an improper person to continue in his Majesty's ser-
yice, arid they have directed your name to be erased from the list of Naval Surgeons accord.
ingly. I have. &c., (Signed) J. W. CºokER
&
guy
“\! t O’MEARA, 28 Chester Place, Kemsington.”
268 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Tickler. Not much to brag of that, if he had done it, but I
doubt the fact. * , - ..
Odoherty. Well, well, as Samuel Johnson said, “Tis no great
object to arrange the precedence between a louse and a flea.” t
Blackwood. All I say is, that the more the book is abused, the
better it sells. I think there is never an hour but I hear it called
for. It has had as great a run as the Cook's Oracle ever had.
North. I’ll lend you the book, however, old Hogg.
Hogg. Thank ye, sir; after a you’re the discreetest of your divan,
and I’ll sing ye a sang for you’re civility. - -
Rempferhausen. Bravo! Colonel, sing, sing—hurra! hurra!
hurra !
Hogg (sings.)
AIR-Lively.
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“THE wox{EN FOLK.” 269
I’ve loe'd them better than mysel’;
I’ve tried again to like them ill.
Wha sairest strives, will sairest rue,
To comprehend what nae man can :
When he has done what man can do, *
He'll end at last where he began.
O, the women folk, &c.
That they hae gentle forms, and meet,
A man wi' half a look may see,
An'graceful airs, and faces sweet,
An' wavin curls aboon the bree—
An' smiles as saft as the young rosebud,
An' een sae pawky bright and rare,
Wad lure the lavrock frae the clud;
But, laddie, seek to ken nae mair.
. O, the women folk, &c.
Even but this night, nae farther game,
The date is nouther lost nor lang,
I tak ye witness ilka ane,
How fell they fought, an’ fairly dang;
Their point they've carried right or wrang,
Without a reason, rhyme, or law,
An' forced a man to sing a sang,
That ne'er could sing a verse ava.
O, the women folk, &c.
Tickler. Well done, kind Shepherd; I do love to hear your voice
once more. Oh! Hogg, those were charming times when you used
to pop in upon me of an evening after the chain was on the door, and
practise the fiddle till the cattle danced upon the meadow. -
JHogg. Hoh sirs, we’re a turnin’ auld noo: we've seen our best
days, my dear Mr. Tickler. º' -- *
Odoherty. Come, come, none of your humdrum sentiment here,
my hearties. I will sing you a song I heard last year on board
a 74—it was sung by its author, the surgeon of the vessel—a
choice lad.
North. What is it about 7
Odoherty. I don’t recollect the words exactly, but I's give you
something to the same tune, and similar in its scope and tendeney,
(ut cum Macveio loquar.) But you must be all ready with a chorus,
mind that— -
Odoherty (sings.)

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270 º: NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.

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2.
He who of tax or tythe is gabbling—
Mark him down for a Jeremy Ben;–*
Or account him a blockhead babbling,
As great a blockhead as Council Ten.
Tickler. Council Ten | Who is that, in the name of Grub-street 2
Odoherty. An ass.—(Sings.)—Chorus my
Płogg. I never heard of him.
Qdoherty. Of course not ; but don't interrupt the song. Tchorus,
as Mulligan has it. (Sings.) Chorus my song then, &c.
Hogg, (coughing.) Hoh hoh –I'll be as hoarse as as a cuddie for
8
He who prates of Reform in Parliament,
Send him adrift to the right or left,
Why need we care what the big whig Charley+ meant—
Whether 'twas TREASON, or only THEFT –
Chorus my song, &c.
4.
He who'd bore us with jabber critical,
On your curst scribes of verse or prose;—
Turn him loose with the ass political;-
I never would wish to get drunk with those.
Chorus my song, &c.
5.
Better it is to toast our pretty ones—
To chaunt—or chorus while others sing;-
To laugh at dull men—and laugh with witty ones;
Or drink the health of our own dear King.
Chorus my song then, joyously chorus it;
Why should we look dull or blue?
There are some moments of pleasure before us yet.
Folderol, tolderol, lolderol, loo !
* Bentham.—M. f Charles James Fox.—MI. -
EIOOR AND MOOTE. 271
a week after this wark. And div ye no find that sangs maks a body
fou as soon as whisky 7 -
Odoherty, Yes—when they act kindly together, like Wellington
and Blucher, I confess these affairs have an exhilarating scope and
tendency.
Bogg. I wush Mr. Canning wad let down the tax on the sma'
stells. A man like him should be aboon garrin' sae mony folk sip
poishon night and morn.
North. I believe the Highlands have not yet been included in the
foreign Department; but Mr. Peel was here with the King, you
know, and he must have tasted good Glenlivet himself, I should
suppose.
Tickler. I beg leave to crave a bumper—Mr. Canning !
Omnes. Mr. Canning !!! !!! !!!
North, Yes, indeed, Canning is the man to carry the country with
him.
Bogg. Is it not a very grand thing to be set as he has been at the
head of things, just as it were by a kind of an acclamation —no
doubting, nor donnering ;-every body just agreeing that he's the
grandest statesman, and the maist glorious orator of the time.
North. I hope he will give himself the trouble to spend about three
minutes apiece this Session upon little Grey Bennet, Lord Archibald
Hamilton, and Jamie Abercrombie ; for I’m really getting sick of
these prosers.
Tickler. How despicable is Bennet's persecution of Theodore Hook.
Lord had Hook been a Whig, like Tom Moore, how little we should
have heard of all this. .
North. Why, to be sure, Hook and Moore stand precisely in the
same situation—both of them clever men, -both of them wits,
both of them sent out to manage Colonial matters, both of them
meeting with queerish underlings, both of their underlings cutting
their throats on detection—and then both of them deprived of their
offices, and in arrear to the public, not through any purloining of
their own, but through circumstances which every one must regret as
much as themselves. - -
Tickler. Aye, but here stops the parallel. Mr. Moore is pitied by
every body, and no Tory ever alluded, or will allude, to his misfor-
tunes in the House; while Mr. Hook is, week after week, and year
after year, made the subject of attack by all that contemptible fry of
the Bennets, Humes, and so forth,
North. And you think he would have been in smoother water if
he had been a Whig
Tickler. I do.—Only look at their protection and proné-ing of such
a fellow as Borthwick,” a person who, according to his own story,
* One of the persons commected with the Beacon and Glasgow Sentincl newspapers, just then
in very bad odor in the law courts, from the number of libel suits against them.—M.
272 - NOOTES AMBROSTANAF,
betrayed all manner of confidence, which he himself had solicited
with all manner of solemnity, for the sake of a few paltry pounds,
or rather for the sake of avoiding a day’s work in THE JURY Court
—where, after all, he might probably have been let off for a shilling.
Just think of a gentlemen like James Abercrombie taking up with
such a creature— -
North. And all in the silly and absurd hope of giving a little
annoyance to the very people who ennobled his own family but (for
which he would have been Nobody) about twenty years ago—no
IOOTe.
Tickler. Have you seen Alexander's pamphlet 7
North. Not yet—Is there any thing new in it? :
Tickler. Why, after all, it turns out that the Lord Advocate's sig-
nature, which they make such a work about, was a FORGERY.
North. Very likely ; I think that's not by any means, the most
heinous of all the tricks they’ve been guilty of But who forged it?
Tickler. Alexander does not sy who, but he states the fact
broadly.* - -
Odoherty. John Bull, who has eyes everywhere, ought to take
it up. -
%rd. Why, Bull seldom meddles with Scotch affairs; and, after
all, the scent of that humbug has got cold as charity.
Tickler. By-the-by, what an absurd thing it is that there should not
be something better here in Edinburgh in the shape of a Newspaper—
Ballantyne's Journal is nothing. •
North. Oh ’tis very well for the theatricals, very well indeed;
and now and then it contains good sensible business articles, too; but
whenever there comes any thing like a political question of import-
ance, nobody can say, a priori, whether James Ballantyne is like to
take the best possible view of the matter, or the worst possible one.
He behaved like a very goose about the Manchester affair; and, upon
the whole, ’tis an inconsistent concern—hot and cold is not the thing
for me,
Odoherty. Stick it into the hero ;-but after all, he's the best.
Tickler Bad's the best ; but, perhaps, Edinburgh is not a good
place for a smart paper—too narrow and limited—people all egg-
shells—damned stupid people too—all taken up with their own little
jokes, that are unintelligible when you pass Cramond Bridge.
Odoherty. THE BEACON, for example, what a lump of dulness it
was It seemed to me to be got up just for the private amusement
of three or four spalpeens. - •
* The pamphlet as entitled. “Letters to Sir J. Mackintosh, Knt. M. P. Explanatory of the
whole circumstances which led to the robbery of the Glasgow Sentimel Office. to the Death of
Sir Alexander Boswell, Bart; and the Trial [June 10, 1822) of Mr. James Stuart, younger, of
Dunearm ; and ultimately to the Animadversions of the Hon. James Abercromby, in the House
of Commons, upon the conduct of the Right Hon. the Lord Advocate, and various individuals.
By Robert Alexander, Editor of the Glasgow Sentinel.”—M.
“THE BEACON.” 273
Hogg. Puir callants, nae doubt they boud to hae their ain bit
cackle in a corner—let them abee.
Odoherty. Now what a proper name Beacon was. By the holy
poker, a mangy mongrel could not have lifted his leg, in passing,
without putting it out. -
Tickler. A fine thing for the lawyers, however.
Odoherty (sings.)
“Ye lawyers so just,
Be the cause what it will, who so famously plead—
How worthy of trust 1
You know black from white—
. You prefer wrong to right,
As you chance to be feed.
Leave musty reports,
And forsake the King's courts,
Where Dulness and Discord have set up their thrones;
Burn Salkeld and Ventris,
With all your damn'd entries.
Hark, away to the claret a bumper, 'Squire Jones.”
| An accident in the gas-pipes.
VOL. I.-20
No. VII.-MARCH, 1823.
SEDERUNT—CHRISTOPHER NoFTH, Esq., Chairman, TIMOTHY TICR-
LER, Esq., Croupier; MoRGAN ODOHERTY, Esq., JAMES HoGG, Esq.,
&c., &c. -
SCENE–The Blue Room—the Table crowded with Bottles, Pitchers,
Devils, Books, Pamphlets, dºc.
TIME-One in the Morning.
Hogg (proloquitur.) It's just needless for you to deny 't, mon; it
was a real bad number. An binna my ain bit paper on Captain
Napier,” there was naething worth speaking o' ' What were ye a'
about 2 -
Odoherty. I was in quod—hang it, they say John Bunyan and
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote books there, but my spirits always sink.
Bogg. And wha brought ye out 7
Tickler. Poo ! poo! he took the benefit of the cessio as usual.
Morth. I’m sure if he would but exert himself, he need never be
In any such scrapes; but I’m weary of speaking. Confound .."
Hogg (aside to the Adjutant.) Never heed, he'll mind you in his
wull for a’ that—his bark was aye waur than his bite.
Odoherty. N'importe | Here I am once more. I’ll be cursed if I
don’t marry a dowager ere the next month is over. How well it
will look—“At her Ladyship's house, by special license, Morgan
Odoherty, Esq., to Lady !” -
Tickler. “Do or die,” is the word with you, it would appear.
Well, you had better get a Highland garb without delay. Nothing
to be done sans kilt now, sir. Even “legs and impudence” won’t
go down unless in puris. -
Odoherty. Did you see Hogg the day of the Celtic cattle-show
I am told he looked nobly.
Tickler. Yes, indeed. Hogg makes a very fine savage. He was
all over in a bristle with dirk, claymore, eagle's feather, tooth,
whisker, pistol and powder-horn. His ears were erect, his eyebrow
indignant, his hands were hairy, his hurdies were horrible, his tread
* This was entitled “The Honorable Captain Napier and Ettrick Forest,” and was a motice
of “Napier's Treatise on Practical Store-Farming, as applicable to the Mountainous Region
of Ettrick Forest,” &c. "I'ruth to say, it was a strong puſf of the Captain—the same who,
when Lord Napier, died in China, in 1834.—M.
BRODIE's EXECUTION. 275

wºrrific I met him even where our merchants most do congre.
gate, at the Cross, and truly he had the crown of the causeway all to
himself. . t
Odoherty. Had you your tail on, Clanhogg 2
Bogg. Ye ill-tongued dyvour.” But what's the use o' argufying
wi' the like o' you?—(Sings.) -
Knees an’ elbows, and a',
|Elbows and knees, and a';
|Here's to Donald Macdonald,
Stanes an' bullets, an' a'l
W -
Morth. Ay, ay, Jemmy, that's the way to take it ; but I’m sorry
you thought it a bad Number. I should have supposed that its con-
taining a touch of your own would have been enough to save it with
you, at least, and the rest of the Ettrick lads. -
Tickler. You deceive yourself, editor.
North. Nay, Tickler, I know what you mean. Upon my word, I
shall insert that thing of yours very soon ; don’t be so very im-
patient.
Tickler. What, you old quiz! do you suppose I was angry at
your omitting my little production ? You may kick it behind the
fire for what I care, I assure you of that, sir. -
North. Not so fast, Timotheus; but what was your chief objec-
tion ? **
Tickler. That shocking, that atrocious lie, about Brodie—or rather,
I should say, that bundle of lies.f
Odoherty. I wrote it. 'Ware candlesticks. -
Fogg. Haud your haund there. Hoot, hoot, sirs ; the present
company are always excepted, ye ken. * - *
Omnes. Agreed Agreed
Tickler. I disdain all personality, but that paragraph was full of
shocking mis-statements. The fact is, I saw Brodie hanged, and he
had no silver tube in his windpipe, and no flowered waistcoat on. It
is true that he sent for a doctor to ask if there was any probability of
escaping with life, but Degravers told him at once, sir, that he would
be “as dead as Julius Caesar;” these were the words. But Brodie
would hold his own opinion ; and nobody e'er threw down the pocket
handkerchief more assured of resuscitation. Poor devil he just
spun round a few times, and then hung as quiet as you please, with
his pigtail looking up to heaven.
* Dyvour—a debtor who cannot pay.—M.
f 1m Blackwood, for February, 1823, was a review of []"Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, in
which, moticing the fact that the Earl of Morton died by the Maidem, which he introduced
into Scotland, the critic affirmed that Deacon 13rodie, who had been hanged (off a drop of his
own invention) for robbing the Excise Office at Edinburgh, thirty years before, actually was
executed with a silver tube in his windpipe, but that all attempts to re-animate his body
were fruitless. The reviewer said, “We have reason to say we know this, for we are old
...; to have often talked with the surgeon who was present when the experiment was
nade.”—M.
276 - NOCTES AMBROSTANAE.
Odoherty. Alas! poor Brodie —To tell you he truth, I wished to
hum D'Israeli a little. *
North. Pleasant, but wrong ! For shame upon all humming !
Odoherty. Farewell —a long farewell to all our Noctes.
Hogg. Ye mak mair trumpeting about a collector chiel, like D'Is.
raeli, than mony a man of original genius and invention. Ye’ve
never reviewed my “Three Perils of Man” yet.
North. The more shame to me, I confess; but wait till the “Three
Perils of Woman” appear, and then we'll marry them together in
One immortal article, -
Odoherty. What, then, are “The Three Perils of Woman 7" I
think, “The Three Perils of Man” were, according to our kilted clas-
sic, “Women, War, and Witchcraft.”
Iſogg. Aye ware they—but faith, guess for yoursell, my cock. I
ance told ame of you the name of a book I was on, and ye had ano
wi' the same name out or I had won to my second volume.
North. Horrid usage for a man of original genius and invention.
But, let's see, I think you should make them, “Man, Malmsey, and
Methodism.”
Mr. Tickler. Or, what say ye to “Ribbons, Rakes, and Ratafie 7"
North. “Flattery, Flirting, and Philabegs?” Three F’s, Hogg.
Hogg. Weel, I thought of some o’ thae very anes. I thought of
“Kirns, Kirkings, and Christenings,” too; and then I thought of
“Dreams, Drams, and Dragoons”—but I fixed at last on three L’s.
Odoherty. “Legs, Lace, and Lies º'
Hogg. Na, na, you’re a' out. “Love, Learning, and Laziness.”
Odoherty. O, most lame and impotent conclusion | But no doubt,
you’ll make it rich enough in the details. Your “Love” will no
doubt end in the cutty stool; your “Learning,” in Constable's Maga-
zine; and your “Laziness,” in Black Stockings. Thus we shall have
an imposing and instructive view of life and society.
Eſogg. If ye say another word, I’ll dedicate the built to you, Captain.
- Odoherty. Do. I always repay a dedication with a puff. &
Hogg. Yon ID'Israeli chap dedicated to you, I'se warrant?
Odoherty. In writing the tale of “Learning,” (for, if I understand
you rightly, there are to be three separate ales,) l beg of you to
imitate, above all other novel writers, n.5 Illustrious friend, the
Wiscount D’Arlincourt.* -
Hogg. Arlincoor, say ye? Wait till I get out my kielewine pen.
Od I never heard tell of him afore. g ~
Odoherty. For shame ! “Not to know him.” (Shakspeare.) In
a word, however, my worthy friend, he is the greatest genius of the
age. If you doubt what I say, I refer you to Sir Richard Phillips
I think I see him lying there beside the head of North's crutch.
* A raodern French novelist.—M.
VISCOUNT D'ARLINCOURT. 277
Morth. (Handing the Old Monthly to the Ensign.) There is the
production.
Odoherty, Ay, and here's the puff, “This is the work of a man
of genius, and the translation has fallen into very competent hands.”
Need I read any more of Sir Pythagoras'
Hogg. Oh, no. But what is't ye wad have me particularly to
keep an ee upon ? Troth, I wad be name the waur of a hint or twä
to help me on with the sklate.
Odoherty, 'Tis more especially in the tale “Learning,” that I ven-
ture to solicit your attention to my noble friend’s works. He is the
most learned novelist of our era. Follow him, and you will please
Macvey himself.
JHogg. Weel, let's hear a wee bit skreed o' him. I daresay Mr.
North will hae him yonder amang the lave, beside his stult. Sauf
us! the very table's groaning wi' sae mony new, authors.
North. You may say so, truly; and I groan as well as my table.
Here’s “The Renegade,” however. Will that do, Odoherty
Odoherty. Yes, yes—any of them will do. You see, Hogg, the
noble author plunges us at once into the deepest interest of his tale.
An invading army of Saracens carries ruin and horror into the hills
of the Cevennes. A Princess, the heroine of the book, is driven
from her paternal halls—she flies with her vassals—the black flag
of Agobar floats awful on the breeze—all alarm, terror, dismay,
desolation—-
Iſogg. That's real good. I’ll begin my “Laziness,” wi' an inva-
sion too.
Odoherty. Certainly—and now attend to this illustrious author's
style, for it is that I wish you to copy, my dear Hogg. Hear this
passage, and thirst for geology. You understand that the descrip-
tion refers to a moment of the deepest and the most overwhelming
emotion—our Princess is in full flight, the hall of her ancestors bla-
zing behind her—
“While the Princess, borne on her gentle palfrey, abandoned herself to these
sad thoughts, Lutevia, at a turn of the rock, again presented itself to her view.
Lighted torches were seen to glance here and there upon the platforms of the
castle. These moving lights, the signal of some new event, announced a tumult-
uous agitation among the soldiery. The fatal bell again was heard. Ezilda could
doubt no longer that the Saracens had attacked the fortress. She immediately
struck into the depths of the mountains. The bright stars directed her march, as
she pursued an unfrequented road across untrod rocks, and by the edges of preci-
pices. At every step Nature presented incxplicable horrors, produced by the
various revolutions which had acted upon this region. In one place were seen
streams of basaltic lava, thick beds of red pozzolanum, calcareous spars, and
gilded purites, thrown out by the numerous volcanoes. In another, strange con-
trast ! the ravages of water had succeeded to those of fire; transparent petrifac-
tions, marine shells, somorous congelations, sparkling scoriae, and crystalliæd
prisms, were mixed accidentally with the confused works of different regions. A
278 NOOTES AMBROSLANAE,
crater had become a lake; an ancient bed of flames, a cascade; the Waves of the
ocean had driven back the blazing volcanoes, had placed the peaks of mountains
where their bases had been, and had rolled péle méle, 2eolites and-silices, cinder8
and crystals, stalactites and tripoli ! ! / From a reversed cone covered with snow,
and which contained freezing springs, boiling waters spouted. In the dark ages,
it would have seemed that the two terrific genii of devastation, fire and flood,
had coutended; and as the mysteries of Providence put to fault the reason of
the philosopher, these mysteries of nature embarrassed all the systems of the
learned.
“The heavens were covered with clouds, a small rain had begun to fall, and
each step had become more perilous; the narrow road cut in the rock seemed to
offer only a succession of precipices.
“After some hours' journey, the Princess approached a torrent, whose waters
thundered between a double colonnade of basaltic pillars. At the bottom of a
glen, which seemed alumost inaccessible, the road enlarged. Upon a barren flat,
surrounded by pointed rocks and enormous calcareous stones, the virgin of Lutevia
perceived a sort of wild camp, lighted by scattered fires. Terror was a stranger
to her soul, and believing that she was covered by the buckler of the Lord, and
that her path through life was to be marked by frightful events, Ezilda was re-
signed to her stormy destiny | | |"
Eſogg. Oh man, that’s awfu' grand; thae lang words gie siccan an
air to the delineation. I dare say some o’ the bonny words would
suit very well in my “Learning.” Will you lend me the buik, Mr.
North Q \
North. Say no more. The volumes are thine own.
Hogg. Thank ye kindly, sir. Od, I’ll gut this chiel or lang be. I
wonder what Gray will think of me? But I’ll easily bam him, moo
he’s ower the water.”
Odoherty. Ay, here's another prime morceau. 'Tis a description,
you are to suppose, of a grotto where a love adventure goes on.
“This celebrated grotto was sunk in the base of a misshapen and rugged rock,
Its peak had been a volcano; its arid summit, scorched by its eruptions, covered
with black lava, green schorl, metallic molliculi,with calcimed and vitrified substances,
bore in every part the destructive marks of fire; while the sunken earth, the
schistows stones, the beds of mud, the irregular mixture of volcanic with marine
productions, and the regular piles of basaltic prisins, were evidences of the opera-
tion of contending elements.”
Hogg. “Evidences of the operations of contending elements ſ” It’s
perfectly sublime. It dings Kilmeny—na, it clean dings her
North. Nil desperandum! Spout us a bit more, Odoherty.
JHogg. Speak weel out, Captain—gie yoursel breath.
Odoherty. Read yourself, Hogg; there's a fine place.
JHogg. Na, wha ever saw the like o't—Ze-ze-ze-oleet—Montlos—
Girand—Salaberry—berry. Ay, it's just Salaberry. Od, this is
worse than the Eleventh of Nehemiah.
Odoherty. Poo! You're at the notes. Let me see the book again.
Did you ever describe a handsome fellow, Hogg 2 Well, hear how
* in Canada.-M,
Hogg, “WATERLoo.” 279
this virgin Princess, here describes one she saw sleeping in his own
bed-room, to whicº, sne nad penetrated. “His chest,” said she, “his
chest halfbared, white as the marble of Paros, was like that of the
athletic Crotona. As vigorous as the Conqueror of the Minotaur, as
colossal as the Grecian Ajax, as beautiful as the Antinous of the
Romans tº - -
North. Stop, stop ; fold up the bedclothes again, if you please.
Upon my word, this is worse than Sophy Western and Mrs. Honour
about Tom Jones's broken arm.
Iſogg. My gudeness | This is just the book I wanted. Od, I'll
come braw speed moo. -
Odoherty. To be sure you will. But a man of your stamp should
not follow with any servile imitation. No-Admire D’Arlincourt,
but cease not to be Hogg.
Eſogg. De'il a fears o' me !
Odoherty. If your heroine is to be woo'd about St. Leonards, be
sure you turm up Pinkerton, or Jameson, and tip us the Latin or
German names of all the different strata in that quarter. It will
have a fine, and, in Scotland at least, a novel effect. If she climb Ar-
thur's Seat, tell us how the thermometer stood when she was kissed
at the top. If there is a shower on her wedding night, take a note
of the cubic inches that fell. If her petticoat be stained with green,
tip us the Linnaean description of the grass. And if you are afraid
of going wrong in your science, Mr. Leslie will perhaps look over
the MS. for you. . - -
Flogg. I’ll send him a copy of the second edition; but I’ll let nae
Professors look at my manuscripts. Od I mind ower weel what
cam o' my Waterloo. - - *... - -
North. Your Waterloo ! God bless me. Did you help Mr.
Simpson,” then - -
Hogg. Ye're a' to seek. It wasna Jamie Simpson's book I had
aught to do wi', (although it was a very bonny bit bookie, too.) It
was a Waterloo o' mine ain, a poem I had written, and I sent it in
to Grieve; and awheen o’ them had a demner at Bill Young's, to read
it over, forsooth. And od! heard you ever the like o' sic tinkler
loons'; they brunt it bodily, and sent me a round-robin that it was
havers—mere havers. .
Odoherty. Paltry, envious souls . Insensate jealousy Despica
ble spleen'
North. Kopaſceg &
Akpavra yapwéptey
Atoſ ºpoſ og1:16a 0Ficy.
* James Simpson, an Edinburgh lawyer, published an interesting account of his visit to
§ºlº in 1815. In the late editions he gives some delightful recollections of Sir Walter
cott.—M.
280 NOOTES AMUBROSLANAE.
Hogg. Eh!
North. Graecum est.
Odoherty. (Sings, accompanying himself on the trombone.)
I
Greek and Latin
Will come pat in
Our Chaldean Shepherd's page.
With geology,
And petrology,
Sans apology,
He, he alone is born to cram our age. (bis)
2.
'Tis he will tickle ye
With Molliculi,
Pouzzolanum, Sehorl, and Schist;
'Tis he will bristle,
With cone and crystal,
His shepherd's whistle
Is now, in loathing and high scorn, dismist, (bis)
3.
Show your glory
In shells and scoriael
Pour your lava, drop your spar 1
With Stalactites,
And Pyrites,
And Zeolites,
Hogg now will make thee stare, prodigious Parr l (bis)
4.
When he prints it out,
The French Institute
Will enrol one Scotchman more ;
How we'll caper,
When Supplement Napier,”
For a physical paper,
Bows low, nor bows in vain, by Altrive's shorel (bis.)
5.
Grasp your slate, sir,
See atch your pate, sir,
You must speak—the world is dumb l
Logic, Rhetºric,
Chemic, Metric,
Fresh from Ettrick,
With glorious roar, and deafning deluge come 1 (bis)
Hogg (much affected). Gie me your hand, Captain. Oh, dear !
Oh, dear me !
North. Enough of this, boys.-What new book have you been
reading, Tickler ? sºr
* Macvey Napier edited the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica—M.
UGO FOSCOLO. 281
Tickler. From Hogg to Foscolo the transition is easy. I have
been much gratified with Essays on Petrarch.
Odoherty. Fudgiolo's new affair?
Tickler. He must now drop that title. 'Tis really a very elegant
volume, full of facts, full of fancy, full of feeling-a very delightful
book, certainly.
North. I glanced over it. There seemed to be a cursed deal of
Balaam, in the shape of Appendixes, and so forth.
Tickler. True enough. But there's sail enough to do even with
that quantity of ballast.
North. Have you seen a little volume about the Spanish affair, by
one Pecchio, a Carbonaro Count from Italy 7
Tickler. Not I, faith; nor never will.
North. No, no, 'tis not worth your seeing. It is full of Blaquiere.
Edward Blaquiere, Esq. writes the preface, and puffs his excellency
Count Pecchios&nd Count Pecchio repays Edward Blaquiere, Esq.
1 the body of the book. It contains, however, and that’s what
rought it to my recollection just now, some most eulogistic pages
ibout Ugo Foscolo. Here is the book, however.—Read for your-
self—(Handing Pecchio.)
Tickler (as musing.) Ay, my Jacopo Ortis and so this is the
way you go on, (reads) “His cottage is isolated, but well furnished.
A canal is near it, that looks like the troubled Lethe. One might
take our friend’s abode for a hermitage, were it not for the Two
PRETTY CHAMBERMAIDs that one observes moving about the pre
cincts.” Two!—Yes, by Jupiter,’tis so in the bond. Two! O,ye Gods:
Hogg. TwA hizzies —Less might serve him, I fancy.
Odoherty. Two Pretty well for the latitude of the Regent's
Park.”
Tickler. Well done, Mr. Last Words! But these are your Zante
tricks. –“The isles of Greece the isles of Greece l’”
North. Pooh, pooh! Timothy, you’re daft. I confess I regret that
ne should have been called Fudgiolo—for a man never finds it easy
to lose a nickname.
Odoherty. Of my making.
Morth. Sorrow on your impudence —You have cost many a
worthy body a sore heart, in your time, with your nicknames.
Odoherty. True, O King!—O King, live for ever !
Hogg. That’s just what I ay thocht. If Mr. North could get
his ain gait, there would not be a better-natured book in a' the
world—it's just that lang-legged Adjutant that pits the deeviltries
intill't.
Odoherty. Hioicks hioicks —but, after all, isn’t it odd that
* Ugo Foscolo occupied what he called Di-Gamma Cottage, St. John's Wood, London.
Instead of two pretty attendants, he had three sisters, all of them very handsome —M. -
282 TNOCTES AMCBROSLANAE.
Reviews, &c., and all their wit, and all their malice, and all their
hypocritical puffing, are not able to produce the smallest effect, good
or bad, upon the permanent reputation of any writer. I confess I
wonder that this should be the case.
North. I. confess I should wonder if it were the case. - ...
Odoherty. Aha! by this craft he hath his living !—but be honest
for once, Kit North, and tell me the name of that author that has
been permanently raised, or permanently depressed, beyond his
merits by our periodicals' -
North. Permanently is a queer word. You think to got out by
that loophole. - -
Odoherty. Why, do but think of things as they are. Does
Wordsworth stand a whit the lower, for having been a general
laughing-stock during twenty long years?—Or does Jeffrey stand
a whit the higher, for having been puffed during a period of about
equal extent.
North. It was I that brought up the one, and put down the other
of them.
Odoherty. Huzza! A trumpeter wanted here ! Why, big fellow.
as you think yourself, they would just have been where they are by
this time, although you had stayed in Barbadoes till this moment.
Hogg. Barbaudoes | Was North in Barbaudoes
Odoherty. Yes, this man who now rules, and with no light rod, the
empire of European literature, consumed many years of his life
among the sugar plantations of the other hemisphere. He has been
a jack of all trades in his day. .
North. Wait, man, he'll see it all in my autobiography—which, if
so please the fates, shall see the light
“Ere twelve times more yon star hath filled her horn.”
Bogg. Meaning me?—Od, I’ll no be lang about twal tumblers, if
that's a' the matter. * *
Odoherty. Ha! haſ honest Jemmy —But, to be serious, old boy,
who then is the man that hath been elevated 7–who is he that hath
in this sort been depressed ? . -
North. Why, as I said before, you will creep out upon your “per-
manently.”
Odoherty. And you may say that. The fact of the matter, or ut
cum Josepho loquar, “the tottle of the whole,” is, that all the criti-
cism that has been written since the Flood, might just as well have
remained in non-existence. For example, does any one really drearn
that there slumbers at this moment, on the shelves of the British
Museum, any real fellow whose works are not known, and deserve
to be known Has my friend D'Israeli, or any of that tribe, ever
been able to ferret out a long-concealed author of genius 3–No, no.
PUFFING AND FAME. 283
Depend on’t, my dear, there's no Swift, nor Pope, nor Gibbon, nor
Smollet, nor Milton, nor Warburton, nor Dryden, nor any body
really worth being up to, but what all the world is up to. The criti-
cal bowstring has been justly applied, or baffled—there is no third to
these two ways of it.
Tickler. I side with the Adjutant. And the longer things go on,
there will be but the more need for plying the cord tightly. No age
ever possessed, nor does ours for what I see, more than a very few
great ones; and to smother the small ones is but doing justice to
these and to the public.
Odoherty. Well said, Timothy.—If one looks round among our
periodicals, there is scarcely one of them that is not laboring away
to hoist up some heavy bottom. The Quarterly and the British
Critic tell us that Milman is a mighty poet. The New Monthly
Magazine, and five or six inferior books, keep up a perpetual blast
about Barry Cornwall—Waugh winds his sultry horn for the glory
of Mrs. Hemans—Taylor and Hessey pound the public with Barton
and Allan Cunningham. -
North. Well, and what do ye make of all this? Is it not true,
that Mr. Milman is a very elegant and accomplished man, and that
he deserves to be lauded for his fine verses 2 Is it not true, that
Barry Cornwall's dramatic scenes formed a delightful little book
and ought they to be quite forgotten, merely because he has written
three or four confounded trashy ones since 2 Is it not true that Mrs.
Hemans is a woman of pretty feeling and writes sweetly —Is it
not true that Bernard Barton and Allan Cunningham are both of
them deserving of commendation ?
Hogg. Hear ! hear ! :* - T
Odoherty. The question is not whether these people deserve some
praise, but whether they deserve the highest praise—for that is what
they get in the quarters I have indicated. And just to bring you up
with the curb, my dear, do you really suppose that any of these
names will exist anno eighteen hundred and forty-three ?
Hogg. The Forty-Three's a long look—heh, me! we may a' be
anoath the moulds by that time.* -
Tickler, (dejectedly.) The wicked shall cease from troubling —
Bogg, (ditto.) And all their works shall follow them —
Odoherty. Come, come; what's the fun of all this 2 (Sings.)
1.
Time and we should swiftly pass;
He the hour-glass, we the glass-
Drink! yon beam which shines so bright
Soon will sink in starless night:
Tchorus, now, Tchorus —
* All were, except Wilson, who died in 1854.—M.
284 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
Ere it sink, boys, ere it sink-
Drink it dim, boys I drink, drink, drinkl
2.
Drink, before it be too late—
Snatch the hour you may from fate;
Here alone true wisdom lies,
To be merry's to be wise—
Ere ye sink, boys—ere ye sink—
Drink ye blind, boys! drink, drink, drinkl
(Much applause.)
North. Odoherty, Odoherty I say you are an absolute bar to
business. Which of you will give me an article on the last Number
of the Quarterly Review 7 -
JHogg. I write in The Quarterly myself now and them, sae, if you
please, I would rather it fell to the Captain's hand.
Odoherty. Well, I like that notion—as if I had not written in
every periodical under the sun, and would not do so if I pleased
to-morrow again. Why, open your gray gleamers, you Pig–you
should not be quite so obtuse at this time of day, I think —
Hogg. Whatma warks do you really contribute till, Captain?
Odoherty. I write politics in the Quarterly—Belles Lettres some-
times for the Edinburgh ; ditto, for the Monthly Review, (particu-
larly the Supplemental Numbers about foreign books.) Divinity
for the British Critic—these are pretty regular jobs—but I also favor
now and then Colburn, Constable, Waugh, &c., in their Magazines.
In point of fact, I write for this or that periodical, according to the
state of my stomach or spirits, (which is the same thing,) when I sit
down. Am I flat—I tip my Grandmother a bit of prose. Am I
dunned into sourness—l cut up some deistical fellow for the Quar-
terly. Am I yellow about the chops—do I sport what Crabbe calls
“The cool contemptuous smile
Of clever persons overcharged with bile;"
Why, then, there's nothing for it but stirring up the fire, drawing a
cork, and Ebonizing—ainst va le monde /
North. So, Principle, Mr. Odoherty, is entirely laid out of view
Odoherty. Not at all, not for the Bank of England, my dear fellow.
But what has Principle to do here ? no more than Principal Baird,
I assure ye. Why, don’t we all know that little Cruikshank did the
caricatures of the King for Hone, and those of the Queen for the
other party,” and who thought the less either of him or his carica-
tures? Are a man's five ſingers not his own property';
North. Dans sa peau mourra le Reynard. So you seriously
think yourself entitled to play Whig the one day and Tory the next,
* IIe did not.—M. -
TEII: QUARTERLY. 285
Odoherty. “Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur”—
North. You talk en Suisse. . . .
Odoherly. Ay, and as you know to your cost, old boy. Point
d'argent, point de Suisse /
Hogg. I dimma follow you vera weel, but I’m feared you're making
a very shameful story of yourself, Captain Odoherty. .
Worth (aside to Hogg.) My dear Corydon—he's only bamming us,
I believe. -
Hogg. Oh! the neerdoweel ! to bam Mr. North ! this beats a’ſ
Odoherty. “This beats York races, Doncaster fair, and Judges
come down to hang folks.”
North. Enough I enough l—but once more to business, my friends !
what say you as to the Quarterly 7 :
Tickler. 'Tis certainly a first-rate Number, the best they have had
these three or four years; but I don't see why you should have am
article upon it. - -
Morth. I do see it, though. Sir, the Quarterly has done itself
immortal honor by that paper “On the Opposition.” I should wil-
lingly give something to know who wrote it.
Tickler. Why, 'tis well argued and well written; but after all,
your own work had said the same things before, and perhaps as well.
North. No, indeed, sir. We had uttered the same sentiments and
opinions; but neither so wisely"nor so well: the clear, quiet, mas-
terly exposure in that paper has not often been rivalled. We have
had few things so good since Burke's pamphlets. Once more, I
would like to know the author's name.*
Eſogg. Can it be Mr. Camming? r * ~ *
North. No, no; it has neither his rhetoric nor his oratory: nor
has it the air of being written by so old or so high a statesman as
Canning. - :
Tickler. Croker :
North. Out again. It wants his rapidity and his vivadi vis. Com-
pare it with the Thoughts on Ireland. They, to be sure, were written
when he was very young, and the style has the faults of youth, in-
experience, and over imitation of Tacitus ; but still one may see the
pace of the man’s mind there; and a very fiery pace it is.
Odoherty. I do not think it can be Gifford’s own handiwork,
North. I would not swear that. It has much of the masculine de-
termined energy of Gifford's mind; and if it has none of the bad
jokes that used to figure in his diatribes, for bitter bad some
of them were, why, such a man may very well be supposed to have
discovered his own weak points by this time. Of late, more's the
pity, his pen has not been very familiar to us even in the Review.4
* Dr. Magimm.—M. t Gifford retired from the Quarterly in 1824, and died in 1826.-M,
286 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
/
Tickler. It will be a great loss to literature when he retires from
his Review. I wonder who is to succeed him.
North. I wish, with all my heart, he had a successor worthy of
himself: a man inspired, like him, in spite of all his defects, with a
true and deep reverence for the old spirit of English loyalty and
English religion; and, what will be even more difficult to match,
imbued with a thorough knowledge of the old and genuine classics
of our literature. I fear no young man will do ; and I know of no
old one likely to buckle to such a labor. Murray should look twice
ere he leap ; but perhaps Gifford himself may stand it out longer
than seems to be generally expected.
Tickler. I hope so. After all, the Tories might find it almost as
difficult to replace him, as the Whigs would find it to replace our
friend Jeffrey. -
North. Just so. The truth is, that both Gifford and Jeffrey have
done many wrong things—the latter many hundreds, perhaps; but
take them all in all, they are scholars and gentlemen, and literature
must number thern among the bene meriti of her republic. Com-
pare them with the fry they have so long kept in the shade.
Hogg (testily.) Neither the tane nor the tither has said a word
about “The Three Perils.”
Odoherty. Come, that’s shabby, however. But cheer up ; I will
do you in both, ere three months be over, or my name's not Morgan.
North. Lord keep us! Does an old stager like the Shepherd feel
sore upon such points as these ? I profess I had no notion of it, or
I should have buttered you with the thumb long ago myself.
Hogg. Praise is praise, an it be but frae a butcher's calland.
North. Elegant, Hogg How you would squeal if I put the knife
in your hide | No jokes on me, my formose puer.
Hogg. Dinna gloom that gait. Odº I was na meaning ony
offence — “.
Tickler, Kiss and be friends. But, North, don’t you wonder at the
Quarterly's taking no notice of the Spanish affairs? I confess I ex-
pected a paper on that subject, full of real information; which,
indeed, we need not look for in any other quarter.
North. Wait a little, I suppose it will keep cool for a little, like
that dishing of O’Meara.
Odoherty. I give up my brother bog-trotter. He is indeed dished.
Tickler. Ay, and yet I am not sure whether it be not Cobbett that
has given him the coup-de-grace. Did you see the Statesman's arti-
cle? No?—Well, then Cobbett just says the truth smack out.*
O'Meara may bother away with paragraphs till Doomsday.—He is
a gone man, until he denies the letters printed in the Quarterly.
* Cobbett wrote leading articles, at that time, in The Statesman, which soon went down.—M
tº
I, DOR PUFFING. 287
North. “Elegant O'Meara,” indeed!—but if it be true that he's
turned out of the menagerie, I suppose no more need be said of him.
I'll tell you what is my opinion—the puff on that fellow in the last
Edinburgh Review must now be making my friend Jeffrey feel as
sore as Dr. Phillpotts’ letter itself. Oh! sir, these are the sort of
rubs that make a man bite the blood out of his nails.-Phillpotts’
calm, dignified, unanswerable smashing has done them more harm
than any thing they had met with these many days, and then on the
back of that comes this vile earposée. -
Odoherty. My private opinion is, that O’Meara’s book was got up
in a great measure as a puff on the Edinburgh Review. The art of
puffing has made great progress of late. Devil a book comes out
without some dirty buttering in it, either of you, North, or the Edin-
burgh, or the Quarterly, or some other periodical the author
wants to conciliate. Witness D'Israeli buttering Gifford—Lord
John Russell buttering Tom Campbell—O'Meara buttering John
Allen;*—and last not least, Billy Hazlitt buttering you in the
Liberal.
North. Call you that buttering your friends? A shame on such
butter |
Odoherty. What would you have?—The boys can’t write three
pages without mentioning you. If that is not butter enough for you,
you must be ill to please.
Bogg. The captain's in the right. An author's aye commended
when he's kept before the public. That's what gars me pit up with
the jokes of some of you chields.
Odoherty. Ditto. But the fact is, that the Cockneys are mad—
they can tell a hawk from a handsaw on other occasions; but when-
ever the wind is North, due North, 'tis all up with them—out it
comes, the absolute slaver of insanity. You have much to answer
for. We shall hear of some tragedy among them one of these days.
North. Any thing but another Mirandola—say I.
Hogg. Hoot, hoot, ye're ower severe now, Mr. North. The poor
lads had eneugh to do to gar the twa ends meet, and now ye’ve
rooked them clean out. If they were stout, braid-backed chields like
the Captain and me, it wad be less matter, they could yoke to some
other thing; but the puir whitefaced tea-drinking billies, what's to
come o'them —I’m wac when I think o't.
Tickler. The parishes of Wapping and Clerkenwell have good
actions against North—he must have raised their poor-rates con-
foundedly.
* John Allem travelled on the Continent, in 1802, as medical attendant and companion, and
continued a hanger-on, a literary toad-eater at Holland House for many years. In 1811 he
was elected Wardem, and in 1820, Master of Dulwich College. He contributed largely to the
Edinburgh Review, and died in 1843.---M. -
288 NOCTES AMBROSIANE.
Odoherty. Oh, dear!—Slops won’t come to so much.—I would
contract to corn and water them at sixpence a head per diem.
Hogg. Wull ye put me in the schedule —Here's my thumb 1.
Odoherty. You, you monster, you Cyclops, you Polyphemus !
why, you would swallow porridge enough to ruin me in a fortnight:
but if you’ll part with three grinders to the Odontist's museum, I
may give you, as Mrs. Walkinshaw says, another interlocutor of the
Lord Ordinary. -
North. Come, come, Hogg, take your revenge in your novel. I
have seen some of the proof sheets, and I assure you I think it will
take to a hair. Indeed, my dear fellow, you cannot, if you would,
launch any thing that will not have talent enough to swim it out.
|For my part, I liked the Perils of Man extremely well—rough,
coarse pieces, no doubt—but, on the whole, a free rapid marrative,
some eminently picturesque descriptions, a great deal of good blunt
humor, and one or two scenes, which I wonder the play-wrights have
not laid paw upon long ere now. Indeed, I think the JDevil, the eat-
ing Ploughman, the two Princesses, &c. &c., would all do capitally
on the stage. You should send a copy to Terry” or Murray. Mur.
ray, by the way, deserves much credit for his dramatization of Nigel.
JHogg. He's a clever lad, Murray. I like him better than ony
play-actor they have.—He never gangs beyond Nature, and he never
buckles to ought but what he's up to.
Odoherty. Would all actors and all authors had wit to follow that
example!—There is really an immensity of quiet comic humor about
Murray—how good is his Jerry Hawthorn but he did wrong to
leave out Almacks in the East, and the Tread-mill—these were
absurd sacrifices to the squeamishness of the modern Athens—they
were, in fact, the best things in the original piece. ?
North. I hobbled out one night to see the thing, but although the
acting was excellent, with the single exception of the row, the affair
struck me as a confoundedly dull one—no incident, no story, no
character, a precious heap of trash assuredly. -
Tickler. Well, good acting is a jewel—Murray, with his bluff
humor, Calcraft, with his true gentlemanlike lightness, and Jones with
his inimitable knowing grin, made it go down with me sweetly.—
What do you think of Mr. Vandenhoff?
Odoherty. No Vandal—but Young has been here !
North. Come, come, nobody starts with being a Young. Rome
was not built in a day—link by link the mail is made-–we must all
creep before we walk.
* Terry was them manager of the Haymarket Theatre in London, and Murray of the Edin'
burgh. Theatre.—MI.
t Pierce Egan's “Tom and Jerry.”—M.
RinyMING wrosſ. 289
Odoherty, You're as great in provel bs as Sancho himself, I swear.
Why don’t you write a rational book on them 7 Nothing worth
twopence in that way, since Erasmus's Adagia—all our English
books contemptible—poor—imperfect—dull—stupid—and devoid
of all arrangement. As for D'Israeli, he, as I said in my review of
him, knows nothing whatever of the subject; for he quotes, for great
rarities, a few of the most hackneyed ones in existence—old Plu-
tarchs, Joe Millers, and the like. e
North. I admire no proverbs more than those Dean Swift used to
make (not to repeat.) - -
Odoherty. It would be a good thing to revive the manufacture,
and apply it to literary topics.
North. We shall see—what would you think of reviving Cowper's
rhyming prose” in the mean time ! I think you might do that
easily, Hogg, or you, Odoherty; either of you have rhymes, God
knows, quantum Suff. -
Hogg. I fear 'twill be stuff—but let's try our hand **
Odoherty. On Peveril of the Peak—
Hogg. The story’s ill plann'd, and the foundation very weak; yet,
begin where you please, I rather think you'll not stop—Great authors
like these may jump or hop, they may leap over years, in one
chapter a score or more, yet no gap appears, one reads on as before;
but if I or any other should follow after that great brother, skipping
and hipping, notching and botching, I rather apprehend my very best
friend would vote me a Bore. • .
Odoherty. You need not feel sore although that should be the case,
I make bold, my dear Jamie, to tell ye the truth to your face, there's
something so sweet, and so mellow, and so little of the air of being
got up, about the style of that right fellow, that whatever he touches
pleases everybody, male and female, from Grizzy to the Duchess,
from the porter to the peer; and, this is what's so queer, all’s one
whether he describe King Charles or King Charles's little pet pup, or
beer foaming in a night cellar's barrels, or muscat wine sparkling in
a jewell'd cap—high or low, with him we go; no affectation, no
botheration, sound sense, a high feeling for honor and arms, a heart
* A few years later, this rhyming prose was actually revived, and by mo less an author than
D’ſsraeli, in his “ Wondrous 'Tale of Alroy.” However, he did not make very much use of it.
In May, 1833, Maginn, who wrote nearly, all the letter-press toe the “Gallery of Literary
Characters” in Fraser's Magazine, (the etched portraits were by Daniel Maclise, then a young
Irish artist rising in to celebrity, and now one of the first painters in 12 urope,) hit off this
rhyming prºse very neatly. The sketch thus, commenced: “O Reader dear! do pray took here,
and you will, spy the curly hair, and forehead bºre, and nose so high, and gleaming eye, of
Benjamin D’is-ra-e-li, the wondrous boy who wrote . Alroy in rhyme and prose, only to show
how long ago victorious Judah’s lion-banner rose.” It is as easy to write this as to write
prose, as any one can ascert in who will make the experiment. Magin m could talk in this
rhymell prose for half an hour at a time, without ever pausing for a word or rhyme. I have
no doubt that the next few pages, in which continuous examples are given, are written by
Maginn —M. -
WOL. I.-21
290 NOCTES AMBROSTANAE.
/
that the black eye of a pretty girl warms, gently and gaily, but never
ungentaly, a pawky glance into everything mean, yet somehow or
other a loftiness of spirit that never ceases to be felt and seen; these
are the qualities, by which he contrives to make all the rest of your
tribe look like mullities, and by which—no offence, for you must not
be disappointed of your rhyme, though it comes a little disjointed—
he contrives, thanks to his long mob, to draw into his own fob such
noble shower of pounds, shillings and pence, i
Iſogg. I wish out of his next book, for which I suppose we may
soon begin to look, he would be so kind as to pay down what I owe
to the Duke, and also to the Crown, for rents and taxes and so forth;
of you, why won't you do the same good turn for me, Mr. North ?
North. If I were you, Dear Jem, when money became due to
them, I would instantly take my pen and compose an ode; they
never would dun you again, if your verses flowed, as I think they
would, easy and good, and sweet and pleasant, as your prose does at
present; but as for me, my dear honey—as for me paying down money,
for you or any other pastoral poet, I must have ye to know it, the
idea's quite absurd—I won’t do it, upon my word—I am not so
green.—In point of fact, I have entered into a compact, (with myself,
I mean) to keep all my cash, making no sort of dash, buying neither
pictures nor plate, nor a Poyais estate; eating nothing better than
plain veals and muttons, and drinking nothing better than simple
claret and champagne; dressing up my old coats with new collars and
buttons; and, in a word, cutting all expenses that are foolish and vain,
and driving on with the old phaeton, the old horses, and the old pos.
tilion; in short, maintaining the most rigid economy, until it be uni-
versally known o' me, that I am fairly worth my cool million. When
that is done, there will be something new seen under the sun; for
I’ll let nobody then call me a niggard, but mount everything in
the grandest style, that was ever seen in this part of the isle, show-
ing off, whoever may scoff, like a second Sir Gregor Macgregor.”
Hogg. I suppose you speak of his highness the Cazique: but,
after all, what could he have expected, if he had but recollected,
that ever since the reign of Canmore was ended, the clan of might
and main from which that potentate is descended, have condescended
to patronize as their favorite air, that fine old pibroch, “Pacck-
hundsaidh gu bair.”
* This was a Scotchman, who declared, during the South American contest for independence,
that he had received the grant of a Province called Poyais, with the title of Cacique. He
created himself baronet, by the title of Sir Gregor MacGregor—proclaim d that he had a right
to confer titles of mobility in Poyais—instituted an Order of Knighthood, of which he was
Grand Master-invited adventurers to fight under his banner—wore the dress of a General
officer, green, with gold embrºidery—succeeded in making up “the Poyais Legion,” promis-
ing grants of land to all who joined him—took his dupes over to Poyais, where most ºf them
erished, most miserably, of want and other discomforts—and, in a word, made many dupes.—
e was an impudent and successful charlatan.—M. -
CHRISTOPHER A CA CIQUE, 291
(Sings.)
Q ne'er such a race was, as there in that place was
...And there ne'er such a chase was at a', man ;
From ilk other they run, all without tuck o’ drum—
Deil a body made use of a paw, man;
And we ran, and they ran,
And they ran, and we ran,
But wha was t run fastest of a, man Ż
Whether they ran, or we ran, or we wan, or they wan,
Or if there was winning at a' man,
There's no man can tell, save our brave general,
Wha first began running of a', man ;
And we ran, &c.
North. When I am a king, which, after all, is a sort of a thing,
(to speak with civility,) that in these days of pudding and praise,
nobody will call a mere impossibility—Well, when I am a King,
like his Majesty Gregor, lesser or bigger, the very first thing that
I will do, will be to send home a ship, inviting you, I mean James
Hogg, you comical dog, to make a trip, and you also, Sir En-
sign, you rip—all the way out to my realms, you shall sip, you two
schlems, grog and flip ; and whenever you arrive, as sure as I’m
alive, I’ll come down to the shore, with my princes and peers, and
the cannon shall roar, and we’ll give you three cheers. But as for
you, Morgan, ere you're well in the bay, you will hear the church
organ sounding away, and we'll lead you at once, all rigged out
for the monce, to the highest altar, to be noosed in Hymen’s halter;
for so great is my regard, my richest prettiest little ward, whether
Duchess or Caziquess, you need look for nothing less, as sure as
my name's King Christopher, it is you shall have the fist of her.
But for you, Jamie Hogg, don’t think to come incog—you shall
have a butt of sherry, to make your heart merry—a grand golden
chain, to wear over your maud—and the Lords of my train shall
shout and applaud, crying Christopher floreat, et SUS Suus Laureate ſ—
With Odoherty for my field-marshal, and Tickler for my premier,
I think, but I may be partial, things will go on airer and jemmier—
and Blackwood will come out to be my bookseller, no doubt;
he shall have the completest of monopolies in my metropolis, for
we’ll suffer nobody to squint at any thing that's in print, unless
it drop from his transatlantic shop; and the Magazine will in lieu
of a Queen amuse the leisure hours of me and my powers; and
with all these alliances, aids and appliances, I don’t think I need
speak either modester or meeker, why, if Macgregor 's Cazique,
I shall rank as Caziquer.
202 NOCTES AMERosana.
Hogg. Will you be a despot, though 3
North. Let me see—no—no–no—too much trouble—but no
sedition within the bounds of my bubble. Instant perdition shall
fall on Joseph Hume, if he dares to come out Disaffection to illume,
to move for any papers, or stir up any rows about tithe-pigs or seal-
ing-wax or my magazinish spouse, whom, though she be spotless as
unsunned snow, I would have you, and all the Bubblish Nation to
know, I will discard whenever I please, sirs, cutting your heads off if
you sneeze, sirs. -
Odoherty. I envy not your pomp, I envy Hogg' (Sings.)
How happy a state will two poets possess,
When Hogg has his wreath, I my rich, Caziquess;
On the wife and the Muse we'll depend for support,
And cringe, without shame, at great Christopher's court.
What though Hogg in a maud and gray breeches does go,
He will soon be bepowdered and strut like a beau;
On a laureate like him, 'twon't be going too far,
To bestow, mighty monarch, St. Christopher's Star.
North. On the wings of imagination, I now overfly time and space;
behold me exercising the kingly vocation among the mighty Bubblish
race—in my mind's eye, here am I, this is my court, and you the
potent nobles that resort to do me honneur and hommage in the hopes
of fricassee and from mage, wherein if I disappoint you grande dom-
mage:–Great Shepherd, kneel—thy shoulder-blade shall feel, ere
long, the weight of my cold steel, in reward for thy song !
Odoherty. Come, Hogg, mind your eye, tip us something & là
PYE.*
North. I forgot to observe, that from customary modesty not to
swerve, and preferring to imitate your old Bourbon or Guelf, to any
Macgregor or Iturbide that may be laid ere a week’s over on the
shelf, I shall christen the chief of knightly orders established within
my borders, by the name of a worthy that is now dead, whose good
looking old-fashioned head has served me in good stead, being always
displayed on my Magazines' backs, to the horror of all Whiggish
clamjamphrey, Jeremybenthamites, and Cockney hacks.
(Odoherty whispers for some time to Hogg, and then rising, picks
out a volume of the Right Hon. the Lord Byron.)
Tickler. What's all this mummery Let your proceedings be
more summary—I’m tired of such flummery. -
* Henry James Pye was the Poet Laureate, who immediately preceded Southey, and was
born in 1745, appointed Laureate in 1790, made London poiice Magistrate in 1792, and died in
1813. He wrote a great many bad verses —the best known being an epic, called “Alfred.”—M.
GEORGE BUCTIAN AN.
Odoherty (reads.)
ON THE STAR OF “THE LEGION OF HONOR.”
(From the French.)
Star of the bravel—whose beam hath
shed
Such glory o'er the quick and dead—
Thou radiant and adored deceit,
Which millions rush'd in arms to greet l
Wild meteor of immortal birth,
Why rise in Heaven to set on earth I
Souls of slain horoes form'd thy rays;
Eternity flashed through thy blaze
The music of thy martial sphere
W as fame on high and honor here;
And thy light broke on human eyes,
Like a volcano of the skies.
Like lava roll'd thy stream of flood,
And swept down empires with its blood;
Earth rocked beineath thee to her base,
As thou didst lighten through all space;
And the shorn sun grew dim in air,
And set while thou wert dwelling there.
*
Before thee rose, and with thee grew,
A Rainbow of the loveliest hue,
Of three bright colors, each divine,
And fit for that celestial sign;
Tor Freedom's hand had blended them
Like tints in an immortal gem.
One tint was of the sunbeam's dyes,
One, the blue depth of Seraph's eyes,
One, the pure Spirit's veil of white
Had robed in radiance of its light;
The three so mingled, did beseem
The texture of a heavenly dream
293
Hogg (cartemporizes.)
ON TEIE HEAD OF GEORGE BUCEIANAN.
(From the Chaldee.)
HEAD of THE SAGE I whose mug
shed
Such jollity o'er quick and dead—
O'er that bright tome presiding high,
Which MILLIONs rush each month to buy
That meteor of immortal birth !
Read rather more than “Heaven and
Earth.”%
has
Limbs of torn authors form its rays;
Eternity attends its praise;
The music of its partial puff
Gives fame and honor quantumn suff.
And its fist darkens hostile eyes,
Like Randal+ hammering for a prize.
Like lava, it in wrathful mood
Swept down Hunt's kingdoms with its
flood :
Leigh bow'd before it, looking base,
And wiped the spittle from his face;
And Hazlitt's nose burnt dim for care,
Spite of the purple dwelling there.
Behind thee rose, behind thee grew
A Rainbow of the lºveliest hue.
Of three bright fellows, each divine,
And fit at Ambrose's to dine :
For HUMBUG's hand had blended them
Much like three posies on a stem.
One loves to sport the rose of red, S
One, the rough thistle's burly head,
One—he of Ireland's modest mien—
Is deck'd out with the shamrock green
The three so mingled, do beseem
The texture of a heavenly dream.
Head of the Sage I thy own old bones|
Lie snug beneath Greyfriars stones.
But, oh! thou Rainbow of the three l
North—Tickler—and Odoherty
Star of the bravel thy ray is pale,
And darkness must again prevail!
But oh I thou Rainbow of the freel
Our tears and blood must flow for thee.
* A poem by the Right Hon. the Lord Byron.—C. N.
† The tri-color.—C. N.
f Randal, a prize-fighter.—M.
§ It is not, perhaps, generally known, that Tickler's family was originally English. It is
supposed that they lived at the Southside in the days of Edward I., who was himself a
Tickler.—C. N.
|| To the disgrace of the city of Edinburgh, and indeed of all Scotland, no stone marks
where the mortal remains of her greatest scholar—the wit, the poet, the historian ; the son, of
whom she, perhaps, has most reason to be proud, are deposited.
[It has not yet been corrected.—M.]
ſt certainly should.—C. N.
Should not this be corrected :
294 Noctes AMBROSLANE.
When thy bright promise fades away, Were thy bright look to fade away,
Our life is but a load of clay. Our life were but a load of hay.
And Freedom hallows with her tread Scorn hallows with a hearty kick,
The silent cities of the dead; The dumb posteriors of Sir Dick;" |
For beautiful in death are they And beautiful, but dead, we deem
Who proudly fall in her array— Tom Campbell's mess of curds and
And soon, oh, Goddess l may we be Cream ;
For evermore with them or thee l And soon, O, Taylor 1 will it be
A match in Balaam ev’n for THEE I
(Hogg kneels, a solemn air is heard from Odoherty's trombone,
Tickler, with dignity, hands the poker to Mr. Worth ; while
it is"descending slowly towards the Shepherd's shoulder, the
curtain is dropt down very gradually upon the dramatis per-
sonae, who form a perfect picture.)
* Sir Richard Phillips, editor of the Monthly Magazing.—M.
No. VIII.-MAY, 1823.
PRESENT—ETTRICK SHEPHERD, Chairman; KEMPFERHAUSEN, Cron
pier; TICKLER, ODOHERTY, DR. MULLION, &es.
SCENE–The Chaldee Chamber—Table as it should be,
TIME–Ten P. M.
Rempferhausen. Ah, mein Gottl what for a barbarian | And you
came to town on purpose ?
Iſogg. Deed did I, lad. And what for no? I aye come in when
there's omy thing o' the kind gaun forrit.
Kempferhausen. O shocking you really horrify me ! You like to
see such things' You really find a pleasure in them :
Hogg. Pleasure here, pleasure there, I cannot bide away from a
hangin'—I tell you plainly that I think it's worth a the Tragedy Plays
that ever were acted—I like to be garred to grue.
Odoherty. And of course a female exit is the more piquant—how
did the old lady go off then }
Hogg. Were you no there, Ensign : Odd, I thought I heard your
cough in the crowd. You were there, you deceiver—you were—you
were not the length of a cart-tram ahint mysel.
Åempferhausen. O, Mr. Odoherty, you too !
Tickler. Pooh, pooh Odoherty went to get materials for an article
—he has promised Ebony a series of HoRAE PATIBULANAE, and they will
be taking papers I believe, after all.
Hogg. I think I could contribute to that series mysel. Odd l I've
seen a matter of fifty hangings in my time.
Odoherty. Fifty why, Hogg, you're old enough to be my grand-
father—and yet I’ve seen three times that number myself—besides
plenty of shootings, and all manner of outlandish doings—guillotine
—sword—axe
Bogg. I wad gang a lang gait to see a beheading. A beheading
for my siller—it's clear afore ony other way.
Odoherty. Genteeler, I confess—but otherwise so so; and as for the
matter of cleanliness, your cord is certainly the very jewel of them all
for that. Why, Hogg, I’ve seen half the breadth of a street smeared
296 NOCTES AMBRÖSLANAC.
f
over with one fellow's claret; and then the assistants trundling in a
wheelbarrow of saw-dust, and all that sort of thing—is disgusting, and
apt to spoil one's breakfast.
Eſogg. Weel, I never saw onybody gang aff easier than Lucky .
M’Kinnon—I keepit my ee upon her, and she never made ae single
steer either wi' foot or hand. She was very easy, poor woman.
Dr. Mullion. Just a stroke of apoplexy—nothing more.
Odoherty. You are right, I believe, and that after all is the best way
it can operate. -
Dr. Mullion. In former times, when the poor devil had to leap from
a ladder, he might go up two or three steps higher and make such a
spring that he was sure of breaking his spine; but now-a-days the fall
is so short and so perpendicular, that they all die of apoplexy or stran-
gulation—which last is bad. - -
Odoherty. What did your friend Brodie die of.” Mr. Tickler
Tickler. Apoplexy, I suppose. His face was as black as my hat.
Hogg. Lucky M'Kinnon's bonny face was black too, they were saying.
Dr. Mullion. Yes, “black, but comely.” I saw her a day or two
afterwards—very like the print. -
Tickler. Those infernal idiots, the Phrenologists, have been kicking
up a dust about her skull, too, it appears. Will those fellows take no
hint %
Odoherty. They take a hint | Why, you might as well preach to
the Jumpers, or the Harmonists, or any other set of stupid fanatics,
Don't let me hear them mentioned again.
Dr. Mullion. They have survived the turnip. What more can be
said 3
Hogg. The turnip, Doctor ?
Dr. Mullion. You haven't heard of it then I thought all the
world had. You must know, however, that a certain ingenious person -
of this town lately met with a turnip of more than common foziness in
his field—he made a cast of it, clapped it to the cast of somebody's
face, and sent the composition to the Phrenological, with his compli-
ments, as a fac-simile of the head of a celebrated Swede, by name Pro-
fessor Tornhippson. They bit—a committee was appointed—a report
was drawn up—and the whole character of the professor was soon
made out as completely Secundem artem, as Haggart's had been under
the same happy auspices a little before. In a word, they found out
that the illustrious Dr. Tornhippson had been distinguished for his In-
habitiveness, Constructiveness, Philoprogenitiveness, &c.—nay, even
for “Tune,” “Ideality,” and “Veneration.”
* Brodie, who was a Deacon, invented the drop, (for execution,) and was the first who per-
ished by it. So with the Earl of Morton, who constructed the instrument of decapitation culled
The Maiden. Dr. Guillotin, who improved on this, did not fall a victim of his ingenuity, as
lias been reported, but survived until 1814.—M. -
QUENTIN DURWARD. º 297
Odoherty. I fear they have heard of the hoax, and cancelled that
sheet of their Transactions. What a pity!
Bogg. Hohl hohl hohl. The organization of a fozy turnip ! Hoh
hoh hohl hohl the like o' that The Swedish turnip—the celebrated
Swede -
Odoherty. Le Glorieux himself never carried through a better quizz.
The whole thing is perfect—Fuit Ilium. /–The worst of the whole
was, that a couple of the leading members had been disputing rather
keenly, which of their own two organizations bore the greater resem-
blance to that of the enlightened defunct. -
Tickler. Name, name.
JHogg. Wha were the twa saps? Name them, name them. . .
Odoherty. No, I shall spare their names; for Ihear your New Novel
is to be a deuced personal thing, and you would perhaps introduce
them. -
Hogg. Here's my hand.
Odoherty. Tush, tush. I’ll tell you no more, but that the one of
them belongs to the Stot's establishment, and the other jobs occasion-
ally in the balaam line for the Crany Review.” Really, they’re not
worth your libelling them, kind Shepherd.
Płogg. We’ll see—we'll see. . .
Tickler. And is it really to be a personal work, Hogg
Eſogg. It sets you weel, hinney—but ha' done, ha' done. Ye'll a’
read and judge for yourselves iu the course of a week or twa; for, now
that Quentin Durward's out o' his hands, Ballantyne will surely skelp
on wi' me. His presses have been a' sae thrang this while, that I
havena gotten aboon half the third volume set up. But I’ll spur up
the lad, noo. De'il mean him, I think he's no blate to keep me taiglin
for ony Quentin Durward that ever came out o' Glenhoulakin.
Tickler. Come now, Hogg, confess that Quentin Durward is a fine,
a noble, a glorious thing.
Płogg. Wait a wee. x +
Odoherty. As your work is still in secretis, of course we can't insti-
tute any comparisons—but I, for one, shall say honestly, that I look
upon Quentin Durward as the very best thing that has come out since
Old Mortality. -
Hogg, Ay, man—4 and div ye really think sae in earnest ? Weel,
I cannot but confessit, I’m muckle of the same opinion mysell, between
friends. It's clean afore Peveril—ay, and Needgill too—clean afore
them. -
Tickler. It has all the novelty of another Ivanhoe—and yet all the
ease and lightness of another Guy Mannering—and by the way, Hogg,
the author seems to be as fond of hanging-matches as yourself—what
* The Scotsman newspaper and the Phrenological Review.-M.
298 NOCTES AMBROSLANAC.
capital characters those two ladder boys are—and then their never
stirring without rope and pulley, any more than a parson without a
corkscrew
Bogg. Gleg chields, faith. Ad my flesh creepit whenever they
cam on the boards—I just thought I saw the rape dangling in the
wind before my very een. Yon tinkler Moograbbin—what a devil of
a spurling yon daur-the-mischief would mak! I think I see him flung
aff.
Odoherty. Your imagination is lively, good Shepherd. Have you
introduced any similar scenes in your work? -- -
Bogg. Ha! lad—wait a wee, again—pumping, pumping !
Odoherty. You seem to think every body is on the qui vive for your
bundle of balaam.
Hogg. Balaam 3 Gude have mercy on us! he's ca'in’t balaam or
e'er its out ! { -
Mullion. Well, that's not so bad after all, as calling it balaam after
it is out; which, however, I am sure nobody will do; at least, nobody
but the Standard-bearer.
Hogg. And his tongue's nae scandal, Doctor—Od every thing's
balaam wi' him, amaist. He ca'd the Brownie of Bodsbeck balaam,
and yet it gaed through three editions. -
Odoherty. Three editions 2 Are you serious !
JHogg. Dead serious—Od does a new title not make a new edi-
tion ?—If ye deny that, I’ll hae ye afore The Three, and see how you’ll
like shoolin out your gowd, but to be sure your brass is mair plenty,
my man.
Odoherty. Mr. Hogg, you and the Author of Waverley are begin-
ning to give yourselves a confounded deal of airs upon your cash. I
don't see what he had to do with blowing such a trumpet about his
beeves, and muttons, and so forth, in that introduction of his. As
for his sneers about garreteers, and chops, and Grub Street, I hope the
gentlemen of the press will take the illiberality as it deserves. Upon
honor, I don't think it was worthy of the Great Unknown to take such
a fling at the innocent misfortunes of a set of gentlemen, who have
all of them done their best to please the public—which is more than
I opine any body will venture to say for him.
JHogg. Come, come, Captain Odoherty, what's your drift.”—Do you
mean to say that I am a gentleman of the press, sir?
Odoherty. Much may be said on both sides—but, however, you
have beeves and muttons enough, I suppose, as well as Peveril; and
you don't live in Grub Street.
Bogg. I live in as decent a place as yoursell, Captain. I put up at
Mackay’s” noo, when I'm in town'—tis a very comfortable house, and
I can gang into the traveller's room, and get pleasant company when-
s * Mackay's Hotel, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh.-M.
BERANGER. 299
ever my fingers are dinnled wi' driving the pen. And I’m a' in the.
heart o' business too—Mr. Constable's grand new shop's just forment
my window—Mr. Blackwood's no a hap-stap-and-lowp amaist farrer
west—and Ballantyne's deevils, they can come jinking back and for-
rit in no time by the playhouse stairs—and Ambrose's here, I can
skelp ower, if it were a perfect steep, without weeting my shoon.
Odoherty. Your top-boots you mean—but I beg your pardon, you
are as sore about the boots as old Philip of Argenton himself. I beg
your pardon, good Monsieur Bête-bottée.
Hogg. You needna be moushying me. I ken naething ava about
your parleyvouzing system—that's my apothegm.
Odoherty. Hogg, I think I have heard you say, that you sometimes
find things take in the ratio of their unintelligibility.
JHogg. What's that now %
Odoherty. I mean to say, that you think people are at times best
pleased with what they can't make neither head nor tail of
JHogg. 'Tis as true a word as ever came out of a fause loon's cheese-
trap. I aye thocht weel of the non-comprehensible system—and
there's a lang-nebbit word for you too, my braw Captain.
Odoherty. Well then, just to please Hogg, Gentlemen of the Press,
I shall tip the company a French chanson—new—original—unpub-
lished—fresh from the pen of my good friend Béranger—the very
last thing Béranger has done.
Tigkler. Ha! I've seen very little of his works,—they say he's the
Tomímy Moore of France.*
Odoherty. Why, he wants Tommy's delicacy and bright fancy; but
then he perhaps has more spirit with him than Tommy. He has
written some abominable things in the licentious way; but so, to be
sure, has Tom Moore. -
Tickler. Ah but has he repented, or at least refrained, like your
amiable countryman :
Odoherty. I don't wish to chatter about humbugs just now. I
shall give you the chanson I spoke of, and you will see, that it at
least is as pure as if Hogg himself had indited the goodly matter.
Tickler. The Edinburgh Reviewers, I think, say, that Béranger is
“the Poet of the People.” Is he so very popular then }
Odoherty. Popular he is ; but not with the People, nor is he the
least in their line. So far from that indeed, that he is far too deep in
* Béranger, the greatest song-writer France ever had, was born in 1780. The brilliant suc-
cesses of France, under young Bonaparte, excited him into composition, and no man did more
for the nationality of Frenchmen. He did not flatter Napoleon even in the fulness of his
power. When the Bourbons returned—forgetting nothing and having learned nothing—he
Sang the strains of Freedom. For this he was prosecuted, fined, and confined. Under Louis
Philippe he did not fare much better. The Revolution of 1848 brought the old poet into public
life, and he was elected a member of the National Assembly—but Age and the Song had stronger
claims than Politics, and he gladly returned to private life. He lives at Passy, near Paris, in
onorable and happy retirement.—M.
300 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
his allusions for the worshipful Reviewers themselves. seeing that they
quoted as a specimen of a " Poet of the People," a verse with a most,
indecent allusion, touching the Jesuits-the which, it is right manifest,
neither the critic himself, nor the editor, could have understood.
Eſogg. Y ou may be sure, the lads just acted upon my principle.
Odoherty. Well, I wish they would act upon your principle only
concerning our own books, and not make us a laughing-stock among
the outlandish-but now for the chanson. (Sings.)
L'oMBRE D'ANACREON.
Air : de la Sentinelle.
Un jeune Grec s'écrit à des tombeaux :
Victoire l il dit ; l'écho redit : Victoire !
O demi-dieux, vous nos premiers flambeaux,
Trompez le Styx et voyez notre gloire.
Soudain sous un ciel enchanté
Une ombre apparait et s'écrie :
Doux enfant de liberté, (bis.)
Le plaisir veut une patrie,
Une patrie.
\-
O peuple Gree, c'est moi dont les destins
Furent si doux chez tes ayeux si braves ;
Quand il chantait l'amour dans les festins,
Anacreon en chassait les esclaves.
Jamais la tendre volupté
N'approcha d'une âme flétrie.
Doux enfant de la liberté, (bis.)
Le plaisir vent une patrie,
e@ Une patrie.
De l'aigle encore l'aile rase les cieux,
Du rossignol les chants sont toujours tendres ;
Toi, peuple Grec, tes arts, tes lois, tes dieux,
Qu'en as tu fait, qu'as-tu fait de nos cendres ?
| Tes fêtes passent sans gaieté,
Sur une rive encore fleurie.
Doux enfant de la liberté, (bis.)
Le plaisir veut une patrie,
Une patrie.
Déjà vainqueur, chante et vole au danger,
Brise tes fers, tu le peux si tu l'oses :
Sur nos débris, quoi ! le vil étranger
Dort enivré du parfum de tes roses !
Quoi ! payer avee la beauté
Un tribut à la barbarie !
Doux enfant de la liberté, (bis.)
Le plaisir veut une patrie,
Une patrie
BERANGER. 301
C'est trop rougir aux yeux du voyageur,
Qui d'Olympie évoque la memoire.
Frappe, et ces bords, au gré d'un ciel vengeuT,
Reverdiront d'abondance et de gloire.
Des tyrans le sang detesté
Réchauffe une terre appauvrie ;
Doux enfant de la liberté, (bis.)
Le plaisir veut une patrie,
Une patrie.
A tes voisins n'emprunte que du fer,
Tout peuple esclave est allié perfide.
Mars va t'armer des feux de Jupiter,
Cher à Venus son étoile te guide.
Bacchus, dieu toujours, indompté,
Remplira la coupe tarie.
Doux enfant de la liberté, (bis.)
Le plaisir veut une patrie,
Une patrie.
Il se rendort, le sage de Theos . . . . . .
La Grèce enfin suspend ses funerailles,
Thébes, Corinthe, Athène, Sparte, Argos,
Ivres d'espoir, exhumez vos murailles ;
Vos vierges même ont répété
Ces mots d'une voix attendrie,
Doux enfant de la liberté, (bis.)
Le plaisir veut une patrie,
Une patrie.
Hogg. A bonny tune, and, I daursay, a bonny sang too. What .
was't a' aboot, sirs ? -
Tickler. Love and country, and so forth. The shade of
Hogg. I daursay it's just plunder't out o' my Perils.* Does it
mention ony thing aboot a bonny lassie, and the flowers and the
gloaming ? v#
Tickler. These are all alluded to, Mr. Hogg.
Hogg. And the birds singing ?
Tickler. Yes, that too, I think.
Odoherty (singing).
* Du Rossignol les chants sont toujours tendres,
Toi, peuple Grec ! yy
Hogg. Na, na-time about's fair play, Captain. Ye've gien us the
copy-I think I may be allood to gie you the original ; for I'm sure
the French thief has just been takin' every idea I had frae me—I
mean *--
* Hogg's " Three Perils of Man,º-M.
302 Noctes' AMBROSIANAE.
Odoherty. Ha! a new light !—Béranger, too, robbing Hogg —But
begin, begin, dear James. -
Iſogg. Ae mair round of the bottles ere I begin—(Drinks a bumper.
of toddy).-Ay, now—my whistle will do now.—(Sings.)

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'Tis not beneath the burgonet, nor yet beneath the crown,
'Tis not on couch of velvet, not yet in bed of down—
'Tis beneath the spreading birch, in the dell without the name,
Wi’ a bonny, bonny lassie, when the kye come hame. -
(Chorus, lads.)
When the kye come hame, when the kye come hame,
"Tween the gloaming an' the mirk, when the kye come hame.
There the blackbird bigs his nest for the mate he lo'es to see,
And up upon the topmost bough, oh, a happy bird is hel
* The song, by Hogg, was very popular, not only in Ettrick Forest, but in all the rural dis.
tricts of Scotland. The refrain originally was, “When the kye comes hame,” but some of the
Shepherd's critical friends pointed out to him that, as the nominative and the verb should
agree, the singular comes was not in accordance with the plural ſcye. Hogg accordingly re-
moved the superfluous and peccant s. When next the song was printed it had the correctioti,
and the Words were, “When the kye come hame,”—but his rural admirers refused to adopt
the alteration, which they said was “dreadfu' affeckit,” and, to this hour, the words are sung
as originally written. Hogg used to relate this anecdote with great glee, in justification of
his unmitigated and undisguised contempt of verbal criticism.—M.
“WHEN THE RYE COME HAME.” 303
There he pours his melting ditty, and love 'tis a' the theme,
And he'll woo his bonny lassie when the kye come hame.
When the kye come hame, &c.
When the bluart bears a pearl, and the daisy turns a pea,
And the bonny lucken gowan has fouldit up his ee,
Then the lavrock frae the bluelift drops down, and thinks nae shame
To woo his bonny lassie when the kye come hame.
When the kye come hame, &c.
Then the eye shines sae bright, the hail soul to beguile,
There's love in every whisper, and joy in every smile:
O wha wad choose a crown, wi' a' its perils and its fame,
And miss a bonny lassie when the kye come hame?
When the kye come hame, &c.
See yonder pawky shepherd that lingers on the hill,
His eves are in the fauld, and his lambs are lying still;
Yet he downa gang to bed, for his heart is in a flame,
To meet his bonny lassie when the kye come hame.
When the kye come hame, &c.
Away wi' fame and fortune, what comfort can they gie?
And a' the arts that prey on man's life and liberty:
Gie me the highest joy that the heart of man can frame,
My bonny, bonny lassie, when the kye come hame.
When the kye come hame, &c. (Much applause.)
Odoherty. Upon my honor, 'tis admirable. Why, when did you
make this, Hoggº You have done nothing so sweet these three
Gall’S.
y Hogg. An’ ye never saw nor heard it afore ?
Odoherty. Not I—how should I? - -
Hogg. Ye invincible ne'er-do-weel ! and yet you reviewed my Three
Perils o' Man for two reviews, and three newspapers forbye.
Odoherty. Well, and what is that to the purpose ?
Iſogg. Not much, I confess—only the next time ye're for reviewing
an author, ye might maybe come as braw speed if ye began wi' read-
ing his book-Tak’ye that hint, my noble Captain?
Odoherty (a little confused). Why, is it possible % I really can
scarce swallow you, Hogg.—Is that song in “The Three Perils of
Man 3”—You are thinking of “The Three Perils of Woman,” an’t ye?
Hogg. Fient a bit o' me. In the book of “The Three Perils of
Man”—the third volume thereof, and the 19th page, you will find it
written as I have sung unto you.
Odoherty (aside to Tickler). I never saw the book—hang it!
Tickler (tipping the Adjutant the wink). Come, Hogg, don’t be too
severe upon Odoherty. The song is a good deal altered since then,
and much for the better. As it stands in the novel, if I recollect
tight, it begins with some trash about “Tarry woo’,” and “whistling
304 NoCTEs AMBROSLANE.
at the plow.” The Standard-bearer might easily think the song a
Y10 W OIle. - -
Hogg. I'se no deny that—for to tell you the plain fact, Christopher,
I had clean forgotten't mysel’. When the book was sent out a' printed
to Yarrowside, od! I just read the maist feck on’t as if I had never
seen't afore; and as for that sang in particular, I'll gang before the
Baillies the morn, and tak’ my affidavy that I had no more mind o'
when I wrote it, or how I wrote it, or ony thing whatever concerning it
—no more than if it had been a screed o' heathen Greek. I behoved
to have written't sometime, and someway, since it was there—but that's
a' I kent. I maun Surely hae flung't aff some night when I was a
thought dazed, and just sent it in to the printer without looking at it
in the morning. I declare I just had to learn the words or I could
sing the sang, as if they had been Soothey's, Tam Muir's, or some
other body's, and no my ain.
Odoherty. Coleridge over again, for all the world, and the Black-
stone of Blarney—“a psychological curiosity,” Hogg! Take one hint,
however, and henceforth always write your songs when you are dazed,
as you call it—Hibernice, when you are in a state of civilation.*.
Hogg (testily). Thank ye, Captain. I need scarcely be after bidding
you read the songs I write, when you find yourself in that same honor-
able and praiseworthy condition.
Odoherty (rings). Hallo—Champagne there ! Cool this fellow with
something that has been in the ice-pail. This eternal hot toddy is
setting his bristles on edge. (Enter Ambrose.) Champagne there,
Ambrose * *
Aempferhausen. Champagner champagner for Hogg. Ha! that's
your sort | what for a cork
Bogg. Eh siccan a clunk as that chiel's loupit awa wi' | There—
haud yer hand, Mr. Ambrose—eh siccan a ream | (Drinks.)
Odoherty (drinking). I pledge you, my Chaldean Shepherd. Well,
the wine is prime. Ferguson for ever, say I
Bogg. Oh dear! I never faund ony thing sae gude since ever I was
born—heh, there's anither glassful there yet, Mr. Ambrose. This way,
bring't this way, man! Oh, dear! what a wagang ! What may it
come to the dozen now, Mr. Ambrose? (Ambrose whispers the Shep-
herd.)—Losh keep us a' —Losh keep us a'!—heh me ! -
Rempferhausen. O, what for a groaning and sighing —what is the
wish to you, Herr Hogg
Hogg. Just that a body could get that same at three bawbees tho
bottle. -
Tickler. I suppose you would never think of small beer with your
porridge again }
a Anglice-Half seas over.—M.
DINNER AT YARROW. 305
Hogg, Na, faith I–nor tryacle neither—no, nor porter and sugar,
which is better than tryacle ony day in the year. -
Odoherty. This fellow Champagne —Come now, Hogg, tell me
honestly what is your idea of a really luxurious dinner? Describe—
describe. -
Hogg. Come ye out our way i' the har'st, and I’ll spare myself the
fash of descriptions, Captain. Let's see—let's see—what suppose I set
you down to a gaucy tureenfu'o' hotch-potch, or hare-soup—remove
that wi' a sawmon, just out o' Yarrow—a whacken fellow wi' his tail
in his mouth—his flesh perfect curds—and then a thumpin' leg of
blackface,” maybe with gravy-juice enough in him to drown a peck o'
mealy potatoes—or what wad ye say to a tup's head and trotters ?—
That's the way we live in Yarrow.—Match us in Cork or Kilkenny, if
ye can.
Odoherty (solemnly).
“And is this Yarrow 3 this the stream
Of which my fancy cherished
So beautiful a waking dream,
A vision which hath perished.”
Hogg. What says the lad?
Odoherty. Well, then, I say with Mr. Wordsworth—
“Whate'er betide, we'll turn aside,
And see the braes of Yarrow.”
Hogg. That's a man,—I thought I could busk a fly that would
please your e'e, you saucy ane—but come, come, wha's ready wi' a
stave 3—Mr. Kemperhausen, the call is for you. - - -
Kempferhausen (sings).
Der wind geht durch die Baiime;
Ausgrunen Schatten schwebt
Die milde Schaar der trailme
Aus Luft und Lust gewebt.
“Was bringt inr aus der ferne
Und locket mich zur Ruh?
Sprücht ibr von Leibgen, gerne
Drückt ich die Augen zu !”
Bogg. Awfu' toothbreakers! wheesht, wheesht.
Kempferhausen. Well, very well, mein Herr Hogg. Ich sange
nichts mehr—Potztausend
Odoherty. D— German —Dr. Mullion, what are you ruminat-
ing?—And you, Tickler, what book is that you are fumbling with !
breed has become very general.—M. *
WOL. I.—22
* The Black-faced sheep are ſound to thrive so extremely well on the Scottish hills, that the
306 NOOTES AMBROSLANE.
Tickler. Only the last Edinburgh. I was thinking we should come
the cat-o'-nine-tails across some of these scamps.
Odoherty. With pleasure, Mr. Tickler—hand me the pamphlet if
you are agreeable. Ay, here it is what a deuced piece of humbug
is this opening article.
Tickler. Of course it is—but why are you so particularly moved,
Adjutant?
Odoherty. Hibernicus sum; nihil Hibernici a me alienum puto.
Tickler. O, you expected something about your dear countrymen,
and the Marquis of Wellesley—did you?
Odoherty. Your ears for a moment, Mr. Croupier—and you, good
Gentlemen of the Press, your ears.
Hogg. The Captain's going to make a speech—fill a’ your glasses.
Tickler. Hush —hush —out with it, then, Odoherty. r
Odoherty. We are told that there are tricks in all trades, so well
understood by the public, as to take off all moral imputation of false-
hood. We are told, for instance, that it is intolerable to accuse of low
mendacity a man of letters, even though no tradesman, for palming off,
as a second edition, the heavy remainder of a first impression garnished
by an additional half sheet of superfluous stuff. Be it so; but of all
the tricks of trade with which I happen to be acquainted, the trickery
of the announcement of this leading article of No. 75 of the Edinburgh
Review, is the most barefaced. For weeks before its appearance, the
newspapers were filled with interesting paragraphs, headed with “We
are able to announce the contents of the forthcoming Number,” &c.—
Such, gentlemen, such are the Day-and-Martin manoeuvres to which this
once famed Journal is reduced; and, in due course of time, this demi-
official information was ratified by the more regular announcement by
advertisement, penned, of course, by the same hand that gave the
important intelligence in the former shape. In all these, this first
article was placarded as “Art. I–Reflections on the State of Ireland in
the Nineteenth Century.”
Tickler. I remember well, that all this was as you have been saying.
Such were the advertisements. -
Odoherty. And what title could just now be more taking? I speak
for myself—Vast visions of bottles and rattles floated before my men-
tal optics”—my mind yearned to hear the Whig Oracle's opinion of
ea!-officio informations, after the Grand Inquest of the country had
{* The Marquis Wellesley, elder brother of “the Duke,” was sent to Ireland, in 1821, as Vice-
roy. It was known that he had a strong desire to see the Roman Catholics relieved, by the
removal of certain disabilitics of which they long and loudly had complained. This political
leaning made Lord Wellesley unpopular with the Orangemen, and the Dublin Corporation, then
exclusively composed of ultra-Protestants. At the theatre, one night, some ruſſians of this
party threw a bottle at him, from the gallery, and very nearly struck him. Arrests were made,
and bills of indictment preferred ; the Grand Jury issued the bills. Mr. Plunket, then Attorney
General, presided ea-officio, but the Government, alarined at the prospect of defeat, nevor .
brought the accused to trial, and thus gave a triumph to the Orangemen—M. . . . .
8COTCH I'ſ TELES. 307
Ignored the bills—I longed to hear how the staunch advocates of the
Revolution of 1688 would treat the memory of William III–I ex-
pected savory remarks on the Beef-steaks—and, in general, looked for
, somewhat ingenious and piquant on Forbes, Standwich, Graham,
Daniel O'Connell, Mr. Plunket, Major-General Sir John Rock, K.C.B.
—cum multis aliis,
Tickler. So did the public.
Odoherty, And what did the purchaser, who sported his six shil-
lings, or, to speak Hibernically, his six and sixpence,” on the strength
of being “pleased with a rattle, tickled with a bottle,” as Pope remarks,
get for his money :
Eſogg. I wonder what it could be 3
Odoherty. You need not waste your time in guessing, for you would
not hit it in a thousand years. In fact, nothing more or less than the
“History and Settlement of Tithes in Scotland P’ which is the running
title at the head of the pages in the Review; but which, if announced
beforehand, would have most effectually damaged the sale.
Hogg, I’m no that sure—I wad like to see the article for ane.
Odoherty. You would like—pooh pooh Who, beyond the par.
ties concerned—the poorly paid minister, the financial elder, the grip-
ing heritor, and the blethering advocate—cares the end of a fig about
the history or the details of such an affair? The Kirk of Scotland is a
most excellent church beyond doubt, but it is also beyond doubt, that
all this prate about rescissory statutes, teind records, Lords of Erec-
tions, laicke patrons, &c. &c., is altogether balaam, of most unques-
tioned description. To be sure, the scribe endeavors to connect the
lumber, by a kind of apropos des bottes, with the fraudulent title ad-
vertised in the newspapers, by means of a head and tail-piece; which
have, however, all the appearance of coming from another hand. It
appears, by his account, that the people who have a design upon the
revenues of the English and Irish churches, wish for as much informa-
tion as possible, on the most approved practical method of doing the
business. “Their expectation,” quoth the Balaamite, “is reasonable,
and we hope the information may not be altogether without advan-
tage | | |" Was there ever a more stupid piece of make-believe at-
tempted to be played off? These worthy characters care little about
the arrangements of the kirk, having a very pretty sweeping plan of
their own already. Andrew FairService remarked long ago, that the
Kirk of Scotland would not be the worse for it, if the dwellings of its
clergy were made something more nearly equal to the dog-kennels of
the fox-hunting squires of England. But the present radical church-
* Until the year 1825, every English shilling, of twelve pence sterling, passed for thirteen
pence in Ireland. The gain was exactly ſorty cents, or one shilling and eight pence sterling,
upon each pound. An act was passed to assimilate the currency, and the British coinage,
then first introduced at no more than its real value, was familiarly spoken of as “Breeches
Money.”—M. - - - - * - - . . "
308 NOCTES AMBROSIA NAE. *
reformers would take care to leave the parson no dwelling at all,
which is a simplification of the system. In truth, as has been long
ago observed by a better authority than mine, there are so many
points of dissimilitude between the circumstances of the two countries,
that analogies drawn between their Church establishments stand on
very insecure ground.
Tickler. The true history of the article is this—Jeffrey had picked
up a dull paper on Scotch tithes from some hum-drum contributor
Odoherty. Whom he should immediately present a 5l. note, a good
character for sobriety, and his discharge.
Tickle?". And Jeffrey thought he could make the young idiot
go down by giving his effusion a catching name. That's all, Odo-
herty.
àourt, Even so, Timotheus—nor is the trick a new one. We
are often baulked the same way in the newspapers, where you are se-
duced into reading a paragraph by the attractive heading of “A Great
Personage not long ago remarked,” or “It is strange that when Mr.
Canning so pointedly told Mr. Brougham that his assertion was FALSE,”
or “SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH and MR. GERALD,” &c., and find, after all,
that its scope and tendency is to recommend Prince's Russian Oil, or
Tom Bish's tickets and shares.
Tickler. What think you of the article on the two poems about the
angels? -
Odoherty. This I beg leave to skip altogether. Jeffrey has certain
reasons to be civil to both Moore and Byron; and here we have a
little small criticism, puffing their last poems. It is the production
of a fourth-rater. I have read critiques as deep in Ackerman's Re-
pository.*
Tickler. You won't say that of Brougham's article on Grattan :
Odoherty. No, no—the article is full of talent—of such talent as
Mr. Brougham possesses—and, to say truth, I loved old Grattan, and
I like very well to see him puffed, even by such a man as Brougham;
for Brougham, though a Whig, is not a goose.
Tickler. How shabby is the notice of Croly!
Odoherty. Right shabby certainly, and right shallow at the same
time, as I shall show you. Brougham, if you observe, sets out with
abusing my good friend young Grattan for publishing panegyrics on
his father, written by men of various abilities, but particularly for giv-
ing to the world that by “a certain Rev. Mr. Croly, whoever he be.”
This little impertinence is in the same taste as the “Ricardus quidam
Bentleius” of Alsop, a forgotten prig; but in his day, just as conceited
as the pertest reviewer in the pack. It is with no pride I say it, but
it is undeniable that such will be the fate of the reviewing tribe in
* A magazine exclusively devoted to fashions f ad mantua-makers’ literature.--M.
EIENIRY GRATT.A.N. 309
general; and in particular, when it will be altogether forgotten that
such an article as this review of Grattan's speeches had ever existence,
the genius and talents of this “certain Rev. Mr. Croly, whoever he
be,” will have secured him an honorable place among the great names
of English literature.” But, look ye, the mock ignorance of the re-
viewer is rendered quite comical by the naiveté of the avowal in the
next page. He was induced, he says, to cut up Mr. Croly, not because
he is an obscure and unknown scribbler, but because “there has been
shown such a disposition to PUFF him in certain quarters.” As it so
happens that these “certain quarters” have ten times more circulation,
and twenty times more weight among the literary world than the ve.
hicle which contains the opinions of this sage critic, there is something
irresistibly droll in his pretending not to know who the object of their
i. or puff—no matter about a word—can possibly be. As to
his abuse of Croly's splendid character of Grattan, as it merely con-
sists in tearing a brilliant sentence or two from their context, and,
after garbling them, then venting some little absurdities at their ex-
pense——there is no more to be said on the occasion.
Hogg. Croly need never fash his thumb about what the like o' them
says. Will ony of them ever write a “Paris in 1815,” or a “Cati,
line 3’’ -
Odoherty. Some of them might be more likely to act a Paris in
1792, or to act a Catiline. But to proceed—“Even-handed justice
returns the poisoned chalice to our own lips.” According to Brough-
am, one of the chief excellencies of Grattan is, his tremendous power
of invective. He is not less enraptured with the unsparing use he
made of this foul-mouthed faculty. Now I shall confess, that I, for
one, rank fish-wife oratory somewhat low, but yet I do not object to
other people's criticising according to their propensities. He quotes
with delight Mr. Grattan's celebrated reply to Mr. Corry in 1800, and
in truth, it must be allowed to be most classical and well-turned Bil-
lingsgate. Corry, on the authority of a sworn evidence, before the
Irish House of Lords, had stigmatized Grattan as being in some de-
gree connected with the bloody rebellion of 1798, to which Grattan
replied in a torrent of abuse, in which this sentence occurs:
“HE IIAS CHARGED ME WITH BEING CONNECTED WITH THE REBELs—
THE CHARGE IS UTTERLY, TOTALLY, AND MEANLY FALSE.” -
For saying this Mr. Grattan is praised by Mr. Brougham—I sup-
pose so—but at least by one of Mr. Brougham's coadjutors in preach-
ing Whiggery through this Review. Well, the book was scarcely in
* The Tories allowed Croly to continue a Curate, though his pen was ever enmployed to assert
and defend their principles and conduct. It was Brougham, when Lord Chancellor, with
Church-patronage in his hands, who—looking on Croly as a man of genius, and laying aside
party considerations—gave him the IRectory of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, London.—M.
t Croly's tragedy of Catiline, chiefly based on one of Sallust's brilliant fragments of Roman
history, is one of the noblest specimens of the unacted drama ever produced in England.—M.
810: NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
London, before Mr. Brougham made an attack on Mr. Canning, for
truckling, as he elegantly termed it, to the Lord Chancellor, from so
mean a motive as desire of place; to which Mr. Canning, in reply, did
not foam or rant like Grattan, but simply and quietly uttered the fol-
lowing brief sentence: -
“I say THAT THAT IS FALSE /*
For my part, looking at the mere taste of the thing, I cannot help
saying, that I think Canning's reply far superior. It goes straight
forward to the point at once, and as a contradiction was all that either
had to give, so every word that did not convey one was waste.
Tickler. I can't help thinking that both retorts were highly unpar-
liamentary—shockingly so—quite wrong. But perhaps the reporters
are alone to blame.
Odoherty. It may be so—it may be that this last affair is newspaper
fudge. But grant Grattan and Canning to have, both of them, really
made these retorts—and grant both of them to have been highly un-
parliamentary retorts, still there is this marked and characteristic
difference between the cases. No tumult was made about the circum-
stance in the Irish Parliament; the speech is reported in a regular
edition of the orator's works; the Whig reviewer extols the eloquence
of the retort coolly three-and-twenty years after it was given. There
is, in short, no Tory angry, and no Whig undelighted. In the other
case, there is a row, the Whigs are indignant, their newspapers up-
roarious, and nothing can be more horrible in their eyes than Mr.
Canning's indecorum, quite forgetting the panegyric pronounced on
Grattan, for doing precisely the same thing, by their principal organ.
Tickler. You may just reverse your second last sentence—there is
no Whig void of wrath, and no Tory—we mean of that base set
among us, who are our greatest disgrace, the Pluckless—not in
mourning.
Hogg. Hoch hoch I hoch heegh heegh hoch I hoch hoch
Odoherty. One word more—I, of course, know nothing of the facts
of the case, nor pretend to pronounce an opinion which party was
right. I am merely criticising the oratorical power displayed by
Grattan and Canning. I know not whether Corry or Brougham was
justifiable in the charge originally made. ſº
Tickler, Perhaps the whole is an invention of the Gentlemen of the
IPress.
* In 1822, Canning—who was on the eve of going into splendid exile, as Viceroy of India–
was appointed Foreign Secretary, on the suicide of Lord Londonderry. The Whig party were
annoyed at his joining Lord Liverpool's ultra-Tory administration, and, in the course of the fol-
lowing Session, (in 1828,) Brougham stigmatized him as having exhibited the most incredible
specimen of monstrous trickery, for the purpose of obtaining office, that the whole history of
political tergiversation, could aſſord. Canning turned white as a sheet, (as a looker-on in-
formed me,) and, pointing his finger at Brougham, exclaimed, “I rise to say that that is false !”
º it appeared that the retort and rejoinder had been made only in a Pickwickian
86 Il SC.--Mºl.
JoANNA BAILLIE. 311
Odoherty. Hogg, have you had any thing to do with this?
Hoſg. I'll tell you what it is, Hogg keus naething about the Edin-
buigh Review, nor Mr. Brougham neither—I have not seen a paper
this month—and as for the Review, that Number's the first I’ve séen
of the blue and yellow these twa years, I believe, -
Odoherty. No great loss. But choose your subject, Chairman ;
what have you seen of late %
Hogg. There's for ae thing The Sextuple Alliance. Deevil o' siccan
poem ever I saw ; but the dedication is capital.
Odoherty. What is it?
JHogg. See there, man.
- TO
A MAN OF LETTERS,
A MERCHANT, POLITIOIAN, AND ECONOMIST ;
A GENTLEMAN
WEIO MIGHT BE NAMED TO For EIGNERs, As A MODEL of AN ENLIGLITENED
AND LIBERAL
BRITISH TRADER ;
A JUST AND ZEALOUS MAGISTRATE,
AN ESTIMABLE PRIVATE CITIZEN,
AN ABLE WRITER, -
AND ORIGINAL THINKER ;
TO THE ROSCOE AND RTCARDO OF GLASGOW,
JAMES EWING, Esq.,
THESE VERSES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
IBY
THEIR AUTHORS.
Odoherty. Very elegant, and most appropriate. Have you any
thing else new : * --
Hogg. Let me think—ay, there's for ae thing, Miss Joanna Baillie's
Collection of Poems. &
Tickler. Ha! I had not heard of her being in the press. Tragic, I
hope.
- %.empferhausen. You will find the book on the side-table, I believe,
Tickler. Yes—that's it—that octavo in greenish—you will see that
'tis only edited by Miss Baillie, although there are several pieces of
hers included. -
JHogg. And some very bonny pieces amang them—rax me the vol-
ume, Mr. Tickler.
Tickler. With your leave, Mr. Iſogg—just let me look over the
index—ha! “Macduff's Cross, a drama, by Sir Walter Scott.” What's
this, Hogg : .
Flogg. O0, just a bit hasty sketch—but some grand bits in't, man.*
* Early in 1823, Joanna Baillie published a collection of Poetical Miscellanies, in which ap-
peared a dramatic sketch by Sir W. Scott, entitled “Macduff's Cross”—s.) called from an erec-
tion (of which the bottom-stone or socket alone remains now) on which was recorded the
bounty of King Malcolm Councre to the unborn Thane of Fife.—M. -
312 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Od! ony body else could have keepit the story for a three volume job
at the least. Rax me the book—thank ye, Tickler—now, listen to this,
——the twa priests are watching at the sanctuary of the Macduff's
Cross, when twa horsemen are seen advancing—listen. .
“See how they strain adown the opposing hill!
Yon gray steed bounding on the headlong path
As on the level meadow—and the black,
Urged by the rider with his naked sword,
Stoops on his prey, as I have seen the falcon
Dashing upon the heron.—Thou dost frown,
And clench thy hand as if it grasped a weapon.
% % # # #
'Tis but for shame to see one man fly thus,
While only one pursues him Coward I turn.”
Odoherty. Well spouted, Shepherd—and admirable lines indeed—
but I’ll read it for myself; what more is there ? +
Hogg. Whoay, there's almost every name that's a name ava here,
an be not mine ain and Byron's. There's Wordsworth—twa sair teugh
sonnets o' his—and Soothey, Lord keep us a'! they're the maist daft-
like havers I ever met wi', the lines of his about a Linn.
Odoherty. Pass the Laureate—does Coleridge figure ?
Hogg. No-no wi' his name at ony rate, (I had clean forgotten
Coleridge.)—But there's Crabbe and Milman, and Mrs. Grant, and
General Dirom, and Miss Holford, and John Richardson.
Tickle). Ah “Otho º'
Hogg. And ane Sir George Beaumont, that Wordsworth dedicates
ane of his poems to—the White Doe if I mind right—and Rogers, and
IIook. -
Odoherty. What!—Theodore ? Let's hear his chant.*
Hogg. This Hook's a minister—the Reverend
Odoherty. Ah! then pass him over, for I’m sure Theodore is not in
orders.
JHogg. And Bowles, and Lady Dacre, and Miss Anna Maria Porter,
and Mrs. Barbauld, and Mr. Merivale.f
Tickler. Let's hear Merivale's contribution.
Hogg. It's ane o' the very best in the book—'tis really a most elegant
poem, but rather ower lang may be for receetin just now. Take this
* It was Theodore Hook's cousin, and the author of the lively romances or novels (for they
are of a mixed character) called “Pe:, Owen,” and “Percy Mallory.”—M.
+ To this volume, Miss Catharine Fanshawe (described by Lockhart as “a woman of rare
wit and genius, in whose society Scott greatly delighted”) contributed some jeua d’esp?'it, and
William Howison's ballad of Polydore, which introduced him to Scott, when a mere lad, was
also among the contents. The John Richardson, in the above list of writers, was Scott's most
intimate friend and a London lawyer, “with a pretty taste for poetry.” Miss Holſord also
wrote verses. General Dirom had a call in the salue line. Lady Dacre (whose play of “Ina,”
performed when she was Mrs. Wilmot, was a failure) afterwards won reputation not only as a
translator of Petrarch and a novelist, but as an amateur sculptor. She died in May, 1854,
The others are too well known to need more particular attention.—M. -
"THE DEVONSHIRE JANE. 313.
for a specimen, now. You are to know that the poem's all about the
scenery on a water called the Axe, somewhere in England. Are not
these equal to Smollett's Leven Water itself?
“Hail, modest streamlet, on whose bank
No willows grow, nor osiers dank;
Whose waters form no stagnant pool,
But ever sparkling, pure and cool,
Their shaky channel keep between
Soft swelling hills of tender green,
That freshens still as they descend,
In gradual slope of graceful bend,
And in the living emerald end.
On whose soft turf, supinely laid,
Beneath the spreading beechen shade,
I trace, in Fancy's Waking dream,
The current of thine infant stream.”
And wi' that he's awa wi't at ance—celebrating a' the auld monaste-
ries and castles. Od! it maun be a bonny classical water. I could
just have thought I was reading about Yarrow, and Newark, and Bow-
hill, and a' the lave o’t.
Odoherty. They seem to be graceful verses—I, however, should
rather have likened them to the flow of Dyer, or Milton's Penseroso,
than to Smollett's charming ode. - - -
Eſogg. Na, I’m nae critic. I only feel that Merivale has the soul
of a poet, and that his verse is delicious music to my ear.” I meant
nae close comparisons.
Odoherty. You read so nobly when the passage suits your taste,
that you would make any thing appear beautiful. -
Hogg. Name o' your quizzes, Captain,_but I'll tell ye what, I’m no
gaun to read omy mair o't; but if ye like, I'se try to sing you a famous
good song that's in this book—a real good song of Mr. Marriott's——
and though it's about a Devonshire lane, it would just do as weel for
an Ettrick Forest “Green Loaning.”
Omnes. Do–do—sing away.
JHogg (sings to the tune of Derry down).
TIIF DEVONSEIIRE LAN.E.
In a Devonshire lane, as I trotted along,
T'other day, much in want of a subject for song;
Thinks I to myself, I have hit on a strain,_
Sure marriage is much like a Devonshire lane.
In the first place, ’tis long, and when once you are in it,
It holds you as fast as the cage holds a linnct,
* Merivale subsequently translated Schiller and Dante, with marked success.-M,
NOCTES AMBROSLANAE,
/
For howe'er rough and dirty the road may be found,
Drive forward you must, since there's no turning round.
But though 'tis so long, it is not very wide,
For two are thé most that together can ride;
And even there is a chance but they get in a pother,
And jostle and cross, and run foul of each other.
Oft Poverty greets them with mendicant looks,
And Care pushes by them o'erladen with crooks,
And Strife's grating wheels try between them to pass,
Or Stubbornness blocks up the way on her ass.
Then the banks are so high, both to left hand and right,
That they shut up the beauties around from the sight;
And hence you'll allow, 'tis an inference plain,
That, Marriage is just like a Devonshire lane.
But thinks I too, these banks within which we are pent,
With bud, blossom, and berry, are richly besprent;
And the conjugal fence which forbids us to roam,
Looks lovely, when deck'd with the comforts of home.
In the rock's gloomy crevice the bright holly grows,
The ivy waves fresh o'er the withering rose,
And the ever-green love of a virtuous wife
Smooths the roughness of care—cheers the winter of life.
Then long be the journey, and narrow the way;
I'll rejoice that I've seldom a turnpike to pay;
And whate'er others think, be the last to complain,
Though Marriage is just like a Devonshire lane.
Odoherty. Upon my word, Devonshire is up just now.—Is there
much humor in the collection ?
Eſogg. Some capital jeesting bits—particularly some riddles and
the like.
What think you of this on a PILLION ?
A RIDI}LE,
Inscribed on many a learned page,
In mystic characters and sage,
Long time my first has stood:
And though its golden age be past,
In wooden wall it yet may last
Till clothed with flesh and blood.
My second is a glorious prize
For all who love their wandering eyes
With curious sights to pamper;
But 'tis a sight, which should they meet
All improviso in the street,
Ye gods ! how they would scamper.
“THE LIBERAL.” 315
My tout's a sort of wandering throne,
To woman limited alone,
The Salique law reversing;
But while th’ imaginary queen
Prepares to act this novel scene,
. Her royal part rehearsing,
O'erturning her presumptuous plan,
Up climbs the old usurper—man,
And she jogs after as she can.
Odoherty. “PILLION P’ Well, that's truly excellent.—Well, we're
all much obliged to Mrs. Baillie. Toss back old Kit's octavo, dear. I
shall buy one of them for myself, to-morrow. -
JHogg. There, it's just lighted on the bunker
Odoherty. Not among the Liberals, I hope.—Ah! 'tis safe. Have
you seen the last Pisan,” Hogg
Hogg. Peezan –Pushion, say rather—it's a' dirt now. Lord Byron,
I aye said, wadna put up wi' sic company lang—and ye laughed at
me; but you see I’m right after a’.
Odoherty. Me laugh at you? I only wonder what the deuce it can
have been, that made him countenance them even for the little time
he did. His articles were libellous sometimes, (these fellows, by the
way, can no more libel than a tailor can ride,) but they had no con-
nection with, or resemblance to the sort of trash the Cockneys stuffed
them in the heart of The last number contains not one line of By-
röm's.--Thank God! he has seen his error, and kicked them out.
Hogg. I canna gie him up. I canna thole’t. I aye think he'll turn
lower a new leaf, and be himself ere lang. -
Odoherty. Quod felix faustumque !--But as to these drivellers, they
are all in their old mire again.-Just Rimini Hunt, and three or four
Inh Ol'O
Hogg. “Lewd fellows of the baser sort,”—to use scriptural language,
touching a most unscriptural crew. - -
Tickler. And whether you take “lewd” in the old or the new sense,
you could not have hit on a fitter epithet for the authors of some of
these disgusting farragos. The fellow that reviews Apuleius would
look at home upon the treadmill. Filthy, dirty creature | Latin, for-
sooth !—and what think ye of King Leigh comparing Pope's face to
a FAWN's 3
Hogg. Which rhymes of course to THORNs or SCORNs.
Tickler. Of course.—Have you seen the LIBER AMORIs?
Odoherty. Not I.--—what is it'—a Cockneyism ?
* “The Liberal,” a quarterly magazine and review, published at Pisa, and edited by Lord
Byron and Leigh Hunt, with assistance from Hazlitt. In the earlier numbers, several of
Shelley's poems had appeared. Iſis death, in July, 1822, sealed the fate of this periodical,
which had very few redeeming features.—M. . . .
316 NoctEs AMBROSLANE.
Tickler. Ay, and a most profligate Cockneyism too.” But wait a
little, wait a little. I can a tale unfold. You shall hear the whole
story in due time, “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ;”
and well know I at least on E CockNEY that would shake in his shoes
if he heard what I am saying. -
Hogg. Ye gar me shake mysel' when ye speak with that groaning
key, and lay out your leg that way. O, Mr. Tickler, ye're an awful
auld carle when your birr's up. Sic an ee too ! ye put me in mind,
no offence, sir, of Galt's Archbishop.f
Tickler. Hah! hah the Archbishop of St. Andrews : Old Ham-
ilton ? -
Hogg. Ay, just him. I have Ringan in my maud here. I coft
him for our bit Yarrow Subscription Leebrary.
Odoherty. Read the description of Timotheus.
Hogg (reading from Ringan Gilhaize). “He used to depict him
as a hale black-a-vised carl, of an o'ersea look, with a long dark beard
inclining to gray : his abundant hair flowing down from his cowl,
was also clouded and streaked with the kithings of the cranreuch of
age—there was, however,” (here's for you, Timothy )—“there was,
however, a youthy and luscious twinkling in his eyes, that showed
how little the passage of three and sixty winters had cooled the ram-
pant”
Tickler. Stop, you old Boar.
Hogg. A devilish weel-sketched portrait in its style—very pictur-
esque, 'faith—and I dare say, very like.
Tickler. Why, I profess to be tolerably read in the history of that
period, and much as I detest the Covenanters, I must allow that Galt
has authority for every fact he introduces.
Hogg. There wad nane o' you believe me, when I said I had au-
thority for the misusage of that priest o' mine, in the Brownie.S
Tickler. It did not signify, whether you had or not—but here the
case is altered, quoth Plowden. This book is really something of a
history.
Odoherty. Faith, I read it as a novel, and, though not quite so laugh-
able as the Entail, I thought it a devilish good novel. -
Tickler. And so it is—but mark my words, the Book will live when
most Novels we see just now are forgotten, as a history.|| 'Tis really
a very skilful, natural, easy, and amusing History of the Establish-
* “Liber Amoris, or the New Pygmalion,” a strange production of William Hazlitt's, written
with great earnestness—as if, in truth, the man must pour out his confessions or have his
heart burst—but open to ridicule and hostile criticism, for many causes.—M.
t Qne of the characters in “Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters,” by John Galt, which was
published in May, 1823.—M.
£ Maud.—A Scottish peasant's plaid.—M.
§ “The Brownie of Bodsbeck,” one of Hogg's first prose stories.—M. .
! On the contrary, like the rest of Galt's historical novels; “ Ringan Gilhaize” was never of
much mark or note, and was soon forgotten, --M. . -
LADY CAROLINE LAMCB. 317
ment of the Reformed and Presbyterian Religion in this kingdom—
very great art in the management, I assure you.
Jſogg. Oh, it's a braw book—it's a real book—I aye liked Galt, and
I like him better than ever now. He has completely entered into the
spirit of the Covenanters—far better than The Unknown—clean aboon
him, head and show thers. The real truth of the character—
Odoherty. Who the devil cares about the Covenanters? Confound
the old bigoted idiot, say I Have you seen Murray” in Claverhouse
Tickler. I have, and he plays it and looks it nobly. The drama is
one of the best from those novels. Mackay's Cuddie Headrigg, Mrs.
Nichol's Mause, and Mason's old Milnwood, are particularly excellent.
Hogy. What for have they no had the sense to keep the one table
with the saltfoot, as in the novel? They’ve clean missed a fine point
by that silly alteration.
Tickler. They have. Tell them of it, and they'll mend it.
JIogg. I had a letter from an Ettrick lad that's settled in America,
the other day, and he says they've made a play there out of my THREE
PERILs already, and it takes prodigiously. They've mair sense owerby
there than here at hame, in some particulars. They turn a' my novels
into plays. Od! I cannot but say it makes me prood to think that
I’m acting just now, at this very moment, in New York, maybe, and
l}oston, and half a dozen mair of their towns intill the bargain ; and
then, how they translate me in Germany; but Kempferbausen can tell
you better aboot those things. -
Rempferhausen. Pooh they translate every thing in Germany;
you need not take that as any very great compliment. And in France
too, faith I believe they translate any thing in Paris that's written in
England.
Hogg. I wad like to see mysell moushified. If ye have the French
Brownie of Bodsbeck, let me hae a lend o't —od I would not won-
der if it garred me tak to learning their lingo.
Odoherty. And then, perhaps, we shall have you writing a book in
French yourself, like a second Sir William Jones, or Mr. Beckford.
By the way, was there ever such a failure as this new imitation of
|Beckford's Wathek, ADA REIS 3
Tickler. I could not get through with it for one; wild and dull
tºgether won't do. Lady Carolinef is a very clever person certainly,
but she should really take a little time and thought. Graham Hamil-
* W. H. Murray, manager of the Edinburgh Theatre, of which his sister, Mrs. Henry Sid-
dons, was lessee. He was an excellent actor.—Charles Mackay, whose Baillie Nicol Jarvie, in
“Rob Roy,” was never equalled, was one of the main supports of this theatre.—M.
t Lady Caroline Lamb (whose husband became Lord Melbourne, after her death in 1828, at
the age of forty-two) possessed some literary talents, and made herself not a little notorious by
the zeal with which, as a canvasser among the electors, she assisted her brother-in-law (the
lſon. George Lamb) when he was a candidate for the representation of Westminster. Her
wild passion for lord Byron was fatal to her domestic felicity, ruined her character, and
alienated her friends. She wrote three novels, “Glenarvon,” (of which she is supposed to
have made Byron the hero,) “Graham Hamilton,” and “Ada Reis.”—M.
318 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
ton was bad, and this is worse. I wonder Murray took the trouble to
publish it. * * * .
Odoherty. Nevertheless, Tickler, there are some fine passages, some
noble things, after all. But to imitate VATHEK and to fail were very
nearly the same thing. Wathek, sir, is one of the most original works
that our age has seen.” It will live when Fonthill is in ruins—are
perennius.
Hogg. I wish you would tell me your notion of some more of the
new books, sits; for I’ve gotten some of the Ettrick lads' siller yet,
and I’m resolved to carry them out every thing that I can coff.
Blackwood says, “The Monks of Leadenhall” is a good novel.
Tickler. It is very fair; the author has spirit and imagination, and
knowledge too, he will be a rising man yet, you will see—if he
takes a little more time and consideration. By all means, export The
Monks of Leadenhall to St Mary's. 'Tis a very promising work.
Hogg. Thank ye, -I'll e'en buy’t then, and “The Pioneers,” that's
a book of Murray's—I suppose it will be worth its price, since it comes
out of his shop, for John's no that keen o' novels now-a-days.
Tickler. Why, the author has very considerable talents—but “The
Spy” was far better. This is rather a heavy book;-but, however, it
will go down on Yarrow and elsewhere;—any thing is valuable in so
far that paints new manners—and, American manners are a rich mine
—and this writer bids fair to dig to purpose in it.f -
A empferhausen. Washington Irving is, I hear, busy with German
manners now. He has taken up his residence there, and is deter-
mined to give us a German Sketchbook in the first placeſ—(what a
present this will be ')—and then a series of works, all founded on
German stories, and illustrative of the characters and customs of Ger-
man life. -
Odoherty. Come, this is good news, Kempferhausen—I am truly
happy to hear Geoffrey Crayon has got hold of so fine a field. In the
meantime, do you stick to your tackle, and devil-a-fear but there's
enough for you both.
Hogg. I've bought D'Israeli's book, and Butler's Reminiscences.S
Tickler. Right in both. Butler is a delightful writer—so calm, so
* William Beckford's singular tale of “Wathek,” was originally written by him in French.
It is so splendid in description, so true in eastern costume, and so wild and vivid in imagina-
tion, that Lord Byron considered it difficult to believe that it was written by an European, and
said, “Even Rasselas must bow before it; the Happy Valley will not bear a comparison with
the Hall of Eblis.”—Fonthill Abbey, which was sold in 1822, has long been shorn of its archi-
tectural beauties, and the last I heard of it was that it had been converted into a factory !—M.
t Fenimore Cooper's sea and Indian novels obtained very large prices in England, where
(to secure the copyright) most of them were first published.—M. -
f Washington Irving (says “The Men of the Zºne”) passed the winter of 1S22 in Dresden, re-
turned to Paris in 1823, and moved to London in May, 1824, to publish his Tales of a Traveller,
which appeared in August of that year.—M.
§ Isaac D'Israeli, best known by his “Curiosities of Literature,” was father of the brilliant
English statesman and writer, and died in 1848, at the age of eighty-one.—Charles Butler, a
well known l{ounan Catholic lawyer, published his agreeable and instructive “Reminiscences”
in 1823. He also was eighty-one when he died, in 1832.—M. -
SCOTTISIT PAINTERS. 31:9
sensible, so judicious, so thoroughly the scholar and gentleman. I
love Butler, and wish his Reminiscences had been five times as large.
I read the book through at a sitting—and delightful reading it was.
Odoherty. There's another new book has just come out, something
between D'Israeli's manner and Butler's; but I don't know whether it
will be in Hogg's way—the “Heraldic Anomalies.”
Tickler. O, a very clever book—I mean to give North a review of
it one of these days, and then Hogg will judge for himself. It is real-
ly quite full of information and amusement too.”
Odoherty. Who wrote it? x
Tickler. God knows some old pawky Barrister—some venerable
quizzer among the benchers, I should guess. There's a vast bunch of
good legal jokes; and a sort of learning that nobody but a lawyer
could have acquired. He is a good-natured, polite and genuinely
aristocratic writer—I wish we had more such. Mayn't it be Butler
himself? - $
Kempferhausen. I should have thought it possible, but he quotes
and praises Butler's books, and of course Butler is above all that sort
of trick. Somebody mentioned Dr. Nares:
Tickler. Ah a good guess too. Why, the man that can write
both that Glossary of the Old English Tongue, and that admirable
novel of “Thinks I to Myself.” may do any thing he pleases. The
Archdeacon is a first-rate man, or at least might be so if he chose to
give himself the trouble,
Odoherty. Well, I hope we shall have more both of him and of
Butler. I shall be happy to see the review, Timothy; but you know
you promised to do Allan's picture, and yet where is it ! The article,
I mean. -
Tickler. Upon my soul, I had quite forgot. I hope the picture is
sold ere now.
Odoherty. I see it is considerably lauded in the Literary Gazette
and elsewhere. Raeburn and he always keep up our art at the exhi-
bition.
Tickler. And Wilkie—but I shall say nothing of him, for I observe .
Hazlitt abuses us for being so proud of him.
Odoherty. I think he might take to abuse of you for being so proud
of Allan too—really Allan rises every day.f
Tickler, Yes, sir—that figure of John Knox is the finest effect his
* By Miss Hawkins, I believe. She was daughter of Sir John Hawkins, the friend and execu-
tor of Dr. Samuel Johnson, of whom he wrote a biography, severely handled by the critics–
bnt with peculiar acerbity by “Peter Pindar.”—M.
t Dr. Robert Nares, whose novel “Thinks I to Myself” was very popular, about half a cen-
tury ago, was co-editor for many years (with Mr. Beloe) of the British Critic, a high-church
literary review. He wrote several recondite philological works, and when he died in 1829,
held four or five rich preferments in the Church.—M. -
: It is scarcely necessary to go into details respecting painters so well known as Raeburn,
Wilkie, and Allan.—The first, who was the best portrait-painter of his time in Scotland, died
320 NoCTES AMBROSTANAE.
pencil has made. Heavens ! to think of these rich people buying
Tenierses and Gerard Dows at such prices, when they could get some-
thing so infinitely better—with all their merit, and something fifty
times beyond them into the bargain—for, comparatively speaking, a
mere trifle. -
Odoherty. Come, I don't know what you mean by trifles—and as
for Allan, he can't complain, for devil a piece of his own handiwork has
he upon his hands. /
Tickler. That's right—so much genius united with so much indus-
try always must command success. I am glad to hear he gets on so
well, however. -
Odoherty. You'll see him in his chariot ere he is three years older.
FIogg. Set him up wi' chariots Deil mean him | I think if yon
auld clattering rickerty of a gig does for a poet like me, a shelty may
serve ony brushman amang them. Chariots! -
Odoherty. Pooh I mean to sport a coach and six myself one of
these days. What do you think I have been offered for my new
Work ;
Tickler. “THE WEST Country, A NovKLž” -
Odoherty. The same.* Guess, Timothy.
JHogg. Five hundred ?
Tickler. A cool thousand 7
Odoherty. Fifteen hundred guineas, by the holy poker | What
think ye of that, Jamie Hogg
Bogg. Fifteen hundred guineas hoh, sirs | What will this warld
come to . Thae booksellers are turned princes. It will be an awful
book for selling though, Captain. It is all about Glasgow.
Odoherty. Glasgow, Paisley, and Greenock—these clasical haunts
are all included under this most rural title. It is to be my chef
d'oeuvre. I intend to take Galt and annihilate him—I mean his
“West Country,” the old “West Country,” the “Entail.”
Hogg. Do that, and you’ll do something.
Tickler. Depict a living idiot equal to Wattie, and eris mihi Mag-
mus Apollo / -
Odoherty. No want of idiots; but, as Hogg says, “wait a wee.”
Have any of you seen the concluding cantos of Don Juan -
Tickler. Oh we have all seen them. North has had a copy of
them these six weeks. I wonder if they're ever to get a publisher:
in 1823,-in subjects of domestic life, none surpassed the second, whose death took place in
Gibraltar Bay, in 1841,–the last, who had mastered the difficulties and reproduced the spirit
of Eastern life, died in 1850. All three were successively presidents of the Royal Scottish
Academy, and had been knighted.—M.
* Which never was written.
+ The half-witted hero of “The Entail.”—M.
# Cantos I. and II. of Don Juan were published in July, 1819, without the name of author or
publisher. Cantos III., IV. and W. appeared together, in August, 1821, still without the name
of either author or bookseller. Cantos VI., VII., and VIII., written at Pisa, in July, 1822, were
published in London in July, 1823.−M.
t IJON JTUAN. 321
Hogg. They're extraordinary clever—they're better even than the
twa first; but that mischievous Constitutional Association will not let
ony body daur to print them.” And, after all, it's maybe as weel,
Sae, for they're gey wicked, I must alloo; and yet, it's amaist a pity,
Odoherty. I have a great mind to turn bookseller myself, just on
purpose to put an end to all this nonsense. A pretty story, truly
that two cantos of Byron's best poetry should be going a begging for
a midwife Horrible barbarism
Tickler. Just retribution ! How are the mighty fallen
“CREDF, BYRON | |”
Odoherty. Crede humbug (Left speaking.)
* A Society which was organized in London, to prevent and punish the publication of im-
moral and seditious works. It raised large funds by subscription, but did little more than
spend them, chiefly in heavy salaries and good dinners.-M.
t “ Creºle Byron,”—the heraldic motto of the house of Byron.—M.
Wol. I.-23
No. IX.-JUNE, 1823.
Odoherty. Make your mind easy, my old poet, about it. They
stand no more in need of your assistance, than a seventy-four wants to
be towed through the Bay of Biscay by a six-oared yawl.
North. There would be no harm, however, in saying, that Quen-
tin Durward is a splendid book?
Odoherty. And as little good. Why need you hold your farthing
candle to the sun ? Hang it, man, never deal in axioms. I was truly
sorry to see you in your last Number so anxious to show up the Wi-
comte Soligny as an ass, when every body saw his measureless ears,
pricked up in proud defiance, affronting the daylight.*
Buller. We punsters of Rhedycina are indignant with the Great
Magician for missing a capital pun, and making a poor one. You re-
member what Louis says to Tristan L'Hermite when he is confined,
and wishes to have the astrologer hanged—that pun about finis.
Tickler. Yes; here's the passage. “Tristan, thou hast done many
an act of brave justice—finis—I should have said fuºus coronat opus.”
Buller. Read it, meo periculo, funis coronat opus. “We must
crown the business by a rope.” Isn't it more professional %
North. Decidedly, a much better pun. Is it yours ?
Mullion. Has Durward been dramatized yet?
North. I don't know ; but I suppose it has. Terry would have but
little labor on his hands, for many of the scenes are dramatic enough
for the stage even as they are:
Mullion. The defiance of Crevecoeur, for instance. There need not
be a word added or diminished there.
Tickler. That certainly is a magnificent scene—a model for all de
fiances.
Odoherty. Could not we get up a thing of the kind here, in our
own way ?
North. How ! What the deuce have we to do with such things?
Odoherty. Why, then, I'll tell you, my ancient biscuit-biter. As
soon as Constable's new shop is finally settled—painters, glaziers, ma-
* A review, in the May number of Blackwood, of “Letters on England, by Victoire, Count
de Soligny,” published by Colburn, of London. and affiliated, by Maga, upon little Tims, the
Cockney, who was one of the guests in the ſent, in August, 1819, as heretofore related.—M.
t Quentin Durward, published in June, 1823, was the first of Scott's fictions which obtained
reputation on the Continent. Terry, who adapted several of the novels for the stage, did not
take this in hand, but it was dramatized, and Imade a splendid spectacle.—M.
THE DEFIANCE OF ODOHERTY. 323
sons, tilers, slaters, carpenters, joiners, upholsterers, paperers, and all
that fry, bowled out clean, there is to be a high dinner given to all the
men of blue and yellow. Jeffrey in persona in the chair.
North. Well, what then { - g
Mullion. I suppose that when the Reviewers are mustered, Odoherty
wishes them to be peppered.
North. Knit him up to the stanchions for that pun. It is beyond
question the worst I have heard since the days of Harry Erskine.
Perge, Signifer.
Odoherty. Would not it be a good thing for you to defy him then
and there, when surrounded by the host of the ungodly
Tickler. Who would be the ambassador?
Odoherty. My own mother's son; and you should be herald, being a
man of inches. I should not dress exactly a la Crevecoeur; but hand
me the first volume of Quentin, and I shall follow it as close as possible.
North. Here, most worthy legate.
Odoherty (reading Quentin Durward, vol. i. p. 205, with a slight
deviation from the words of the tewl). Would not this read grandly
in future ages, “Ensign and Adjutant Morgan Odoherty, a renowned
and undaunted warrior 7)
Mullion (aside). Over a tumbler of punch.
Odoherty. “Entered the apartment, dressed in a military frock-coat,
thickly frogged, black stock, Cossack trowsers, Wellington boots, and
steel spurs. Around his neck, and over his close-buttoned coat, hung
a broad black ribbon, at the end of which dangled a quizzing-glass.
A handsome page—”
JHogg. Wha the deil will he be &
Odoherty. Don't interrupt me. “A handsome page, James Hogg,
Esq., Shepherd of Ettrick 2)
Płogg. Hear till him Me a page to a stickit Ensign º
Odoherty. “Bore his hat behind him. A herald preceded him,
bearing his card, which he held under the nose of Francis; while the
ambassador himself paused in the middle of the hall, as if to give
present time 27
Tickler. What, by the way, did the Great Unknown mean by such
a phrase as “present time 3" -
Mullion. Perhaps, because the business was no past time.
Worth (springs up in a rage). By Jupiter Ammon, Mullion, another
such pun, and I will fine you a bumper of magnesia water -
Odoherty. “As if to give present time to admire his lofty look,
commanding stature, and the modest assurance which marked the
country of his birth.”
* When a licentiate of the Scottish church, whose devotion or ambition has led him into the
pulpit, happens to fail as a preacher, he is usually spoken of as “a stickit Dominie.” In like
manner, Ilo doubt, Hogg thus alluded to Odoherty as a mere carpet-knight.--M. *
324. - NoCTES AMBROSLANAC.
Omnes. Hear, hear, hear ! º -
Odoherty. Well, I'll skip on to the defiance at once. Turn to page
213. (A rustling of leaves is heard.) “Hearken, Francis Jeffrey,
King of Blue and Yellow—Hearken, scribes, and balaamites, who
may be present—Hearken, all shy and shabby men—and thou,
Timothy Tickler, make proclamation after me—I, Morgan Odoherty, ,
of the barony of Iffa and Offa west, and the parish of Knockman-
downy, late Ensign and Adjutant of the 99th, or his Majesty's Tippe-
rary regiment of infantry, and Fellow of the Royal, Phrenological,
Antiquarian, Auxiliary Bible, and Celtic Societies of Edinburgh; in
the name of the most puissant chief, Christopher, by the grace of
Brass, Editor of Blackwood's and the Methodist Magazines; Duke of
Humbug, of Quiz, Puffery, Cutup, and Slashandhackaway; Prince
Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners,
and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of
Cockaigne; Count Palatin of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy
JPoker; Baron of Balaam and Blarney, and Knight of the most sting-
ing Order of the Nettle, do give you, King of Blue and Yellow, openly
to know, that you having refused to remedy the various griefs,
wrongs, and offences, done and wrought by you, or by and through
your aid, suggestion, and instigation, against the said Chief, and his
loving subjects, the authors in particular, and the Tory people in gen-
eral, of this realm, he, by my mouth, renounces all belief in your
assery, pronounces you absurd and trashy, and bets you sixpence, that
he beats you as a critic and as a man. There, my tester is posted in
evidence of what I have said.”
Omnes (with enthusiasm). Hear him hear him hear him
Odoherty. Let me go on, for I think the remainder would be ap-
plicable. “So saying, he plucked the sixpence from the bottom of his
breeches pocket, and flung it down on the floor of the hall.
“Until this last climax of the bet, there had been a deep silence in
the Whig apartment during this extraordinary scene; but no sooner had
the jingle of the tester, when cast down, been echoed by the deep
voice of Timotheus, the Blackwoodian herald, with the ejaculation
‘Vive Tête de Buchanan º' than there was a general tumult; while
Brougham, Sydney Smith, Leslie, and one or two others, whose coats,
whole at the elbows, authorized the suspicion that they could sport
the coin, fumbled in their pockets for wherewithal to cover the six-
pence; the Seven Young Men exclaimed, “No bet with you, Butcher
Bubble, bubble ! Comes he here to insult the King of the Libellers
in his own hall ?”
“But the King appeased the tumult, by exélaiming, in a voice
agreeably composed of the music of an English coachee grafted upon
a genuine Embro' brogue, “Silence, my lieges | Cover not the bet, for
you would pse your blunt; Christopher is too rum a customer for me.”
LEDDY GRIPPY. W325
Hogg, Od, man, that's the verra way Advocate Jeffrey speaks.
Tickler. It would be a fine subject for a picture. I shall suggest it
to Allan, when I see him next.
Mullion. It could be called the “Defiance of Doherty.”
Odoherty. I trouble you for the vowel, my friend—Odoherty, if you
please—I have no notion of any body's being alliterative at my ex-
CIASG.
p Tickler. Yes, it would be a grand historical painting. The stuck-
pig stare of the great man himself—the scowling fury of Brougham
—the puckered-up nose of the Mercurial Parson—the jobbernowl
gape of “our fat friend”—the sentimental visage of the “Modern
Pygmalion”—the epileptical frenzy of the half-human countenance
of the , and the helpless innocence of the Seven Young Men,
would be truly awful and sublime, while the magnificence of the
Odoherty
Odoherty. The stateliness of the Tickler
Tickler. And the beauty of the Hogg, would afford a fine fore-
round. *
Buller. Allan should lose no time. If he does not do it at once, as
I am off for London to-morrow, I shall speak to that other great
master of the sublime, George Cruikshank.
JVorth. There is another defiance in the third volume, where De la
Marck sends Maugrabbin to the Duke of Burgundy.
Mullion. If you copy that defiance, send Hogg as ambassador, for
he has the best title to be Rouge Sanglier. &
Hogg. I wish, doctor, ye would let Hogg alane. What for are ye
aye harling me intill your havers, by the lug and the horn ?—I dinna
like it. - -
Odoherty. What I surly
Hogg. It's no decent to be aye meddling wi' folks' personalities.
I'm sure by this time the whole set o' you might ha' mair sense. Ye
ken what ye hae gotten by your personalities.
North. A decreet o' Court, Jamie, as Leddy Grippy? would have
Said.
Tickler. Softly on that score.
North. What do you mean?
Tickler. Have you not heard the news? Why, the old woman is
still alive. *
Hogg. Godsake is she till the fore yet -
Odoherty. Yes; all alive and kicking—and in town too. Galt was
taken in by the jeu d'esprit in the respectable elderly paper, an-
nouncing that she died much and justly regretted.
* Sir John Leslie, described by Scott as “a great philosopher, and as abominable an animal
as ovcı I saw.”—M.
# The heroine of G:llt's novel of “The Cintail.”—M.
326 NOCTES AMBROSLAN AF.
* |
Tickler. I see by the twinkle of North's eye that he was at the
bottom of the story { *
Mullion. What story .
Tickler. Of her death. The notice of her decease was a hoax, they
say, got up in the back shop.
Bogg. That maebody need misdout; mony a hoax and ither black
jobs hae been ciecket-there.
Odoherty. The Chaldee, Jamie.
Tickler. The leddy means to raise an action. She lays the damages
at five thousand pounds sterling.
JHogg. And I’ll lay the wad o' a crown, that she'll no fake a far-
thing; but, Captain, tell us a' about it—Man, this is capital. I'll
obligate Ebony to pay us for an extra number—an extra number clears
his scores for Christopher's pranks.
Buller. Do, Captain, let's have it. Sure we are all alike implicated
in whatever affects the general concern ?
Odoherty. The fact is, that Galt did not well know how to wind up
the Entail; and I advised him to kill the old hen off.
Buller. And you cleared the way by the premature notice of her
death, did you ? *
Odoherty. Just so—but had the facetious paragraph which I pre-
pared to contradict the melancholy intelligence been inserted in Bal-
lantyne's Classical Jöurnal, it would have dried all eyes in the happiest
style imaginable.
Mullion. And why did it not appear !
Odoherty. I took it myself to the office, but with all the taste and
discrimination which distinguishes the management of that weekly
obituary of taste and fine writing, the communication, was declined,
unless the editor might be permitted to announce that it was “from a
correspondent.” I should, however, add, that the refusal was couched
in the politest manner possible. *
Buller. Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re.
Mullion. O yes—the newspaper editors have of late grown so
cursedly conscientious, that no ordinary consideration will induce them
to insert the most indirect puff possible, upon their own responsibility,
save to serve an unknown friend.” - *
(Enter a Devil with a proof-sheet, which is handed to Odoherty
—Hogg looks over the Ensign's shoulder.)
* A newspaper announced the suicide of a much respected gentleman. The same day, he
came to complain of the statement as wholly unfounded, and likely to injure him, “You must
insert a contradiction in to-morrow’s paper,” said he to the editor. “I will do what I consist-
ently can to satisfy you,” was the reply, “but as to admitting that I was misinformed, or
could be, it is out of the question.” The other exclaimed, “But I am here, in excellent health !”
After a pause, in which he seriously thought upon the point, the editor closed the matter by
saying, “I’ll tell you what I can do—I shall say that the rope broke, before life was quite ex-
tinct, and that immediate and skilful medical assistance restored the vital spark. Beyond
that, you cannot expect rue to go.” There is nothing, in a mewspaper, so systematic as pro-
claiming your own infallibility and questioning that of all others.--M. . º
ODOHERTY's NovKL. 327.
Hogg. Eh! Captain—are ye sae far forrit already wi' your novel?
Tickler. How ! Odoherty are you really then at press with “THE
WEST COUNTRY 2’”
Hogg (taking hold of the proof-sheet and looking at it). 'Deed
is he—and—na, as I’m a soul to be saved, he has a Galt's folks.
There's Doctor and Mrs. Pringle at the very head o' the chapter—the
seventeenth chapter. *
Omnes. Read, read, Hogg
Odoherty. There—take it. --
Hogg (reads). “The General Assembly,”—that's the name o' this
chapter.
Odoherty. No sneers at the institutions of the country. I revere
the General Assembly—I respect the King's Commissioner—I ad-
mire the table and triumphant arches thereof—I laud the proces-
sion—I love the Moderator's cocked-hat and breakfast. But, proceed,
Jamie.
JHogg (reads). “Doctor Pringle and the Mistress took up their first
abode at Leith, in the Exchange Hotel, one of the quietest houses for
persons and families of sedate and clerical habits, in the whole coun-
try—for having brought in their own carriage, the distance from Ed-
inburgh was of no consequence, though Mrs. Pringle daily grudged
the high shilling toll on Leith Walk, and thought the Baillies of Ed-
inbro' great extortioners for exacting so much.” Odd, Captain, ye
wagered that ye would write a book about the West in Galt's style—
noo, this is no ae bit like it.
Omnes. Proceed proceed •
: Hogg (reads). “Sir Andrew Wylie had promised to take tea with
them—and Andrew Pringle had also engaged himself, at his mother's
earnest entreaties, to be present, in order to help his worthy father
and her to entertain the little Baronet. The Count and Countess Mi-
lani, alias Mr. and Mrs. Goldenball, had returned from their matrimo-
nial excursion to the North, and the Doctor ” This, Captain, will
never do. - -
Odoherty. Turn over to the tea-making—there you will find, I flat-
ter myself, some Smack of the original.
Hogg (fºrms over a leaf or two and reads). “I ne'er,” said Doctor.
Pringle, “could hae thought it within a possibility, that after the sore
trials Mrs. Oswald had come through 2)
Tickler. Mrs. Oswald ! Who the deuce is she I remember no
such person in any of Galt's works. . . .
Odoherty. “Margaret Lyndsay !” The Doctor was speaking of her.”
Tickler. What has she to do in your work, Odoherty
Odoherty. Read on, Hogg.
* Wilson’s “Trials of Margaret Lyndsay.”—M.
328 Nootes AMBROSIANAE.
Hogg (reads). “I ne'er,” said Doctor Pringle, “could hae though
it within a possibility, that after the sore trials Mrs. Oswald had come
through, she would have been so soon persuaded by Mr. MacTaggart
to change her life.” - g
“She took him in her advanced years for a bein down-seat,” said
Sir Andrew Wylie. -
“Ay, ay,” replied Mrs. Pringle, “nane o' your overly peeous, sweet-
lippit madams for me—Mrs. MacTaggart—Mrs. Oswald that was—I'll
ne'er deny she didna meet wi' an affliction, but we hae a' had our ca-
lamities.”
“It’s a very just observe,” said the Doctor; “and though me and
Mrs. Pringle there have lived long together in a state o' very pleasant
felicity for mony a day and year, yet, if it be the Lord's will to take
me to himself first, I would think it no sin in her to marry again ;” .
and he added, looking tenderly to the Mistress, “but, deed, Jenny, my
dear, I wouldna like to see’t.” -
Omnes. Bravo, Captain
Odoherty. Yes—I think you must allow that pathetic touch to be
Galt to the backbone.
Hogg. Ye may brag as ye like, Captain; but it's nae mair like his
way, than the baukie bird's like the peacock. What say ye till't,
Christopher ? --
North. I have my suspicions. Confess at once, Captain. Throw
yourself on our mercy. Acknowledge that Galt assisted you with the
General Assembly chapter.
Buller. Veniat manus auxilio, quae sit mihi
Tickler. But joking apart. Is Galt really the author of these books?
Buller. I have heard
Omnes (in amazement). What have you heard?
Jºnter AMBROSE.
Ambrose. Mr. North, a lady would speak with you.
North. Me! 'Tis too early in the night. What like is she
Ambrose. “Rather oldish.”
Odoherty. What, Kit—does the taste of your loyalty go that length
—But show the gentlewoman in. (Exit AMBRose.)
Mullion. A lady inquiring for a gentleman at Ambrose's between
eleven and twelve -
Tickler. You never told us, North, of your marriage? But murder
will out, you see. Enter MRs. NoFTH !
Enter AMBROSE showing in LEDDY GRIPPY.
Omnes (all rising). Mrs. Walkinshaw
The Leddy. That's my name for want of a better.
FAMA CLAMOSA. 329
North. A glass for Mrs. Walkinshaw.
The Leddy. Whilk's Mr. North ?
JHogg. Yon's him—ye might hae kent him by the powdered wig
and the green specks, and the stult at the chair back.
The Leddy. Hae ye sare een, Mr. North, that ye canna thole the
light, or is't only because ye ken that ye darena look me in the face?
—but if ye’ll no face me, ye'll maybe hae to face far waur—for I'll be
as plain as I’m pleasant wi' you, Mr. North. This night I will hae
justice done, or the morn's morning I'll maybe gar you claw whare
it's no yeuky. Gentlemen—for nobody should be bird-mouthed in a
case of extremity—I’ll pannel you for a jury atween me and Mr.
North, there sitting, and ye sall be, in the words of law and gospel, a
covenant and jurisdiction in the great thing between us.
North. I know nothing about it—I know nothing about it—if you
have any business with me, call again, this is neither a fit time nor
lace.
The Leddy. Warna ye art and part guilty of a fama clamosa, in
the Hebrew tongue, and on the language of Scripture?
North. I don't understand you, madam. Whatever I am respon-
sible for, these gentlemen are equally responsible.
The Leddy. Then ye're a' conjoint and colleague for a cessio bono-
'rum, to help one another.
Ommes. All !
Odoherty. May I be so bold as to ask in what way does a gentle-
woman of your years of discretion desire our help ?
The Leddy. Touts | Nane o' your animal eagerness, as Mr. Peveril
the author ca's 't. I camma here for pastime—but on a salacious case
and question ; in short, I'm an injured woman—a damaged person,
seeking redress in consequence of Mr. Jamphrey
Odoherty. The devil | What has Jeffrey done to you ?
The Leddy. Done —what hae ye done to him, that he has in a
manner washed his hands clean o' Mr. North, and a' his connections—
the whilk decision and verdict on his part obligates me to come here
myself—in propria persona—and form of pauper.
North. Well, and what is it that you want }
The Leddy. Heh, Mr. North ! but ye're a pepper-box. I rede you
to keep ony sma' share of temper that ye enjoy—ye'll hae need for’t
a’. Ye see, gentlemen, as I was saying, having had a comfable wi'
Mr. Jamphrey, and hearing, as I was telling, how he's under the
greater and lesser excommunication, and put to the horn with you
and by you—and is thereby terrified out of his senses at the thought
of having any thing to say to you, I thought, thinks I, before the out-
lay o' feeing ither counsel, I would try my hand at an amicable ar-
rangement. Mr. North, there where he sits, hiding his face like an
ill-doer, as he well knows he is to me and mine—But no to summer
330 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
and winter—in short, gentlemen, I hae come for a solacium—being
informed that Mr. North has been art and part in causing it to be
set forth and published to the world, that I was dead, though the
malice prepense was softened, as Mr. Jamphrey Said, by the much and
justly regretted. Now, is it not a most injurious and damageous
thing, to put forth a calamity of that kind against a living and life
like woman 3 For, supposing I had a friend in the jaws o' death—think
ing o' making his iast will and testament, wherein he was mindit to
leave and bequeath unto me a handsome legacy in free gratis gift, as a
testimony of his great regard, and the love he bare—and supposing
the doctor at his bedside were to tell him I was dead, or ony sympa-
thizing relation then and there present were to give him a newspaper
to read, containing that interesting intelligence—and supposing that
he was thereby moved to score me out of his will, and to depart this
life—would not I have sustained a great damage—and could not I
thereupon constitute a ground of action, and raise a salacious plea, to
damnify me for the loss, detriment, and disappointment 3
North. Madam —you cannot expect us to deliver an opinion upon
a case, to which it would appear we are likely to be parties. -
The Leddy. No-but I'll be content if ye'll just compound with me
for the felony. .. º
North. We can never, gentlemen, after such an appeal, be so un
gallant as to allow a lady to go into court.
Omnes. Certainly not; we shall agree to her terms at once.
The Leddy. Then, Mr. North, are ye willing to confess a fault to-
wards me !
North. I throw myself at your merciful feet. -
The Leddy. Ye hear that, gentlemen; he confesses that he ha
been guilty of raising a fama clamosa against me.
Ommes. He has : he has confessed.
The Leddy. And hé said ye were ilk and a' alike concernt and
guilty, art and part, delinquent and culprit in the case.
Omnes. We did, we freely own it; we are all responsible for this
matter, and, like him, cast ourselves at your merciful feet.
Odoherty. And we hope your leddyship will spare us in the kick-
1ng.
The Leddy. I will do that ; ye’ll find me very gentle. º
Tickler (aside to Worth). Agree to any thing, Kit, to get rid of her.
The Leddy. And, Captain Odoherty, ye hae acknowledged yourse!
as guilty as Mr. North.
Odoherty (astonished). What is she after now # * & -
The Leddy. I take ye a' to witness, for I will produce the ane
against the other in court, that ye have acknowledged yourselves
guilty, with Mr. North, in the damage and detriment of a fama cla-
mosa on me. Noo, though I’m content with a solacium of a hundred
A STAME’EDE. 331
pounds, and a hundred pounds for cost frae Mr. North, yet I hereby
give you notice, in due form of law, that I intend forthwith, unless
Satisfied in the interim, to bring an action against you all severally,
saving and excepting Mr. North, whose offer I have accepted; and
having estimated my damage at five thousand pounds, I will have
that paid down to the uttermost farthing .
(Evew St Omnes, in the greatest panic and consternation.)
No. X.—JULY, 1828.
A FRAGMENT
% $ º * # # %
Odoherty. Chorus then. Buller, awake, man. Chorus, all of you,
I say.
Chorus of Contributors,
So triumph to the Tories, and woe to the Whigs,
And to all other foes of the nation ;
Let us be through thick and thin caring nothing for the prigs
Who prate about conciliation.
Dr. Mullion. Bravo, Odoherty, bravissimo –that is decidedly one
of your very best effusions,
Odoherty. No blarney to me, mon ami. I have taken my degrees
in that celebrated university. In candor, however, and equity, I am
bound to say, that I do think it a pretty fairish song, as songs go
now-a-days.
North. Why, it must be admitted, that there is an awful quantity
of bad songs vented just now.
Tickler. It must be the case as long as they issue in such shoals;
the bad must bear a huge proportion to the good at all times; for they
are just the off-throwings of the ephemeral buoyancy of spirit of the
day; and as actual buoyancy of spirit generally breeds nonsense, and
affectation of it is always stupidity, you must e'en be content with your
three grains of wheat in a bushel of chaff.
North. Yes, yes—they must be from their very nature ephemeral,
Which of all our songs—I don't mean particularly those of the present
company—but of all the songs now written and composed by all the
song-writers now extant—will be alive a hundred years hence %
Odoherty. Just as many as are now alive of those written and com-
posed, as you most technically phrase it, a hundred years since.
Tickler. And that is but poor harvest indeed. Look over any of the
song-books that contain the ditties of our grandmothers or great-grand-
mothers, and you will scarcely ever turn up a song familiar to any body
but professed readers. *
Odoherty. More's the pity. By all that's laughable, the reflection
DR. KITCHEN.E.R. 333
saddens me. “Pills to purge Melancholy,” has become a melancholi-
ous book in itself. You read page after page, puzzling yourself to
make out the possibility—how any human mouth could by any device
have got through the melodies—the uncouth melodies
Buller. You know Tom D'Urféy's plan He used to take a country
dance, the more intricate the better—for as you see by his dedication, he
prided himself on that kind of legerdemain—and then put words to it
as well as he could.
Odoherty. I know—I know—but I was saying that it is an unpleas-
ant sort of feeling you have about you, when you peruse, like a grop-
ing student, songs that you are sure made palace and pot-houses ring
with jollity and fun in the days of merry King Charles, and warmed
the gallantry of the grenadiers of Britain at the siege of Namur, under
hooked-nose Old-glorious,” or of
.#
Our countrymen in Flanders
A hundred years ago,
When they fought like Alexanders
Beneath the great Marlboro’.
North, Ay, “the odor's fled.” They are like uncorked soda-water.
Honest Tom D'Urféy, I think I see him now in my mind's eye, Ho-
ratio. Holding his song-book with a tipsy gravity, and trolling
forth
Joy to great Caesar,
Long life and pleasure,
with old Rowley leaning on his shoulder, partly out of that jocular
familiarity which endeared him to the people in spite of all his rascal-
ities, and partly to keep himself steady, humming the bass.
Buller. Have you seen Dr. Kitchener's book 3
North. I have, and a good, jovial, loyal book it is. The Doctor is,
by all accounts, a famous fellow—great in cookery, medicine, music,
poetry, and optics, on which he has published a treatise.}
Odoherty. I esteem the Doctor.
North. The devil you do ſ—after cutting him up so abominably in
my Magazine, in an article, you know, inserted while I was in Glas-
gow, without my knowledge.
Odoherty. Why are you always reminding a man of his evil-doings?
* William III., whose “pious, glorious, and immortal memory” used to be the Orange charter
toast in Ireland.—M.
+ Dr. Willian Ritchener, more distinguished by gastronomic than medical knowledge, wrote
a book called “The Cook’s Oracle,” invented new and improved old dishes, had his friends,
as a “committee of taste,” to pass judgment upon them at dinner, had very pleasant Conven'-
Suziomes for the male and female literati, and enjoyed life much. IIe insisted on punctuality,
and had a placard over his chimney-piece, inscribed, “Come at seven, go at eleven.” George
Columan slily interpolated a monosyllable, making the line run, “go it at eleven.” Optics and
music, as well as gastronomy, supplied subjects for Kitchener's pen. Iſe died in 1827.-M.
334 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Consider that I have been white-washed by the Insolvent Court since,
and let all my sins go with that white-washing. To cut the matter
short, I had a most excellent cookery-book written, founded on the
principles practised in the 99th mess, and was going to treat with
Longman's folks about it, when Kitchener came out, and pre-occupied
the market. You need not wonder, therefore, at my tickling up the
worthy Doctor, who himself enjoyed the fun, being a loyal fellow to
the backbone; a Tory tough and true. We are now the best friends
in the world. &
Mullion. Well, let that pass—what song-writer of our days, think
you, will live —Moore ?
Morth. Moore l No, he has not the stamina in him at all. Eſis
verses are elegant, pretty, glittering, any thing you please in that line;
but they have defects which will not allow them to get down to pos-
terity. For instance, the querulous politics, on your local affairs,
Odoherty, which make them now so popular with a very large class
of your countrymen, are mere matters of the day, which will die with
the day; for I hope you do not intend to be always fighting in Ireland?
Odoherty. I do not know how that will be—better fighting than
stagnating; but, at all events, I hope we will change the grounds some-
what—I hate monotony; I trust that my worthy countrymen will get
some new matter of tumult for the next generation.
North. It is probable that they will—and then, you know, Moore's
—“Oh breathe not his name,” “Erin, the tear,” &c., &c., will be just
as forgotten as any of the things in Hogg's Jacobite relics.
Tickler. Which will ever stand, or rather fall, as a memento of the
utter perishableness of all party song-writing.
North. And then there's Moore's accursed fancy for showing off learn-
ing, and his botany, and Zoology, and meteorology, and mythology.
Odoherty. O ay, and the mixed metaphor, and the downright non-
sense—the song you quoted just now could be finely amended.
North. What song?
Odoherty. “Erin, the smile, and the tear in thine eyes, blend like
the rainbow,” &c. Now, that is a washy, watery comparison for my
hard-drinking country. I lay £5 that a jug of punch would be a more
accurate and truly philosophical emblem ; as thus. There's the Pro.
testant part of the population inferior in quantity, superior in strength,
apt to get at the head, evidently the whisky of the compound. The
Roman Catholics, greater in physical proportions, but infinitely weaker,
and usually very hot, are shadowed forth by the water. The Orange-
men, as their name implies, are the fruit, which some palates think too
sour, and therefore reject, while others think that it alone gives grate-
ful flavor to the whole. *g
Mullion. And what's the sugar
Odoherty. Why, the conciliators dropped in among us to sweeten
SONG OF A FALLIN ANGEL. 335
our acidity—and you know some think that they have supplied with
too liberal a hand—very much at the risk of turning the stomachs of
the company. - -
North. A hopeful illustration—but in truth, Odoherty, your whole
conversation is redolent of nothing but drink. -
Odoherty. I am like Tom Moore's First Angel—the gentleman with-
out a name, and admire compotation, not exactly “the juice of Earth.”
however, as Tom calls it, that being, I take it, ditch-water.
Mullion. You never saw the song Tom intended for this drunken
angel of his after his fall?
Odoherty. Not I—parade it—is it not in the poem : • ,
Mullion. No ; Denman, who is Moore's doer of late, cut it out, just
as he cut up the Fables.* I have a copy, however, which I shall
Sing. - ..?
SONG OF A FALLEN ANGEL OVER A BOWL of RUM-PUNCH.
By T. M., Esq.
Heap on more coal there,
And keep the glass moving,
The frost nips my nose,
Though my heart glows with loving.
Here's the dear creature,
No skylights—a bumper;
He who leaves heeltaps
I vote him a mumper.
With hey cow rumble O,
Whackſ populorum,
Merrily, merry men,
Push round the jorum.
What are Heaven's pleasures
That so very sweet are { ..
Singing from psalters,
In long or short metre.
Planked on a wet cloud
Without any breeches,
Just like the Celtic,+
Met to make speeches.
With hey cow rumble, &c.
Wide is the difference
My own boozing bullies,
Here the round punch-bowl
Heap'd to the full is.
* It was believcd that Moore’s “Fables for the Holy Alliance” were subp litted to Lord Dan-
man, then Common Sergeant (one of the local judges) of London, previous to publication, that
..he might decide on the question how libellous they were.—M.
t The Celtic Society, at their annual dinner, always wore the kilt.—M.
3.
3
6
NOCTES AMBROSLANAG.
|
Then if some wise one
Thinks that up “yonder"
Is pleasant as we are,
Why—he's in a blunder.
With hey cow rumble, &c.
Morth. A very hopeful and well-behaved angel, by my word.
Mullion. Enough of Moore. Campbell -
Worth. Has written one song which I hope will live long as “the
flag of Old England waves lordly in pride,”—that is, I hope for ever. I
mean the Mariners of England. -
Tickler. A glorious song indeed But Campbell has disgraced him-
self by a shabby song, in the New Monthly, about the Spaniards. It
is not fit for a gentleman like Campbell to fall into the filthy slang of
the blackguards of the press, and write low stuff about Prince Hilt,” or
to call the grand old stainless flag of France (which he knows—the
blackguards do not—is linked with so many splendid recollections) the
“White emblem of white liver.”
Dr. Mullion. Some of Sir Walter's songs will certainly live.
North. Perhaps—those in his Poems and his Novels, if they are
his; but I do not recollect any thing particular of any other; and, in
point of fact, you never do hear them sung by any body. Bishop, by
the way, has very poorly set County Guy, very poorly indeed.
Odoherty. I like Bishop, a worthy pleasant fellow ; but, somehow
or other, I think his music generally but compilation,--a bar from this
body and a bar from that body—curiously indented and dovetailed, I
admit, but still only joinery and cabinet-making.f
North. Nobody has said a word about Byron.f -
Tickler. Dead as Harry the Eighth, and it is a pity. Heavens !
who can think that the author of Childe Harold, and Manfred, and
Don Juan, should have sunk to what he is now, a scribbler in a dirty
magazine, and a patron of the Hunts It, however, speaks volumes
in favor of the morality of the country, after all, when we find that
even genius, such as his, must sink, if it dares oppose what we are
still determined to call religion and loyalty.
Odoherty (handing The Island to Worth). I have brought down
Christian.S Would you wish to look at it? -
Buller Does it sell ?
Odoherty. Not at all, though the third edition is advertised. I was
told at Longman's that they had not disposed of a hundred. It would
have a better chance with Murray; but he and his lordship have bro-
* So the Duc d’Angoulême was called.—M.
f Mr. Bishop, who has composed several operas, and the music for hundreds of songs, was
elected Professor of Music in the University of Oxford, and has been knighted.—M.
t In August, 1823, Byron embarked at Genoa, on his last, and glorious visit to Greece.—M.
§ “The Island,” which contains some passages as fine as Byron ever produced, was writteu
in Genoa, and published in June, 1823. -
chºr
“THE ISLAND.” 337.
ken, after a furious quarrel. The correspondence between them is
said to be curious. .
Buller. Of course we shall have an awful libel on Joannes de Mo-
ravia in due time. - -
Odoherty. I hope so, from the bottom of my soul; for then Murray
will take vengeance in turn. I had rather than a tenpenny, and that
cash, we could print Byron's Critique on the Pot of Basil,
Tickler, Faugh, don't mention it.
North. Christian, I see, is a poor thing, with a good bit here and
there in it, but not the least originality. He is the old hero—the
Lara, the Conrad, the fellow of whom his lordship found the germ in
Miss Lee's Kruitzner, transported to Botany Bay, or thereabouts, where,
instead of mosques, and kiosks, and tambourgis, and phingaris, we are
entertained with Toobonai, and Boolootoo, Mooa, Figi, Hooni, Licoo,
Guatoo, Goostrumfoo, et omne quod endeth in Oo. And the woman-
kind are the old womankind, not a bit the worse for the wear.
Tickler, Yes, and you have the same amazing industry in trans-
ferring Bligh's Narrative, that he has shown so often before. But the
introduction, and indeed some other passages, remind us of the better
days of Byron. Listen
“The morning watch was come; the vessel lay
Her course, and gently made her liquid way;
The cloven billow flashed from off her prow,
In furrows formed by that majestic plough;
The waters with their worlds were all before;
Behind, the South Sea’s many an islet shore.
The quiet night, now dappling, 'gan to wane,
Dividing darkness from the dawning main;
The dolphins, not unconscious of the day,
Swam high, as eager of the coming ray;
The stars from broader beams began to creep,
And lift their shining eyelids from the deep;
The sail resumed its lately shadow’d white,
And the wind fluttered with a fresh'ning flight;
The purple ocean owns the coming sun,
But ere he break—a deed is to be done.”
Odoherty. Very toploftical, to be sure. Commend me to the pane
gyric on what our friend Fogarty (from whom his lordship seems to
have taken the idea) calls “Tobacco, lord of plants.”
But here the herald of the self-same mouth
Came breathing o'er the aromatic south,
Not like a “bed of violets” on the gale,
But such as wafts its cloud o'er grog or ale,
Borne from a short frail pipe, which yet had blown
Its gentle odors over either zone,
And puff’d where'er winds rise or waters roll,
Eſad wafted smoke from Portsmouth to the Pole,
Wol. I.-24
338. NOCTES AMBROSIAN A3.
Opposed its vapor as the lightning flashed,
And reek'd, 'midst mountain-billows unabash'd,
To AEolus a constant sacrifice, *
Through every change of all the varying skies.
And what was he who bore it? I may err,
But deem him sailor or philosopher, -
Sublime tobacco which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labor or the Turkman's rest;
Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand;
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,
When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe,
Like other charmers wooing the caress
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties—Give me a cigarl
And as we are talking of it, do hand us over that paper of Cotton's
best, until I blow a cloud. •
North. Why, Odoherty, you have scarcely brought us any news
from London. -
Odoherty. How could you expect blood from a turnip ! There's no
news there. Parliament was just spinning down, when I quitted the
city, as drowsily as a tetotum—nothing doing in the monde littéraire—
the Haymarket gay, to be sure, and our friend Terry,” drollest of
actors, as he is among the worthiest of men, making the populace
laugh—but I brought you down a special article on London, from a
friend of mine, which will tell you every thing tellable, so you need
not pump me.
Dr. Mullion. Did you see any of the gentlemen of the press?
Odoherty. Saw the whole goodly army of martyrs in full array;
just as stupendously dull as ever, and, unless I mistake, more vicious,
to speak as a jockey among the lower orders, than warmint. When I
knew the body first, they were a fine hard-drinking, pudding-headed
race, who just got through their balaam as fast as their fingers would
let them—spouted at the Eccentrics—regaled themselves with cheese
and porter, and occasionally, when the funds were good, with Hollands
and water, not caring a single sixpence for politics, or thinking them-
selves at all primed up with the opinions they were advocatiag—and
there are still some of that good old school surviving, with two or
* Terry, who was very intimate with Scott and his friends, made his reputation at Edinburgh
Theatre. In 1819, he became manager of the Haymarket Theatre, London, and joint lessee
and manager with Yates of the Adelphi in 1825. IIe died in 1828.
+ This special article was the leader in Blackwood, for July, 1823, and was written by Dr.
Maginn, who had removed, a short time before, from Cork to London. The article bears the
name of “London Oddities and Outlines,” and is smart, lively, and satirical.—M.
"THE PRESS-GAN.G. 339
three of whom I got misty one night at Offley's”—but, sir, the Cock-
ney portion of them have been horribly altered for the worse.
AVoyth. How % • , -
Odoherty. The poor creatures have actually set up to have opinions
of their own—the idiots—and to have personal quarrels, and animosi-
ties, and principles, and fiddle-de-dee.
Tickler. Mighty audacious. Can't they eat their victuals when
they get them in peace?
North. The newspaper press is unquestionably becoming very base.
What a hideous, a detestable attack, some of the Whig and Radical
papers made on John Bull ! -
Odoherty. Well, do the press-gang itself justice There was almost
a universal outcry at that brutal business even among themselves. It
was abominable. John, however, put it down like a man.
Worth. Well now, had the unfortunate Beaconites, which we still
have thrown in our faces, though heaven knows their worst crime was
stupidity, done any thing approaching that in atrocity, what an up-
roar would have been raised by the whole Whig party
Tickler. And deservedly, for they would have been base assassins;
but the Whigs may do any thing—the basest as well as the most
malignant of people.
Odoherty (sings).
1.
Rail no more, Tories, rail no more;
Whigs are but asses ever,
On land, on wave, on Sea, on shore,
All rascals of white liver.
Then rail not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting sounds of wrath and woe
Into hey ninny nonny.
2.
Sing merry ditties, and no mo
Of lumps so dull and heavy;
The heads of Whigs were ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then rail not so, &c.
There's a touch Shakspearian for you, in the twinkling of a bedpost.
North. You are not drinking any thing, Tickler.
Tickler. I cannot say I like your wine. It is souring on my stom-
ach.
North. Cannot you get spirits then I'll concoct a jug.
* Near Covent Garden—now Evans's.-M,
340 NOOTES AMBROSLANAE.
Tickler. So be it. (Sings.)
Drink to me only from a jug,
And I will pledge in mine ;
So fill my glass with whisky punch,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that in my throat doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sip,
That honor I’d resign.
The second verse is not worth parodying. Ay, this is so mething
like. Your health, Mr. Editor. * &
North. Mr. Tickler, I have the pleasure of drinking your very good
health. Apropos, has not Boone published a poem” on things in gen-
eral %
Odoherty. I saw one in a certain place sadly mutilated, and have
read only two pages. It is a puff on Mr. Canning.
Tickler. Very superfluous, therefore. It is, moreover, a good joke
to see the great man of the Council of Ten, the essence of gravity,
thinking to flatter the witty Antijacobin by his balaam.
North. Canning must have laughed at the idea, in his sleeve, I
mean—for a minister can never laugh otherwise.
Buller. I suppose he addressed the book,
O Boone, ne te
Frustrere.
* % :6 36 * $ $
* This was entitled “Men and Things in 1828, a Political Sketch, in Three Epistles, to the
Right Hon. Geo. Canning, with copious Notes. By James Shergold Boone, M. A.”—Of poem
and poet, I am free to confess utter ignorance.—M.
No. XI.-AUGUST, 1823,
North. Nay, do not blush, Ensign. I thought you had dipped in
the Shannon. I believe you sing extempore?
Mullion. Ay, and ex-trumpery.
North. Curse your punning. Quaver away this.
(Throwing M. a paper.)
Mullion (hums a preludio). Then, therefore, give due audience and
attend. Milton, hem
1.
The birds have sung themselves to rest,
That sang around our bower;
The weight of the night-dew has bow’d
The head of every flower.
2
The ringing of the hunter's horn
Has ceased upon the hill,
The cottage windows gleam with light,
The harvest song is still.
3
And safe and silent in the bay
Is moor'd each fisher's prow,
Each wearied one has sought his home,
But where, my love, art thou?
4.
I pick’d a rose, a red blush rose,
Just as the dews begun,
I kiss'd its leaves, but thought one kiss
Would be a sweeter one.
5
I kept the rose and kiss, I thought
How dear they both would be
But now I fear the rose and kiss
Are kept in vain for thee!
Really a very pretty song. It was spoony in you to drop it out of
your pocket, Odoherty e -
342 NOCTES AMIBIROSIANAE.
Odoherty. And amazingly genteel in you to sing it under the cir-
cumstances. It was about as bad as Brougham's reading in Parlia-
ment Mr. Saurin's letter, picked out of Lord Norbury's pocket.*
North. Is the author a secret :
Odoherty. Not the least. Rest her soul! she died of love. Her
name was Quashie Maboo-quite a sentimental negress, who kept
a canteen in the Bowery Way, New York. Poetry and peach-brandy
were the death of her. I got her a great wake in 1816, for she was
tenderly attached to me.
North. Wilberforce ought to quote this song as a proof of negro
capacity. Was she pretty 2
Odohorty. Yes, black but comely—she squinted furiously, but it
passed for ogling; and I can assure you her pine-apple rum was
superb.
Mullion. You were then a rum customer, I take it. Apropos of
love, Tom Moore is in Ireland, I understand.
North. So I am informed by letter from Killarney. He travels in
the train of the Marquis of Lansdowne, who is visiting his Irish
estates.
Tickler. Tom goes as joculator, I suppose. Lansdowne, when in
office, was distinguished as a dancing-master, and gave Thomas, if I
mistake not, the place in the West Indies for his piping.
North. I do not blame him for that. I rejoice to see literary merit
patronized, but there was something base and grovelling—in a word,
something truly Whig–in the ruffian treatment Dibdin's experienced
from the gang which got into power in 1806.
Tickler. Dirty revengeful—and beggarly to the last degree. They
could not forgive him for having, in his glorious songs, stirred the
* Mr. Sheil, in his “Sketches of the Irish Bar,” (Article, I.ord Norbury, vol. ii., p. 88,) gives
a diſſerent and uncontradicted version. Norbury “was in the habit of stuffing papers into
the old chairs in his study, in order to supply the deficiency of horse-hair which the incum-
bency of eighty years had produced in their bottoms. At last, however, they became, even
with the aid of this occasional supplement, unfit for use, and were sent by his Lordship to a
shop in which old ſurniture was advertised to be bought and sold. An individual of the name
of Monaghan got one of these chairs into his possession, and, finding it stuſſed with papers,
drew them out. IIe had been a clerk in an attorney's office, and knew Mr. Saurin's hand-
writing.”—It was a letter from Saui in, the first law-officer of the Crown in Ireland, to Lord
Norbury, Chief Justice, recommending him, when on circuit in the King’s County, to talk to
Protestant gentlemen about and against the Catholics and their claims The authenticity of
the letter was undoubted, the aſſair was discussed in Parliament, but the then Tory Ministry
effectually screened Norbury and Saurin l—M.
t Mrs. Gilpin, we are told by Cowper, was economical, and had a frugal mind, even when
“She to pleasure was inclined.”
Moore might have been her blood-relation, adroitly managing, on most occasions, to “travel
in the train '' of somebody who paid; all the expenses. In his Diary are numerous records of
this.--M.
f No.—Moore was appointed Registrar to the Admiralty Court, at Bermuda, in 1808, and Lord
Lansdownc did not enter office until 1806 —M.
§ Dibdin, who wrote a great number of patriotic sea-songs, during the naval contests which
terminated at Trafalgar, received a Government pension, in acknowledgment of the service
they had done by inspiring and exciting the British tars. When the Whigs came into oſtice,
in 1805, they struck Dibdin's name out of the pension-list . As a party, they had opposed the
war, anº; were determined to punish the poet for doing any thing to encourage it.—M.
*
DURE OF SUSSEX. 8 343
spirit of Britain against their friends the Jacobins; and accordingly,
in his old age, the filthy fellows deprived him of a pension which ha
had earned by services to his country, more solid than the nine-tenths
of those which have been the foundation of many a Whig property.
North. Well, well—they stick to one another, however; which is
more than can be said of other people who shall be nameless. You
know we have often contrasted the different treatment experienced by
this very Tommy Moore and Theodore Hook, under the very same cir-
cumstances.”
Odoherty. Theodore, however, is winding up after all, and must
eventually be cleared of all slur. If the details of his case were pub-
lished, it would be the exposé of all the most rascally piece of pitiful
persecution ever heard of; and I hope it will be published some fine
day or other. *
Mullion. You have heard Theodore's joke on his misfortune :
Buller. No, never. (Aside.) Pius millies jam audiwi.
Mullion. Poh, man, you must have heard it; it is in print. When
he came from the Isle of France, he touched at the Cape of Good
Hope, where he met Lord Charles Somerset. “Bless me,” said his
lordship, “what sends you home so soon, Hook—a complaint in your
liver?”—“No,” replied Theodore; “a disorder in my chest.” You
certainly heard it {
North. Why, yes; it's almost as venerable as any thing in Joe
Miller.
Mullion. I was aware of that, and only told it as a preface to the
Duke of Sussex's admirable version of the story. The Duke, you
know, is very bright.
Odoherty. Yes, as one of Lambton’s coal-scuttles.
Mullion. And hates Theodore, whom he suspects—with what rea-
son I cannot say—of having demolished him in Bull.f
Tickler. Why, certainly, his highness has no great reason to be
obliged to the tribe of Bull; for he was only suspected to be a block-
head formerly, but now is written down as an ass regular,
Mullion. Well, sir, an ultra fit of candor every now and then seizes
on him, and he panegyrizes Hook's wit. “I don't like the man, sir.”
he says—“I don't like the man ; but to do him justice; let us be
fair; he's a droll fellow, sir—a droll fellow ; he tells you a good thing
—a devilish good thing now—ha, ha, ha!—a most excellent thing.
You know he was at the Isle of France; ay, and he came back from
* Both had held colon.al appointments of trust. Each had suffered by his deputy's miscon-
duct. Hook was sent home in chains, and not even his own friends, the Tories, wiped away
the claim, but even seized his property while he was dead and unburied. Moore fluttered
about in society, spent a season or two at Paris, (with occasional ſlights to London,) and finally
compromised for a few hundreds.—M.
t Theodore Hook, as Editor of John Bull, spared no leader of the antagonist Whig party.
The Duke of Sussex, pompeus and proud, was frequently a victim.—M.
344 NOOTES AMBROSIA NAB,
ſhe lsle of France too—ha, ha, ha! and we all know why—ha, ha,
ha I Well, then, coming home, he stopped at the Cape of Good
Ilope—some place in India, you know—where he met Charles Som-
erset. Says Charles to him, ‘Why, Hook,” says he, “what the devil,'
says he, ‘brings you home 7 I hope,’ says he, “it is nothing ails your
liver ?' Well, now, just mind what Hook said—devilish good—very
good, faith—I don't like the man, sir—I don’t like the man ; but let
us be fair; he is a droll fellow, sir—a droll fellow. ‘No,' says Hook,
‘nothing ails my liver—never was better in my life,’ says he ; “but
there is a deficiency in my accounts, which I must go over to answer.’
Ha, ha, ha! Devilish good, was it not ? When I heard it first, every
body laughed. Ha, ha, ha!” -
Tickler. You are a capital mimic, Mullion. I wish Mathews had
that story. -
Worth. No, no; it would be scandalous to bring a prince of the
blood on the stage. Remember that he is a son of George III., and
brother of George IV.
Tickler. Pooh Mathews could tell it of Signor
any other of the Duke's select circle.
Mullion. Who, by the way, regularly laugh at the joke, whenever
it pleases the Duke to tell it. It is his highness's best story, and is
always told on great occasions, state days, holidays, and the like.
North. Come, gentlemen, change the subject, if you please. I do
not like to hear any thing disparaging to any son of HIM, who, no
matter what king may reign, shall be king of my heart to the end of
the chapter.
, Or
Come fill up your wine,
Look, fill it like mine;
Here, boys, I begin,
A good health to the KING !
Tims, see it go round,
Whilst with mirth we abound.
Chorus.
For we will be dull and heavy no more,
Since wine does increase, and there's claret good store,
Nay, don't us deceive
Odoherty. Upon honor, I filled a bumper from the foundation.
North, I did not address you, my good fellow. I spoke to Mullion,
who is fighting shy; but do not interrupt me. --
Nay, don't us deceive,
Why this will you leave?
The glass is not big,
What the deuce, you're no Whig.
Come, drink up the rest,
Or be merry at least,
“”TIS IN VAIN TO COMPLAIN.” 345
Chorus.
For we will be dull and heavy no more,
Since wine does increase, and there's claret good store.
Tickler. Out of Pills to Purge Melancholy, if I mistake not ?
North. Yes, from the aforesaid. It was a favorite chant of worthy
Dr. Webster, some forty years ago, when we used to meet in the Gude
Auld Town, at the White Horse in the Canongate. Many a scene I
have got through since the Aughty-Three. “And I said, the days of
my youth, where are they And Echo answered, Where are they "
Odoherty. Pr'ythee, no more of your antediluvian recollections—
your dramas of the ancient world.
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ſ We have laughed,
We have quaffed,
We have raked it fore and aft,
But out of pleasure's bowl have not emptied all the draught.
Never mind •
Days behind,
But still before the wind,
Float after jolly souls, full flasks, and lasses kind.
Buller. Extempore? Stans pede in uno?
º,
34.6 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
/
Odoherty. Yes, on honor. I was seized with a fit of poetical fury.
Buller. You are almost as great as Pistrucci himself.
Odoherty. I knock under to Coleridge only ; for he makes, verses
asleep. I make music sometimes in that state, but never poetry.
North. Have you heard Coleridge's late epitaph on himself, which
he composed in that way ?
Tickler. No. Repeat it.
JWorth. -
Here lies poor Cole, at length and without screaming,
Who died as he was always wont, a dreaming;
Shot, as with pistol, by the gout within,
Alone, and all unknown, at Embro' in an inn.
Tickler. “Alone, and all unknown, at Embro' in an inn.” How
mournful and musicall I hope, before the day comes when my epi-
taph will be required for him, he will have the firmness to put forth
his strength, and take his place among our great men. -
Mullion. What are you thinking of Ensign —You don't hear what
any body says to you. You did not hear the Epitaph.
Odoherty. Beg your pardon—beg your pardon a thousand-times
over—I was looking at these prints—they’re new ones surely.—What
the devil are they
North. Pooh! they're some new affairs—materials that Dr. Mullion
has got together for his Lectures on the Fine Arts.
Odoherty. Oh! is that the case? What are the subjects, pray ?
Mullion. Don't you see well enough what they are ?—Why, they’re
the new set of prints come out by way of illustrations to Leigh Hunt's
poem of “The Choice,” in the last Liberal. I shall lecture on them
one of these days.
Odoherty. The artist? -
Mullion. Nay, as to that I can't say. There's no name to the
articles; but 'tis whispered that they are Haydon's.
Odoherty. Haydon's 2–Impossible !—impossible—not the least like
his style.* Why, they seem to be mere caricatures.
Mullion. Not a bit—I assure you 'tis all dead earnest. There is
much gusto about them—a fine free sweep of pencil—a delicate sense
of the grace of things. They’re very pretty sweet prints. I intend to
make Ambrose a present of them after my lecture is fairly done and
delivered.
Odoherty. By jingo, I can't make either head or tail of these things.
* Haydon mistook his vocation, when he became a Historical Painter, although he was as
good, in that ling, as most of his contemporaries. As a teacher he was never surpassed. Land-
seer, Lance, Harvey, Eastlake, and a score more, are living examples of this. They were his
pupils. As a public lecturer on the principles and practice of painting, no one ever ap-
proached him. He was written down, talked down, sneered down by the l’oyal Academy,
which should have invited him to accept its highest honors. His mind was overthrown, and
he perished by his own hand, on June 22, 1846.-M1.
LEIGH HUNT’s “CHOICE.” 347
There should have been a motto, or something, at the bottom, to let
one into the artist's meaning. What, now, is this here one, Mullion ?
Mullion. There are mottoes to each of them, taken from the poem
itself; but the frame-maker has, by some mistake, covered them with
his pasteboard and gilding. Here, however, is the Liberal, No. IV.
I believe I can easily point out the appropriate passages for your
benefit. -
Odoherty. That's a good fellow. Well, then, what is the bit alluded
to here?—(I haven't seen the last Liberal myself yet.)
Mullion. This print, sir, represents his Majesty of Cockaigne in the
attitude of doing what he says in his poem he is very fond of—admir-
ing Nature. 3.
Odoherty. NATURE 3–Why, he's at the tea-table.
Mullion. No matter—he's admiring the “Goal of life.”
Odoherty. The Bowl of life, you mean—he has the Slop-basin in
his dexter paw.
Mullion. Well—and what should he have He is talking in the
poem about bowers and showers, and treeses and breezes, and so forth;
and he breaks out into this fine apostrophe, which is the motto to your
print: -
“Come then, ye scenes of quiet and content,
Ye Goals of life, on which our hearts are spent,
Meet my worn eyes—I LovE YOU IVEN IN VALES
OF CUPS AND SAUCERs, AND SUCH Delfic DALES 3?
Are not they sweet natural lines?
Odoherty. Why, Wales is a pretty country—and I dare say, even
on delft-ware, such as he seems to have on his table, the representation
yet may be charming. Seriously, this print gives us an amicable idea
of his Majesty.
A'empferhausen. Dear divine enthusiast! Well, only to think of
people making a laughing-stock of this innocent-hearted, good, worthy,
gentle soul, that is quite happy, quite upon the air, with having a rural
peep of a few blue trees and cottages on a piece of crockery ware —
For shamel for shame !
Odoherty. What the deuce is this grand roll, North
North. You talk of Dr. Mullion's lectures—I would have you know,
I mean to cut in upon that series of his myself. In a word, here goes
my lecture on these prints, and on the poem from which they sprung.
I shall read it to you. Listen, boys |
MR. NORTH's LECTURE ON “THE CHOICE,”
4 Poem recently written by Leigh IIunt, a Convert and Vice-Poet-Lawreate to
JSlackwood's Magazine.
Our innumerable delightful qualities of head and heart, and, above
all, out invincible good nature, have at last made a complete convert
2’
/
348 INOCTES AMBROSLANAC.
of Leigh Hunt, and he is never happy except when lauding Black-
wood's Magazine to the seventh heaven. No sooner does he put on
his yellow breeches,” in the morning early, than he trips crisply down
from his attic story into the breakfast-parlor, and seasons every mouth-
ful of muffin with the mustard of Ebony. He cannot write a note to
Mr. Pygmalion the painter, or Mistress Molly the charwoman, with-
out trumpeting our praises; and will sit up for hours together in his
bed, with his peaked-up mouth, and swaling night-cap, gazing him-
self away through an opening in the dimity, on a striking likeness of
Us, sketched by our common friend Haydon, during his last visit to
Scotland. He is absolutely possessed—haunted—waylaid—bedridden
—not by an Incubus, God forbid, but by a most affable and benign
spirit, hight Christopher North, who purifies, by gentle ministrations,
the corruptions of his Cockney blood, and so fills his brain with
“fancies chaste and noble,” that he is henceforth appointed our Vice-
Poet-Laureate, with a salary of four gallons of gin-twist, and a keg of
best Dunbar red-herrings, to be paid at Hampstead at “ten of April
morn, by the chime.” Let no envious railer scoff at Leigh Hunt as a
placeman and pensioner. No doubt, the situation is a lucrative one,
and with judicious economy, our laureate, if he may not live upon it
and lay by money, cannot fail to become a richer man every year. He
must not, however, buy any more busts of those “down-looking” Greeks,
and we recommend him (if he has not done so already) to sell his
piano-forte. He has but an indifferent ear for instrumental music, and
tuning is expensive. The position, too, either of a man or a Cockney,
at the ivories, is below the dignity of our laureate, and unworthy an
eater of red-herrings. The barrel-organ is a preferable instrument;
and we have heard that Mr. Hunt's execution upon it is to be equalled
only by his command over the hurdy-gurdy. But we are intruding
into the sacred privacy of domestic life, and therefore shall not again
panegyrize Mr. Hunt's musical powers, our Laureate although he be,
till we have the pleasure of meeting him in the street with a salt-box, or
in a lane with a Highland bagpipe. Meanwhile, let him be to us our
MAGNUs APOLLAR.
We refer such of our readers as may not have heard of Mr. Leigh
Hunt, to various papers in this miscellany with the signature Z. These
will tell what he was ; but we have his own words for what he wishes
to be —and the following morceaux are from the intended life of our
Vico-Laureate, adumbrated or shadowed forth in his beautiful poem,
“The Choice.”f º
* Leigh Hunt was educated at Christ's Hospital, Ilondon. The dress of the school-boys there
consists of no cap, (the head is always uncovered, and a small woollen covering, such as would
be too small for a four-hours-old baby, is worn on the girdle,) a long blue frock, festooned
round the waist by a leathern belt, a girdle, yellow breeches and stockings, and thick shoes.—M.
f “With a perked feather swaling in his bonnet.” The line was to be ſound in Hunt’s “Ri-
mini.” He has cut it out of the later editions.—M. - -
# See Liberal, No. IV.-C. N. º
JLEIGH HUNT. 349
The poem opens with a panegyric upon Pomfret, the author of that
great original poem The Choice, on which Mr. Hunt's is modelled,
“I have been reading Pomfret's Choice this spring,
A pretty kind of-sort-of-kind of thing, º
Not much a verse, and poem none at all,
Yet, as they say, extremely natural,
And yet I know not. There's a skill in pies,
In raising crusts as well as galleries;
And he's the poet, more or less, who knows
The charm that hallows the least thing from prose,
And dresses it in its mild singing clothes.
Poetry's that which sets a thought apart,
To worship Nature with a choral heart:
And may be seen where rarely she intrudes,
As birds in cages make us think of woods.
Beaux have it in them, when they love the faces
Of country damsels, and their worsted graces.”
“Mild singing clothes.” What are they Not surely your yellow
breeches, Mister Hunt. Perhaps caps and bells. Are kilts mild sing-
ing clothes? Petticoats are liker the thing when they rustle. The
two last lines are not original, but filched from the Filcher. They
were shown publicly in prose by the new Pygmalion some time ago,
that is, without their mild singing clothes. And pray, our good Vice-
Laureate, what may they mean?—When a Cockney chucks a country
wench under the chin, and gloats upon her linsey-woolsey petticoat, call
you that “poetry?” The author of Rimini ought to know better; but
we hope that he is merely shamming innocence to please us; in which
hope we are strengthened by the subs?quent strapping Alexandrine—
“The ladies rise in heaps, and give them sweet admissions ſ”
A little further on, our Vice shows he is no such simpleton about
such affairs as he would pretend to be; but, on the contrary, some-
what peevishly complains, that, in the present day, a man cannot
write lusciously and liquorishly without being shook by the ears, or
Rose-pulled by some Z. or other. -
“Else I would print my fancy by itself,
And be ‘a love’ on every lady's shelf;
Perhaps I shall be so some day or other,” &c.
Promiscuous concubinage not yet being the order of the day, the
publication of the “loves” alluded to is deferred till a fitter opportunity;
and meanwhile the Vice writes, he tells us, such verses as “smile on
tables in the parson's nose.” For smile, nostro periculo, read smell.
How elegant the use of the word parson And, altogether, what dig-
rtified and gentlemany ease does Mr. Hunt exhibit in these his “mild
350 NOCTES AMBROSTANAE.
/ .
singing clothes!” Instead of one, he shall have two kegs of Dunbar
reds.
JBut now for him. Hear—hear—hear !
“First, on a green I’d have a low, broad house,
Just seen by travellers through the garden boughs
And that my luck might not seem ill bestowed,
A bench and spring should greet them on the road,
My grounds should not be large; I like to go
To Nature for a range, and prospect too,
And cannot fancy she'll comprise for me,
Even in a park, her all-sufficiency:
Besides, my thoughts fly far; and when at rest,
Love, not a watch-tower, but a lulling nest.
But all the ground I had should keep a look
Of Nature still, have birds'-nests and a brook;
One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees:
For I'd not grow my own bad lettuces,
And above all, no house should be so near,
That strangers should discern me here and there;
Much less when some fair friend was at my side,
And swear I thought her charming, -which I did.
I am not sure I’d have a rookery;
But sure I am I'd not live near the sea,
To view its great flat face, and have my sleeps
Filled full of shrieking dreams and foundering ships;
Or hear the ...; when his slaughter's o'er,
Like Sinbad's Inonster scratching on the shore.
I’d live far inland, in a world of glades,
Yet not so desert as to fright the maids:
A batch of cottages should smoke beside;
And there should be a town within a morning's ride.”
Our Vice says, “My grounds should not be large.” His grounds !
—Leigh Hunt's grounds.]—A gentleman of landed property —A Sur-
rey freeholder —What do you mean by “not large,” Vice? It is an
indefinite expression. What think you of a couple of hundred acres?
—“No low, broad house” should ever have less than an estate of that
extent, at least in a ring-fence. Now, is not this rather exorbitant?
Consider also the danger of losing yourself in a multitudinous sea of
Swedish turnips—the dead certainty of being lost for ever—or found
a skeleton, of several months' lying, in a potato-furrow. Besides, what
a most idiotical style of farming you here chalk out for yourself!
“One spot for ſlowers, and the rest all turf and trees.” That would
never pay. Do you intend to sell the birds'-nests at Covent-Garden
market—eggs, or broods and all? If so, you must study nidification;
for if you have only a “flower-garden, turf, and trees,” and nothing
else, devil a singing-bird will build his nest near your “low, broad
house,” except it be a barn-door fowl or a guinea-pig. Farther, what
sort of a brook will that be, without ever a stone, or a rock, or an old
rotten stump, to amuse itself with ? Such a brook would be an object
A COCKNEY'S PARADISE'ſ 35t.
of the deepest compassion in dry weather; and, indeed, unless you had
a draw-well, of which no mention is made, what is to become of the
tea-kettle? You say, “I am not sure I'd have a rookery.” There you
are right; for when you and some fair friend were strolling through
the grove, and you were swearing you thought her charming—“which
you did"—down haply would plump an epaulette on each of our
Vice-Laureate's shoulders, which would be no small nuisance to your
fair friend, and stop the current of her ideas. But, my good soul, you
speak doubtfully about the rookery, just as if you could order the
rooks to build on any morning you chose to appoint. Take our
advice, and have no rookery. Rook-pies are disgusting; and then a
crowd of Cockneys would be firing away at the young hop-the-twigs
every spring, to the great annoyance of yourself and fair friend, to say
nothing of the positive danger of flying ramrods and split barrels. Let
it be fixed, therefore, that there shall be no rookery. “Not so desert
as to fright the maids.” Do you mean here, simply, your brace of
servant girls, or maids in general % “The unaids” is an equivocal
expression; so is “fair friend;” and really all these inuendoes set
one's tooth on edge, and look more like Odoherty himself than his
Vice. “A batch of cottages” is far more elegant than a batch of
Peers, or a batch of bread;—and “within a morning's ride” leaves
the distance of the town in a pleasing obscurity.—So you seriously
intend keeping a horse ? I am sorry to hear it, both on your account
and his own. He will have poor picking on the turf among the trees,
and will come down with you to a certainty. Keep a cuddy, and let
him browse in the lanes; but on no account whatever venture upon
horseback. Your fair friend would have nothing else to do but to
make plasters; and we humbly conceive, that this “morning's ride”
will furnish a fundamental objection to your villa. Take the coach at
once, or borrow a shandrydan at the “batch of cottages,” from the
pig-dealer; and so jog into town in Safety.
Aha! my friend you are at your old tricks—we knew we should
catch you at last. Next comes the old imageman, with his batch of
gods and goddesses on his board; and Mr. Hunt purchases about a
dozen nudities for the moderate sum of eighteen-pence a-pair, rough.
and smooth.
“And yet to show I had a taste withal,
I’d have some casts of statues in the hall,
Or rather entrance, whose sweet steady eyes
Should touch the comers with a mild surprise,
And so conduct them, hushing to my door,
Where, if a friend, the house should hear a roar.
The grateful beggar should peep in at these,
And wonder what I did with Popish images.”
Next our Laureate says he could write and read,
352 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
* “Till it was time
To ride or walk, or on the grass go rhyme.”
Stop a moment, if you please—no riding. You forget that we al-
ready put our veto on that. It is not so easy a matter for a man at
your time of life to learn to ride. Gracious heavens ! are you mad?
“I’d never hunt, ExCEPT THE Fox, and then
Not much, for fear I should fall,” &c.
Hunting the Fox a little! Only imagine him breaking cover. Why,
you fly over your horse's ears at the first ditch, six inches wide. First
of all, you talk of riding to town—on paper—your brain and your
bottom warm—and nothing will satisfy you, but to HUNT THE Fox.
O, Editor of the Annals of Sporting ! what wouldst thou not give for
a sight of our worthy Vice-Laureate leading the Surrey Hunt, Rey-
nard in view, and Tims whipper-in After HUNTING THE Fox, but
“not much,” Mr. Hunt thinks himself equal to any display of bodily
vigor, and declares— -
“All manly games I’d play at : golf, and quoits,
And cricket, to set all my limbs to rights,
And make me conscious, with a due respect,
Of muscles one forgets by long neglect.
But as for prize-fights, with their butchering shows,
And crowds of black-legs, I'd have none of those;—
I am not bold in other people's blows.
Besides, I should reside so far from town,
Those human waves could never bear me down—
Which would endear my solitude, I own,
But if a neighbor, fond of his antiques,
Tried to renew a bout or two at sticks,
I’d do my best to force a handsome laugh
Under a ruddy crack from quarter-staff;
Northink I had a right to walk my woods,
Coy of a science that was Robin Hood's.
'Tis healthy, and a man's; and would assist
To make me wield a falchion in my fist,
Should foes arise who’d rather not be taught,
And war against the course of truth-exploring thought.”
This is a good passage. But what if Bill Gibbons should some
day pitch the ring for a fight between the Bush-Cove and Cabbage,
with the ropes belonging to the P. C. in Mr. Hunt's Park Fifty
miles from town is no security against such an invasion; and surely
Mr. Hunt would not countenance the Beaks. What would honest
Robin Hood have thought of the expression, “coy of a science " If
our Vice would consider the matter for a minute or two, he would be
sensible of the extreme ludicrousness of the most remote comparison
between himself and Robin Hood. He-with his yellow breeches,
silk hat, red slippers, and shabby-genteel surtout, picking his steps,
within sound of the dinner-bell, among a few beds of tulips and peomy-
POMIFRET. 353
roses, or selecting a dry spot of his “turf and trees,” that he might
“on the grass go rhyme,” or scribble a literary Examiner—and that
immortal Bowman of the Forest Tims, personating Bruce at Ban-
mockburn in our Tent, was nothing to the King of the Cockneys, with
a quarter-staff in his lily hand, enacting the Outlaw of Sherwood
Such pastimes, however, would be but rare, and never allowed to
imierfere with our bard's severer studies. For
“I’d write, because I could not help it; read
Much more, but nothing to oppress my head;
For heads are very different things at ease,
And forced to bear huge loads for families.
Still I would think of others; use my pen,
As fits a man and lettered citizen,
And so discharge my duty to the state;
But as to fame and glory, fame might wait,
Nevertheless, I’d write a work in verse,
Full of fine dreams and natural characters;
Eastern, perhaps, and gathered from a shore
Whence never poet took his world before.
To this sweet sphere I would retire at will,
To sow it with delight, and shape with skill;
Aad should it please me, and be roundly done,
I’d launch it into light, to sparkle round the sun.”
Now, high as our opinion is of our laureate's abilities and genius, we
offer to lay six guineas of wirewove gilt to a pound of whitey-brown
that not two hundred copies of this Eastern Tale are sold within the
two years. Instead of “sparkling round the sun,” it will lie a heavy
bale in a dark warehouse ; and if printed at his own risk, Mr. Hunt
will find himself some twenty or thirty pounds out of pocket. Our
Vice-Laureate must therefore give up all idea of “launching it into
light,” and confine himself to his Odes on our Birthday, and the An-
niversary Hymn on the création of the Magazine.
Pomfret, we are told, got into a row with some bishop or other, on
account of a suspicious line in his poem, which was thought to re-
commend a kept mistress, in preference to a wife. Mr. Hunt is face-
tious on this in a note; but it puzzles us to know, from the following
passage, whether he holds the opinion erroneously attached to the
“Parson.”
“In pleasure and in pain, alike I find
My face turn tenderly to womankind;
But then they must be truly women, not
Shes by the courtesy of a petticoat,
And left without inquiry to their claims,
Like haunted houses with their devil's dams.
I'd mend the worst of women, if I could,
But for a constancy, give me the good;—
I do not mean the formal or severe,
Much less the sly, who's all for character;
\OL. I.-25
354 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
But stich as, in all nations and all times,
Would be good creatures, fit for loving rhymes,
Rind, candid, simple, yet of sterling sense,
And of a golden age for innocence.
Of these my neighbors should have choice relations;
And I (though under certain alterations)
I too would bring—(though I dislike the name;
The Réverend Mr. Pomfret did the same ;
Let its wild flavor pass a line so tame;)—
A wife, or whatsoever better word .
The times, grown wiser, might by law afford
To the chief friend and partner of my board.
The dear, good she, by every habit then,_
Ties e'en when pleasant, very strong with men ;
Though your wise heads first make one's system wrong,
And then insist that only theirs last long,< .
Would finish, and make round in every part,
The natural harmony of her own wise heart;
And by the loss of something of her right
Of being jealous, consummate delight.
Gods! how I'd love her morning, noon, and night !”
Now, who and what the devil is this madam ? How is she to be
named ? Miss, or Mistress % What alteration does qur mysterious
friend mean to make on the Marriage Law 3 Has he communicated
with the Lord Chancellor, my Lord Ellenborough, Dr. Phillimore, and
the blacksmith at Gretna-Green 2 What is there peculiarly odious,
loathsome, and repulsive in the word “wife,” that Mr. Hunt should
publicly express his dislike of it, “in mild singing clothes #" What
word would he prostitute in its place º Or what is the matter with
the tympanum of his ear, or the core of his heart, that a word sacred
to all the rest of his species, should, to him, sound unhallowed ?
On he goes, - -
- “I’d have my mornings to myself. Ev’n ladies
Should not prevent me this, except on May-days'
Unless we fairly struck our tents awhile,
To stroll, like gipsies, round about the isle;
A plan I might be bent on, I confess,
Provided colds would give us leave, and dress,
And twenty other inconveniences.
I d give up even my house to live like them,
And have a health in every look and limb,
To which our best perceptions must be dim.
A gipsy's body, and a poet's mind,
Clear blood, quick foot, free spirit, and thought refined,
Perpetual airs to breathe, and loves to bind,-
Such were the last perfection of mankind.”
It does not seem to us, that the difficulties in the way of putting this
scheme into practice are at all insurmountable. What if some two or
three of the party should have a cold, cannot they take with them a
few boxes of lozenges, and a score of aperient powders? In a few days,
NORTH ON HUNT, * 355
all obstructions will be worked off; and the Blanket-Tent will murmur
beneath the moon with a mellower and more subdued Snore. In a
Blanket-Tent, we presume, the gipsying party mean to shelter; and
do not forget now to provide for yourselves a sufficient stock of horn
for the manufactory of ornamental spoons. As to dress, about which
Mr. Hunt seems to be so unhappy, let him boldly take with him his
yellow breeches in a bandbox; and every day before dinner, he can
put them on most rurally in a ditch by the roadside, exhibiting
“The last perfection of mankind,
A gipsy's body, and a poet's mind.”
As to the “twenty other inconveniences,” we consider them, what.
ever they are, quite imaginary; and the party will find both luxurieſ
and necessaries in every wood. .
On returning home from this pretty little wild excursion, Mr. Hunt
once more “takes up house;” and he really gives himself the charac-
ter of a very pleasant and amiable landlord.
“These mornings, with their work, should earn for me
My afternoon's content and liberty.
I’d have an early dinner, and a plain,
Not tempting much ‘to cut and come again;’
A little wine, or not, as health allow’d,
But for my friends, a stock to make me proud;
Bottles of something delicate and rare,
Which I should draw, and hold up with an air,
And set them on the table, and say, ‘There!’”
We were here most anxious to know the dimensions of Mr. Hunt's
dining-room, and the prevailing color of its furniture. But we are
only told,
“My dining-room should have some shelves of books,
If only for their grace and social looks—
Horace and Plutarch, Plato, and some more,
Who knew how to refine the tables' roar,
And sprinkled sweet philosophy between,
As meats are reconciled with slips of green.
I read infallibly, if left alone;
But after meat, an author may step down.
To settle a dispute or talk himself:—
I seem to twitch him now with finger from his shelf.”
Hitherto our opinions on all the principal questions in taste, man-
ners, morals, and religion, have been in unison; but now Mr. Hunt and
we cease to row in the same boat—for if we did, we should be pulling
away, when he was backing water. What will Odoherty say to his
Vice, when he reads,
“I would not sit in the same room to dine
And pass the evening; much less booze till nine,
A-
2
MOOTES AMBEOSLAN AE.
3
X
6
And then with a white waistcoat and red face,
Rise, with some stupid, mumbling, common-place,
And ‘join the ladies,’ bowing, for some tea,
With nauseous looks, half lust, half irony.”
The last line in this quotation speaks of something beyond our expe-
rience or observation—but may, nevertheless, show Mr. Hunt's famil-
iar knowledge of the human heart. To prevent the possibility of such
\normities, he suggests a very notable expedient.
“I’d have two rooms, in one of which, as weather
Or fancy chose, we all might come together,
With liberty for each one nevertheless
To wander in and out, and taste the lawns and trees,
One of the rooms should face a spot of spots,
Such as would please a squirrel with his nuts;
I mean a slope, looking upon a slope,
Wood-crown'd, and dell'd with turf, a sylvan cup.
Here, when our moods were quietest, we’d praise
The scenic shades, and watch the doves and jays.”
Besides the ordinary and necessary out-houses, such as hen-house,
pig-sty, dog-kennel, “and the rest,” Mr. Hunt proposes to build a
“chapel.” This made us wink again; for nothing makes him so ir-
ritable as to be suspected of Christianity. But list—oh I list—if ever
you did the dear Cockney love—
“Greek beauty should be there, and Gothic shade;
And brave as anger, gentle as a maid,
The name on whose dear heart my hope's worn cheek was laid.
Here, with a more immediate consciousness,
Would we feel all that blesses us, and bless;
And lean on one another's heart, and make
Sweet resolutions, ever, for love's sake;
And recognise the eternal Good and Fair,
Atoms of whose vast active spirit we are,
And try by what great yearnings we could force
The globe on which we live to take a more harmonious course."
But, gentle reader, out with your pocket-handkerchief—and if you
have any tears, prepare to shed them now. For, woe is me! and alack!
alack-a-day ! poor dear Mr. Hunt has taken to his bed—is going to
die—is dead.
“And when I died, 'twould please me to be laid
In my own ground's most solitary shade;
Not for the gloom, much less to be alone,
But solely as a room that still might seem my own.
There should my friends come still, as to a place
That held me yet, and bring me a kind face:
There should they bring me still their griefs and joys,
And hear in the swell'd breeze a little answering noise.
Had I renown enough, I’d choose to lie,
As Hafiz did, bright in the public eye,
TIII TORIES. 357."
With marble grace inclosed, and a green shade,
And young and old should read me, and be glad.”
No—no—no. It must not—shall not be. Buried in your own
grounds ! No-no–no It is too far from town—and the Wuster-
Heavy would be perpetually overloaded with pilgrims seeking the
shrine where thou wert laid. We insist on your submitting to a pub-
lic funeral, and in WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
*2+
Tickler. After all, we must succumb, Odoherty. North is North.
He is our master in all things, and above all in good humor.
Odoherty. An admirable lecture indeed. Put round the bottles,
and I shall repay Great Christopher with a chant.
Ommes. Do—do—do.
Odoherty (sings).
THE TORIES-A NATIONAL MELODY.”
1.
'Tis with joy and exultation I look round about this nation,
And contemplate the sum of her glories;
You must share in my delight, for whoever Is is right—
Oh! the prime ones are every where Tories.
Start whatever game ye please, you'll be satisfied in these
The just pride of the Island reposes—
Whigs in ambushes may chaff, but the Tories have the laugh
When it comes to the counting of noses,
Dear boys!
When it comes to the counting of noses.
2.
Can the gentlemen of Brookes' show a nose, now, like the Duke's,
Who squabashed every Marshal of Boney's;
And at last laid Boney's self on yon snug outlandish shelf,
Just with three or four rips for his cronies?
When the Hollands and the Greys see the garniture of bays
Nodding o'er this invincible Tory, w
Can they give the thing the by-go, by directing us to Vigo,
And parading their Corporal's story {
Poor Bob 14
Their negotiating Corporal's story ! .
3.
'Tis the same way in the law:—in the Chancellor's big paw
What are all these Whig-praters but rushes?
With one knitting of his brows every whelp of them he cows,
With one sneer all their balaam he crushes.
* By Dr. Maginn.—M. + Sir Robert Wilson.—M
358 - NOOTES AMBR()SIANAE.
,”
They got silkers from the Queen; but in ragged bombazeen
They must all be contented to jaw, now. -
Hence, the virulence that wags twenty clappers at “Old Bags,”
And behind his back calls him “Bashaw” now—
Poor dears!
They behind his back call him “Bashaw” now !
4
Stout Sir Walter in Belles Lettres has, I’m bold to say, no betters,
Even the base Buff-and-Blue don’t deny this— 2 *
Why?—Because their master, Constable, would be packing off for Dun-
stable,
The first pup of the pack that durst try this.
“You shan’t breakfast, dine, nor sup” ties their ugly muzzles up
From the venture of such a vagary;
But a sulky undergrowl marks the malice of the foul,
And we see and enjoy their quandary,
Poor curs!
We all see and enjoy their quandary.
!---
5.
Thus, in Letters, Law, and Arms, we exhibit peerless charms;
We in Parliament equally triumph—
When to Canning we but point, Brougham's nose jumpeth out of joint,
And Sir Jammy Macgerald" must cry “humph I’’
Then we’ve Peel, too, and we’ve Croker, who upraised the “holy poker"
O'er thy crockery, lately, Joe Hume!
'Neath our eloquence and wit, Duck-in-thunder-like they sit,
And await the completion of doom—
Poor things!
They await the completion of doom.
6
We've the President to paint—we've the Wilberforce for Saint—
And our sculptors are Flaxman and Chantrey !
On the stage we've Young and Terry—ay, and Liston the arch-merry,
And great Kitchener chants in our pantry!—
Mong the heroes of the ring, we’ve a Jackson and a Spring—
We've a Bull to gore all the Whig news-folk—
Among preachers we’ve a Phillpotts—an O'Doherty 'mong Swill-pots—
And Saul Rothschild to tower o'er the Jews-folk,
Dear boys!
Baron Rothschild to tower o'er the Jews-folk.
'7.
What Review can Whig-sty furnish, but is sure to lose its burnish
When our Quarterly's splendors we hang up?
Or what Magazine's to mention, of the slenderest pretension,
Beside CHRISTOPHER's princely prime bang-up:
There's but ONE besides in Britain, I consider 'twould be fitting
To name after and over that rare man,
* Sir James Mackintosh.—M.
THE TORTES. 359
'Tis the Tory on the throne—for his heart is all our own,
And 'tis this keeps their elbows so bare, man,
Poor souls |
Their hearts low, and their breeches so bare, man!
8.
Oh! with joy and exultation we look round about the nation,
And contermplate the sum of her glories.
Oh! how just is our delight! Oh! whoever Is is right,
Oh! the prime ones are every where Tor1Es |
Look whatever way you please, ’tis in these, and only these,
All the pride of the Island reposes— .
We’ve º corn and they’ve the chaff—they’ve the scorn and we've the
augh, & *
They've the nettles and ours are the roses,
Dear boys.
They've the nettles and we have the roses.
No. XII.--OCTOBER, 1823.
SCENE I.—The Chaldee Closet.
Enter North and MR. AMBROSE.
Mr. Ambrose. I hope, my dear sir, you will not be offended; but I
cannot conceal my delight in seeing you lighten my door again, after
two months' absence. God biess you, sir, it does my heart good to
see you so strong, so fresh, so ruddy. I feared this wet autumn might
have been too much for you in the country. But Heaven be praised
—Heaven be praised—here you are again, my gracious sir! What
can I do for you?—What will you eat?—What will you drink 2–Oh
dear! let me stir the fire; the poker is too heavy for you.
North. Too heavy —Devil a bit. Why, Ambrose, I have been in
training, out at Mr. Hogg's, you know. Zounds, I could fell a buffalo.
Well, Ambrose, how goes the world !
Mr. Ambrose. No reason to complain, sir. Oysters never were
better; and the tap runs clear as amber. Let me lang up your crutch,
my dear sir. There now, I am happy. The house looks like itself
now. Goodness me, the padding has had a new cover ! But the
wood-work has seen service.
North. That it has, Ambrose. Why, you rogue, I got a three
pronged fork fastened to the end on’t, and I used it as a lister.
Mr. Ambrose. A lister, sir?—I ask your pardon.
North. Ay, a lister. I Smacked it more than once into the side of
a salmon; but the water has been so drumly, that Sandy Ballantyne
himself could do little or nothing.
Mr. Ambrose. Nothing surprises me now, sir, that you do. We
have a pretty pheasant in the larder. Shall I venture to roast him for
your honor ? " .
North. At nine o'clock I expect a few friends; so add a stub-
ble-goose, some kidneys, and hodge-podge; for the night is chilly;
and a delicate stomach like mine, Ambrose, requires coaxing. Glen-
livet.
Mr. Ambrose. Here, sir, is your accustomed caulker.
(NoFTH drinks, while MR. AMBROSE keeps looking upon him
with a smile of delighted deference, and exit.)
North (solus). What paper have we here 4–Morning Chronicle,
THE MORNING CIIRONICLE. 361
Copyright sold for £40,000. A lie.*—Let me sec; any little traitor-
ous copy of bad verses? Not one. Tommy Moore and Jack Bowring
are busy otherwise, Poor occupation for gentlemen, sneering at
Church and King. “That wretched creature, Ballasteros " Nay, nay;
this won't do; I am getting drowsy.--(Snores.)
Jºnter MR. AMBRosB. A sound of feet in the lobby.
Mr. Ambrose. Mr. Tickler, sir—Mr. Mullion—and a strange gen-
tleman. Beg your pardon, gentlemen; tread softly. IIe SLEEPs.
Bonus dormitat Homerus,
Strange Gentleman. Wonderful city. Modern Athens indeed. Ne-
ver heard a more apt quotation.
Tickler (slap-bang on North's slowlder). Awake, arise, or be for
ever fallen Mullion, shake him by the collar; or a slight kick on
the shins. Awake, Samson; the Philistines are upon thee!
(Nowth yawns ; stretches himself; sits erect; stares about
him ; rises and bows.)
Mullion. Capital subject, faith, for Wilkie. A choice bit. Odds
Safe us, what a head Gie's your haun, my man. Hooly, hooly; your
nieve's like a vice. You deevil, you hae jirted the bluid frae my finger-
ends.
North. Mr. Tickler, you have not introduced me to the young gen-
tleman.
Tickler. Mr. Vivian Joyeuse.}
North. Young gentleman—happy to take you by the hand. I hope
you have no objections to smoking. wº
Joyeuse. I have no objections to any thing; but I shall hardly be
on an equal footing with you Sons of the Mist. -- ~ *
North (to Tickler). Gentlemanly lad.—(Re-enter AMBROSE.)—
* Mr. James Perry, “a canny Scotchman,” had made the Morning Chronicle one of the
daily journals of London. It was the recognised organ of the Whig or Opposition party. He
was on intimate terms with the leaders of that party, and had shown, more than once, that he
was to be trusted. In his paper appeared the earliest, and some of the best, of Moore's polit-
ical squibs. There, also, did Byron sometimes appear. The editorial part was ably performed,
and the dramatic critic was no less a person than William Hazlitt. Perry was the ſounder of
the European Magazine in 1782. He died in 1821, and the Chronicle was then sold to Mr.
Clements, proprietor of the Observer and Bell’s Life, which continue to have large circula-
tion. Clements paid £40,000 for the copyright, presses and types. The paper gradually de-
clined in his hands, until after having had it about thirteen years, he sold it to Sir John East-
hope, a stock-broker, about the period (Nov. 1834) when The Times suddenly turned round,
on Peel's accession to office, andebecame Conservative instead of Radical. The Chronicle, for
a time, seemed likely to resume its position as a Liberal organ, but its proprietor was believed
to have used part of its machinery (foreign correspondents) for stock-jobbing purposes, and
the shadow settled on it again. It was purchased from him by a party of gentlemen possessed
of much wealth, who forthwith gave it a Puseyite politico-religious leaning. This it retains, but
it is said that Baron Rothschild, of Ilondon, has entered into the proprietorship. At present,
its leading articles have no weight, but its foreign correspondence is generally admirable.
The article in the Edinburgh Review, on the “Morning Chronicle,” was written by Hazlitt.—M.
+ In Knight's Quarterly Maſſazine, one of the best periodicals ever published in London,
there was an imitation of the Noctes, lively, well written, and with the character of each speaker
well individualized. Mr. Vivian Joyeuse was the mom de plume assumed by one of Knight's
contributors. Macaulay, Praed, John Moultrie, Chauncey Hare Townshend, Charles Knight,
(Editor and publisher,) were among the leading writers in this periodical.—M. -
362 - NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Hollo! Ambrose? What now 8 . Have you seen a ghost 3 or has the
cat run off with the pheasant? If so, I trust he has justured his lives,
Mr. Ambrose. Here is a gentleman in the lobby, inquiring for Mr.
Tickler. .
'ickler. Show him in. Hope it is not that cursed consignment of
cotton from Manchester—raw-twist, and r
THE ENGLISH OPIUM.
EATER –huzza huzzal (Three hearty cheers.)
JWnter THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER” and THE ETTRICR SHEPIIERD.
The Shepherd. Thank ye, lads; that's me you're cheering. Haud
your hauns, ye hallan-shakers, or my drums will split. Sit down, sit
down; my kite's as toom as the Cornal's head. I've had nae four-
hours, and only a chack wi' Tam Grieve, as I came through Peebles.
You'll hae ordered supper, Mr. North
North. My dear late English Opium-Eater, this is an unexpected,
unhoped for happiness. I thought you had been in Constantinople.
The Opium-Eater. You had no reason whatever for any such
thought. No doubt I might have been at Constantinople—and I wish
that I had been—but I have not been ; and I am of opinion that you
have not been there since we last parted, any more than myself.
Have you, sir?
The Shepherd. I dinna ken, sir, where you hae been ; but, hech,
sirs, yon bit Opium Tract's a desperate interesting confession. It's
perfectly dreadfu', yon pouring in upon you o' oriental imagery. But
nae wunner. Sax thousand draps o' lowdnam | It's as muckle, I
fancy, as a bottle o' whusky. I tried that experiment mysel, after
1eading the wee wud wicked wark, wi' five hunner draps, and I couped
ower, and continued in ae snore frae Monday night till Friday morn-
ing. But I had naething to confess; naething at least that wad gang
into words; for it was a week-lang, dull, dim dwawm o' the mind,
with a kind o' soun' bumming in my lugs; and clouds, clouds, clouds
hovering round and round; and things o' sight, no made for the sight;
and an awful smell, like the rotten sea; and a confusion between the
right hand and the left; and events o' auld lang syne, like the tor-
ments o' the present hour, wi' naething to mark ony thing by; and
doubts o' being quick or dead; and something rouch, rouch, like the
fleece o' a ram, and motion as of everlasting earthquake; and nae re-
* Thomas de Quincey, whose “Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” in the London Mag-
azime, immediately obtained him high repute as a writer, has done nothing half as good,
during his four and thirty years of authorship, as that, his first production. Well learned in
ancient and modern tongues, he has written a vast quantity, but when his transcendental and
unintelligible metaphysics are weeded out, the actual substance of his works will be in a small
space. With the German school of philosophy he is well acquainted, and has endeavored,
chieſly by translation, to make his countrymen familiar with it. He has written a great deal
—chiefly for magazines. Sometimes he is extremely graphic and picturesque, but his great
fault is diffuseness, want of concentration, and an inability to discuss a subject without di-
gressions—ſt propos to nothing. His writings have been published in America in a collected
ſorum; this has not been done-in England, where only a selection could obtain a sale.—M.
WORDSWORTEI. ' . 363
membrance o' my ain Christian name; and a dismal thought that I
was converted into a quadruped cretur, wi' four feet; and a sair drowth,
aye sook, sooking awa’ at empty win’; and the lift doukin down to
Smoor me; and the moon within half a yard o' my nose; but no
just like the moon either. O Lord safe us! I'm a grewing to think
o't; but how could I conFEss? for the sounds and the sights were
baith shadows; and whare are the words for expressing the dis-
tractions o' the immaterial soul drowning in matter, and wastling wi'
unknown power to get ance mair a steady footing on the greensward
o' the waking world ! -
Mullion. Hear till him—hear till him. Ma faith, that's equal to
the best bit in a' the Confessions. *
The Shepherd. Haud your tongue, you sumph; it's nae sic things.
Mr. Opium-Eater, I used aye to admire you, years sin syne; and never
doubted you wad come out wi' some wark, ae day or ither, that wad
gar the Gawpus glower. -
The Opium-Eater. Gar the Gapus glower —Pray, who is the
Gapus’
The Shepherd. The public, sir; the public is the Gawpus. But
what for are you sae metapheesical, man There's just nae sense
ava in metapheesics; they're a clean nonsense. But how’s Wuds-
worth ; •
The Opium-Eater. I have not seen him since half-past two o'clock
on the 17th of September. As far as I could judge from a transi-
tory interview, he was in good health and spirits; and I, think, fatter
than he has been for some years. “Though that's not much.”
The Shepherd. You lakers are clever chiels; I'll never deny that;
but you are a conceited, upsetting set, ane and a' o' you. Great ye-
gotists; and Wudsworth the warst o' ye a'; for he'll alloo nae merit
to ony leevin Cretur but himsel. He's a triflin Cretur in yon Excursion;
there's some bonny spats here and there; but nae reader can thole
aboon a dozen pages o't at a screed, without whumbling ower on his
seat. Wudsworth will never be popular. Naebody can get his blank
poems aff by heart; they're ower wordy and ower windy, tak my
word for’t. Shackspear will say as muckle in four lines, as Wuds-
worth will say in forty. -
The Opium-Eater. It is a pity that our great living poets cannot
be more lavish of their praise to each other.”
The Shepherd. Me no lavish o' praise ? I think your friend a great
man—but *
North. I wish, my dear Shepherd, that you would follow Mr.
* De Quincey has written a great deal about Wordsworth, apparently as his friend and ad-
mirer, but it may be noticed that a certain deprecatory tone runs through his description of
the man and estimate of the poet. Wordsworth and his friends, I know, were ill-pleased
with this, which—from early and extended kindnesses to De Quincey—Wordsworth had no.
teason to expect.—M. + .*
364 NoCTÉs AMBROSLANE.
Wordsworth's example, and confine yourself to poetry. Oh! for an
other Queen's Wake.
The Shepherd. I’ll no confine myself to poetry for ony man.
Neither does he. It's only the other day that he published “A Guide
to the Lakes,” and he might as well have called it a Treatise on Church
Music. And then his prose work about Spain” is no half as gude as a
leading paragraph in Jamie Ballantyne's Journal. The sense is waur,
and sae is the wording—and yet sae proud and sae pompous, as gin
name kent about peace and war but himsel, as gin he could fecht a
campaign better than Wellington, and negotiate wi' foreign courts
like anither Canning. Southey writes prose better than Wudsworth,
a thousand and a thousand times. Wha's that glowering at me in
the corner ? Wha are ye, my lad?
Mr. Vivian Joyeuse. I am something of a nondescript.
The Shepherd. An Englisher—an Englisher—I’ve a gleg lug for
the deealicks. You're frae the South—but nae Cockney. You're
ower weel-spoken and ower weel-faured. Are ye married ?
Mr. Joyeuse. I fear that I am. I am fresh from Gretna.
The Shepherd. Never mind—never mind—you're a likely laddie—
and hae a blink in thae eyne o' yours that shows Smeddum. What
are all the people in England doing just the now %
Mr. Joyeuse. All reading No. II. of Knight's Quarterly Magazine.
North. A very pleasant miscellany. Tickler, you have seen tha
work. Mr. Joyeuse, your very good health, and success to Knight's
Quarterly Magazine.f. (General breeze.)
The Shepherd. Did ony body ever see siccan a blush Before you
hae been a contributor for a year, you'll hae lost a' power of redden-
ing in the face. You may as weel try then to blush wi' the palm o'
your hand.
Tickler. Mullion, who knows every thing and every body, brought
Mr. Joyeuse to Southside, and I have only to hope that his fair bride
will not read him a curtain-lecture to-night, when she hears where he
has been, among the madcaps. -
The Shepherd. Curtain-lecture | We are a' ower gude contributors
to be fashed wi' any daft nonsense o’ that sort. Na—na—but what's
this Quarterly Magazine?—I never heard tell o't.
North. Why, I will speak for Mr. Joyeuse. It is a gentlemanly
miscellany—got together by a clan of young scholars, who look upon
the world with a cheerful eye, and all its ongoings with a spirit of
hopeful kindness. I cannot but envy them their gay juvenile temper,
* In 1809, with an intention of urging that the Peninsular War be vigorously carried on,
(with a view to checking the vast puissance of Napoleon,) Wordsworth published a prose pain-
phlet on the relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal to each other.—M.
t Knight's Quarterly Magazine died aſter completing three volumes. It is very difficult to
be obtained now, at any price, in Frigland, and is curious as containing, among other things,
as iunch of Macaulay's early poetry and prose as would fill a volume.—M.
KNIGHT's QUARTERLY. 265
so free from gall and spite; and am pleased to the heart's core with
their elegant accomplishments. Their egotism is the joyous freedom
of exulting life; and they see all things in a glow of enthusiasm which
makes ordinary objects beautiful, and beauty still more beauteous.
Do you wish for my advice, my young friend ?
Mr. Joyeuse. Upon honor, Sir Christopher, I am quite overpowered.
Forgive me, when I confess that I had my misgivings on entering
your presence. But they are all vanished. Believe me that I value
most highly the expression of your good-will and friendly sentinents
towards myself and coadjutors.
North. Love freedom—continue, I ought to say, to love it; and
prove your love, by defending all the old sacred institutions of this
great land. Keep aloof from all association with base ignorance, and
presumption, and imposture. Let all your sentiments be kind, gener-
ous and manly, and your opinions will be safe, for the heart and the
head are the only members of the Holy Alliance, and woe unto all men
when they are not in union. Give us some more of your classical
learning—more of the sparkling treasures of your scholarship, for in
that all our best miscellanies are somewhat deficient, (mine own not
excepted,) and you may here lead the way. Are you not Etonians,
Wykeamists, Oxonians, and Cantabs, and in the finished grace of
manhood º Don't forget your classics.
The Shepherd. Dinna mind a single word that Mr. North says
about classics, Mr. Joyous. Gin ye introduce Latin and Greek into
your Magazine, you'll clean spoil’t. There's naething like a general
interest taken in the classics throughout the kintra; and I whiles
jalouse that some praise Homer and IIorace, and Polydore Virgil, and
“the rest,” that ken but little about them, and couldna read the
crabbed Greek letters aff-hand without stuttering.
The Opium-Eater. All the magazines of the day are deficient;
first, in classical literature, secondly, in political economy, and thirdly,
in psychology.
The Shepherd. Tuts, tuts.
Tickler. Mr. Joyeuse, I agree with North in strenuously recom-
mending you and your friends to give us classical dissertations, notes,
notices, Conjectures, imitations, translations, and what not. Confound
the Cockneys they will be prating on such points—and have smug-
gled their cursed pronunciation into Olympus. There is County Tims
proceeding, step by step, from Robert Bruce to Jupiter Tonans; and
addressing DianAR as familiarly as he would a nymph of Covent-
Garden, coming to redeem two silver teaspoons.” There was John
Keats enacting ApollAR, because he believed that personage to have
* The Scotch and the Irish very contemptuously regard the Cockney mispronunciation of
words ending with a vowel. To say Juliar, Appollar, sofar, Annar-Maria”, and lor, for
Julia, Apollo, sofa, Anna-Maria, law, &c., is true Cockney;-but they have not an idear of
the error they thus fall into. On the American stage, where so many English performers are to
366 NOOTES AMBROSIANAS.
been, like himself, an apothecary, and sickening, because the public
was impatient of his drugs. There is Barry, quite beside himself with
the spectacle of Deucalion and Psyche peopling the earth anew by
chucking stones over their shoulders—in my humble opinion, I con-
fess, a most miserable pastime;—and there is King Leigh absolutely
enlisting Mars into the Hampstead heavy dragoons, and employing
him as his own ORDERLY.
The Shepherd. Capital, Mr. Tickler, capital. I aye like you when
you are Wutty. Gang on—let me clap you on the back—slash awa
at the Cockneys, for they are a squad I scunner at; and oh! but you
hae in troth put them down wi' a vengeance
Tickler. Hazlitt is the most loathsome, Hunt the most ludicrous.
Pygmalion is so brutified and besotted now, that he walks out into
the public street, enters a bookseller's shop, mounts a stool, and repre-
sents Priapus in Ludgate Hill.” King Leigh would not do this for
the world. From such enormities he is preserved, partly by a sort of
not unamiable fastidiousness, but chiefly by a passionate admiration of
his yellow breeches, in which he feels himself satisfied with his own
divine perfections. I do not dislike Leigh Hunt by any manner of
means. By the way, Mr. Joyeuse, there are some good stanzas about
him, in Knight—for example:
They’ll say—I shan’t believe 'em—but they’ll say,
That Leigh's become what once he most abhorr'd,
Has thrown his independence all away,
And dubb'd himself toad-eater to a lord;
And though, of course, you'll hit as hard as they,
I fear you’ll find it difficult to ward
Their poisoned arrows off—you'd best come back,
Before the Cockney kingdom goes to wrack.
The Examiner's grown dull as well as dirty,
The Indicator's sick, the Liberal dead—
I hear its readers were some six-and-thirty; +
But really 'twas too stupid to be read. .
'Tis plain your present partnership has hurt ye;
Poor brother John “looks up, and is not fed,”
For scarce a soul will purchase, or get through one,
E'en of his shilling budgets of Don Juan.
North. Do you quote from memory ! I remember a good stanza in
Don Juan about John Keats, Hazlitt's Apollo and Apothecary.
be seen and heard, the Cockneys proper may at once be detected by this abuse of the conso-
nant 7".-M.
* William Hazlitt, so many years persecuted by Blºckwood, was a quiet, reserved student,
who seldom mingled in society, was rarely personal in his writings, and had broken down his
nervous system by excessive fondness for strong tea.—M.
t Of Leigh 1 [unt's repeated efforts to estabiish a periodical, which it would pay him to con-
tinue, The Indicator was the best. It was crewded with affectations, (or worse, elce it would
not have been II unt'3,) but there was a freshness running through it which was re-al. Hunt
loved books and nature, and liked to write on both subjects.—M. -
&
MAGA, - - 367
John Reats, who was killed off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible—without Greek,
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak,
Poor fellow I his was an untoward fate;
'Tis strange, the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.
Tickler. Exactly so. Now, what a pretty fellow is the publisher of
Don Juan l John Keats was the especial friend of himself and
brother; and they both raved like bedlamites against all who were at
all sharp upon the poor apothecary. But what will not the base love
of filthy lucre –Alas! his lordship is driven to degradation. And
who but this crew would become parties to a libel on their own best-
beloved dead friend ?
The Shepherd. There's nae answering questions like these. The
puir devil must be dumb. A crabbed discontented creature o' a nee-
bor o' ours takes in the Examiner; and I see they are aye yammering
and compleening upon you lads here, but canna speak out. They are
a' tongue-tied, and can only girn, girn, girn.” Blackwood here, and
Blackwood there, but nothing made out or specified. Bandy-legged
Baldy Dinmont himself allows they are just like a parcel o' weans
frighted at their dominie, when Christopher appears, and lose a' power
to bar the maister out, when they see the taws ance mair, and begin
dinglan in their doups in the very fever o' an imaginary skelping.
North. It is all very true, my dear Shepherd. I often think that
our weak points have never yet been attacked, for is it not singular
that no impression has ever yet been made on any part of our whole
line? Good gracious! only think on our shameful violation of truth!
Why, that of itself, if properly exposed, and held out to universal
detestation, would materially diminish our sale in this great matter-
of-fact age and country. Who, like us, has polluted the sources of
history? -
The Shepherd. Hush, hush!—We dinna ken Mr. Joyous weel
aneuch yet to lippen to him. Perhaps he'll betray the sacred con-
ſidence o' private friendship! Isna that the way they word it?
Mr. Joyeuse. I shall make no rash promises. My reply to the
Shepherd shall be in a quotation. Byron loquitur.
They err'd, as aged men will do; but by
And by we'll talk of that; and if we don’t,
"Twill be because our motion is not high
Of politicians, and their double front,
* Girn—to grin.—M.
368 NOOTES AMDROSIANAé.
Who live by lies, yet dare not boldly lie:—
Now, what I love in women is, they won’t,
Or can't do otherwise, than lie; but do it
So well, the very truth seems falsehood to it.
And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade; and I defy
Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put
A fact without some leaven of a lie.
The very shadow of true truth would shut
Up annals, revelations, poesy,
And prophecy—except it should be dated
Some years before the incidents related.
North. Well, well, we stand excused like our neighbors, the rest
of the human race. But what say you to our gross inconsistency, in
raising a mortal one day to the skies, and another pulling him an angel
down? In one article you are so saluted in the nose with the bagpipe
of our praise, “that you cannot contain, you ninny, for affection;” and
at p. 36 you find yourself so vilified, vituperated, tarred and feathered,
that you are afraid even to run for it, and would fain hide yourself for
a month in a dark closet. Who can defend this?
Tickler. I can. The fault is not with us, but it lies in the constitu-
tion of human nature. For, to-day, a given man is acute, sensible,
enlightened, eloquent, and so forth. We praise and pet him according-
ly—smooth him down the back along with the hair—give him a sop
—tell him he is a clever dog, and call him Trusty, or Help, or Nep-
tune, or Jupiter. The very next day we see the same given man in a
totally different predicament, that is to say, utterly senseless, worse
than senseless, raving. What do we do then? We either eye him
askance, and not wishing to be bitten, and to die of the hydrophobia,
make the best of our way home, or to Ambrose's, without saying a
word; or we take a sapling and drub him off; or if the worst come
to the worst, we shoot him dead upon the spot. Call you this incon-
sistency Not it indeed. Shall I illustrate our conduct by examples?
North. There is no occasion for that at present. But what do you
say to our CoARSENEss?
The Shepherd. Ay, ay, Mr. Tickler, what do you say to your coorse-
sess %
Tickler. In the meantime, James, read that, and you will know what
I say about yours. (Gives him a critique cn the Three Perils.) But
as to the occasional coarsenesses to be found in Maga, I am, from the
very bottom (no coarseness in that, I hope) of my heart, sorry to see
them, and much sorrier to think that I should myself have written too
many of them. They must be disgusting occasionally to delicate
minds; nay, even to minds not delicate. And I verily believe, that to
Englishmen in general, this is our very greatest fault. With sincere
TFTE SYMPOSIUM. 369
sorrow, if not contrition, do I, for one, confess my fault; and should I
ever write any more for the Magazine, I hope to keep myself within
the limits of decorum. Intense wit will season intense coarseness; but
then I am at times very coarse indeed, without being witty at all ; and
am convinced, that some passages in my letters, although these are on
the whole popular, and deservedly so, have been read by not a few whom
I would be most unwilling to offend, with sentiments of the deepest
and most unalloyed disgust.
Mr. Joyeuse. Not at all, Mr. Tickler—not at all. Believe it not, my
dear sir. Coarse you may occasionally be, but you are always witty.
The Opium-Eater. I have always admired Mr. Tickler's letters, there
is such a boundless overflow of rejoicing fancies; and what if one par-
ticular expression, or sentence, even paragraph, be what is called coarse,
(of coarseness as a specific, definite, and determinate quality of thought,
I have no clear idea,) it is lost, swallowed up, and driven along in the
ever-flowing tide; and he who should be drowned in trying to pick it
up, could never, in my opinion, be a fit subject for resuscitation, but
would deserve to be scouted not only by the humane, but by the Hu-
mane Society. If I were permitted to say freely what are your great-
est faults, I should say that
Enter MR. AMBROSE, just in the nick of time.
Mr. Ambrose. Gentlemen, supper's on the table.
North. Mr. Joyeuse, lend me your arm. . -
(Eveuni, followed by the Opium-Eater, Tickler, the Shep-
herd, and Mullion.) •
SCENE II—Blue Parlor.
Tickler. Now for the goose. A ten-pounder. All our geese are
swans. There, saw ye ever a bosom sliced more dexterously —Off go
the legs—smack goes the back into shivers—so much for the doup.
Reach me over the apple sauce. Mullion, give us the old pun upon
the sage. Who chooses goose ?
Mullion. I'll trouble you for the breast and legs, wi'a squash o' the
apple crowdy. Ambrose, bread and potatoes, and a pot of porter.
The Opium-Eater. Mr. Ambrose, be so good as to bring me coffee.
Shepherd. Coffee !! What the deevil are you gaun to do wi'
coffee at this time o’ night, man 3 Wha ever soops upon coffee ?
Come here, Mr. Ambrose, tak him ower this trencher o' het kidneys, I
never hae touched them.
Tickler. Is your pullet tender, Kit There be vulgar souls who pre-
fer barn-door fowl to pheasants, mutton to venison, and cider to cham-
pagne. s: º be who prefer corduroy to cassimere breeches, and
WOL. I.-2 - -
...”
a’
370 NoCTES AMBROSIANAE.
the “Blue and Yellow” to green-gowned Maga.” To such souls, your
smooth-shining transparent grape is not so sweet as your Small red
hairy gooseberry. The brutes cannot dine without potatoes to their
fish
The Shepherd. What say ye, Mr. Tickler ? wadna you eat potatoes
to sawmont? I thought he had kent better than to place gentility on
sic like gruns. At the Duke's, every one did just as he liked best
himself, and tell't the flunkies to take their plates to ilka dish that
pleased their e'e, without ony restraint. But ye haena been muckle in
hee life these last fifty years. -
Tickler. My dear Mullion, I beseech you not to draw your knife
through your mouth in that most dangerous fashion : you’ll never stop
till ye cut it from ear to ear. For the sake of our common humanity,
use your fork.
The Shepherd. Never mind him, Mullion—he's speaking havers. I
hae used my knife that way ever since I was fed upon flesh, and I never
cut my mouth to any serious extent, above a score times in my life.
(MR. AMBRose sets down a silver coffee-pot, and a plate of
muffins, before the Opium-Eater.) -
The Opium-Eater. I believe, Mr. Hogg, that it has been ascertained
by medical men, through an experience of some thousand years, that
no eater of hot and heavy suppers ever yet saw his grand climacteric.
I do not mention this as any argument against hot and heavy suppers,
except to those persons who are desirous of attaining a tolerable old
age. You, probably, have made up your mind to die before that pe-
riod; in which case, not to eat hot and heavy suppers, if you like them,
would truly be most unreasonable, and not to be expected from a man
of your acknowledged intelligence and understanding. I beg now to
return your kidneys, with an assurance that I have not touched them,
and they still seem to retain a considerable portion of animal heat.
The Shepherd. I dinna ken what's the matter wi' me the night, but
I'm no half so hungry as I expeckit. Thae muffins look gaen invit-
ing; the coffee comes gurgling out wi' a brown Sappy sound. I won-
der whare Mr. Ambrose got that Team. A spider might crawl on’t.
I wush, sir, you would gie us a single cup, and a wheen muffins. (The
Opium-Eater benignantly complies.)
North. Pray, Tickler, what sort of an eater do you suppose Barry
}ornwall ?
Tickler. The merry-thought of a chick—three tea-spoonfuls of
peas, the eighth part of a French roll, a sprig of cauliflower, and an
almost imperceptible dew of parsley and butter, would, I think, dine
the author of “The Deluge.” By the way, there is something surely
* Maga, as published in Edinburgh, is clothed in a covering which, iſ not exactly entitling it
to the name of “green-gowned Magaſ” may be said to be the color of sage.—M.
t Ream—cream.—M.
OPIUM. 371
not a little absurd in the notion of a person undertaking the “Flood,”
whom the slightest shower would drive under a balcony, or into a
hackney-coach. I have no doubt that he carried “The Deluge” in
his pocket to Colburn, under an umbrella. -
North. My dear Tickler, you cannot answer the very simplest ques-
tion without running into your usual personalities. What does Byron
dine on, think ye 3
Tickler. Byron —Why, bull-beef and pickled salmon, to be sure.
What else would he dine on ? I never suspected, at least accused
him, of cannibalism. And yet, during the composition of Cain, there
is no saying what he may have done.
The Shepherd. I’m thinking, sir, when Tam Muir was penning his
Loves of the Angels, that he fed upon calf-foot jeelies, stewed prunes,
the dish they ca' curry, and oysters. These last are desperate for that.
Tickler. Did you ever hear it said that Mr. Rogers never eat animal
food, nor drank spirits
North. I have seen him do both. -
Tickler. Well, you astonish me. I could not otherwise have be-
lieved it. -
Mullion. Never, never, never in all my born days, did I eat such
a glorious plateful of kidneys as that which Mr. Opium-Eater lately
transmitted to me through the hands of our Ambrose. I feel as if I
could bump my crown against the ceiling. I hae eaten the apple o'
the tree of knowledge. I understand things I never had the least
ettling of before. Will ony o' ye enter into an argument? Choose
your subject, and I'm your man, in theology, morality, anatomy, chem-
"istry, history, poetry, and the fine arts. My very language is Eng-
lish, whether I will or no, and I am overpowered with a power of
words.
The Opium-Eater (aside to TICKLER). I fear that Mr. Mullion's
excessive animation is owing to a slight mistake of mine. I carelessly
allowed a few grains of opium to slide out of my box into the plate of
kidneys which Mr. Hogg sent for my delectation; and ere I could pick
them out, Mr. Ambrose wafted away the poisoned dish to Mr. Mullion,
at a signal, I presume, understood between the parties.
Mullion. I say, Opium-Eater, or Opossum, or what do they call
yon, did you ever see a unicorn ? What signifies an Egyptian ibis, or
crocodile of the Nile? I have a unicorn at livery just now in Rose
Street. Tickler, will you mount Noble subject for John Watson.*
No man paints a unicorm better.
North. John Watson paints every thing well. But (aside to THE
SHEPHERD) saw ye ever such extraordinary eyes in a man's head as in
Mullion's 3 * -
* Now Sir John Watson Gordon, President of the Scottish Academy of the Fine Arts, and
one of the best portrait-painters in Great Britain.-M.
372 NOCTES ANIL3ROSTAN HE.
Mullion. Francis Maximus Macnab's Theory of the Universe is the
only sensible book I ever read. Mr. Ambrose—Mr. Ambrose—bring
me the Scotsman. * -
The Shepherd (to NonTII). I have heard there was something wrang
wi' Mullion at school; and it's breaking out you see noo. He's gane
clean wud. I wus he māyna bite.
Tickler. Sell your unicorn to Polito, Mullion.
Mullion. Polito —ay, a glorious collection of wild beasts—a perfect
House o' Commons; where each tribe of the beasts has its represen-
tative. Mild, majestic, towzy-headed, big-pawed, lean-hurdied lion,
saw ye ever Mungo Park 3 Tiger, tiger, royal tiger—jungle-jumping,
son-o’-Sit-DIector-Munro-devouring tiger 1 (Rises.) -
The Shepherd. Whare are you gaun ?—Wait an hour or twa, and
I’ll see ye hame. - -
Mullion. I am off to the Pier of Leith. What so beautiful as the
sea at midnight ! A glorious constellation art thou, O Great Bear !
Eſurra ! Hurra ! - g (Evit, without his hat.)
The Opium-Eater. I must give this case, in a note, to a new edi-
tion of my Confessions. If Mr. Mullion did really eat all the kidneys,
he must now have in his stomach that which is about equal to five
hundred and seventy drops of laudanum. - * .
The Shepherd. Eat a' the kidneys —That he did, I’ll swear.
The Opium-Eater. Most probably, Mr. Mullion will fall into a state
of utter insensibility in a couple of hours. Convulsions may follow,
and then—death.
The Shepherd. Deevil the fears. Mullion 'ill dee nane. I’ll wauger
he'll be eating twa eggs to his breakfast the morn, and a shave o’ the
red roun’; lurking frae him a' the time wi' een as sharp as darnin'
needles, and paunin' in his cup for mair sugar. º
Tickler. Suppose now that the conversation be made to take a lite-
rary or philosophical turn. Mr. North, what is your opinion on the
influence of literature on human life 2
North. Why, after all, a love or knowledge of literature forms but
a small and unimportant part of the character either of man or woman.
ſłave we not all dear friends whom we admit to our most sacred con-
fidence, who never take up a printed book (Maga excepted) from
year's end to year's end ? How few married women remember, or at
least care a straw about, any thing they read in their maidenhood,
when in search of husbands ! Take any lady, young, old, or middle-
aged, and examine the dear creature with a few cross-questions, and
you will not fail to be delighted with her consummate ignorance of all
that is written in books. But what of that ? Do you like, love, es-
teem, despise, or hate her, the more or less %–Not a whit.* -
* “And oh, ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck'd you all !”—M.
§
Pl, RITY OF SCOT"TISH SONG. - 373
The Opium Eater. The female mind knows intuitively all that is
really worth knowing ; and the performance of duty with women is
simply an outward manifestation of an inward state agreeable to na-
ture; both alike unconsciously, it may be, existing in perfect adapta-
tion to the peculiar circumstances of life. Books may, or may not,
cherish and direct the tendencies of a femalé character, naturally fine,
delicate, pure, and also strong; but most certain is it that books are
not the sine-qua-non condition of excellence. The woman who never
saw a book may be infinitely superior, even in all those matters of
which books treat, to the woman who has read, and read intelligently,
10,000 volumes. For one domestic incident shall teach more wisdom
than the catastrophes of a hundred novels; and one single smile from
an infant at its mother's breast may make that motherwiser in love
than even all the philosophy of Plato and the poetry of Wordsworth.
The Shepherd. There now—I just ca’ that sound sense and a true
apothegm. And what'll ye say to poets and sic like, that put meretri-
cious thoughts into the nature of woman, and dazzle the puir innocent
things' eyne till they can see naething like the path of duty, but gang
ramstam and camstrairy, aiblins to the right hand and aiblins to the
left? In that case, one might call his brother a fool, without danger
of the fire,
Tickler. Well spoken, my dear James. I beg your pardon, once
more, for having ever called you “a coorse tyke.” You have a soul,
James; and that is enough.
The Shepherd. We have all sowls, Mr. Tickler, and that some folks
will come to know at last. But I am nae dour Calvinistic minister, to
deal out damnation on my brethren. All I say is this, that if the low-
est shepherd lad in a' Scotland were to compose poems just on pur-
pose to seduce lasses, he would be kicked like a foot-ba' frae ae parish
to anither. And will gentlemen o’ education, wha can read Greek,
and hae been at a college-university, do that and be cuddled for’t, that
would bring a loon like Jock Linton to the stang, the pond, or the
pump 2 -
North. You don't mean to tell me that there are no such songs -
among the old Scottish poetry, Shepherd? -
The Shepherd. No half a dizzen in the hail byke—and them wrote,
Ijalouse, by lazy monks, losels, and gaberlunzie-men.” But what I say
is true, that love-verses, composed wi' a wicked spirit o' deceit and
corruption, are no rife in ony national poetry; and, least o' all, in that
of our ain Scotland. Men are men—and, blessings on them, women
are women ; and mony a droll word is said, and droll thing done,
among kintra folks. But they a' ettle at a kind o' innocence; and
when they fa’, it is the frailty of nature for the maist part, and there is
* Gaberlunzie—a mendicant; a poor guest who cannot pay for his entertainment.—M.
374 A NOCTES AMBROSIANAR.
rue repentance and reformation. But funny Sangs are the warst o'
poets' sins in lowly life; and if siccan a chiel as Tam Muir, bonny
bonny writer as he is, were to settle in the Forest, he might hae a
gowden fleece, but in faith he would soon be a wether. -
The Opium-Eater. Amatory poetry is not only the least intellectual,
but it is also the least imaginative and the least passionate of poetry.
The Shepherd. Hoots, man—I dinna understand you sae weel now.
What say ye - - --
The Opium-Eater. In mere amatory poetry—that is, verse addressed
to ladies in a spirit of complimentary flirtation, there is a necessary
prostration or relinquishment of the intellect: the imaginative faculty
cannot deal with worthless trifles; and passion, which cleaves to flesh
and blood, dies and grows drowsy on a cold thin diet of words.
The Shepherd. That's better expressed; at least, it suits better the
level o' my understanding, and that's the criterion we a judge by.
Now, sir, this I wull say for the Lake folk, that they, ane and a', with-
out exceptions, excel in painting she-characters; Wudsworth, Wulson,
Soothey, Coalrich, and yourself, sir, (for confound me gin you're no
a poet,) make me far mair in love with the “Women-Folk—the
Women-Folk,” (wait a wee and you'll hear me sing that sang,) than
Tam Muir and a' that crew. Wulson's gotten awful proud, they say,
since he was made a Professor; but let him lecture as eloquently's he
likes, frae Lammas to Lammas, for fifty year—and by the Isle o' Palms
and the City o' the Plague wull he be remembered at last. They're
baith fu'o' havers; but oh man, every now and then, he is shublime,
and for pawthos he beats a'. Wudsworth wunna alloo that ; but it's
true, and I hae pleasure in Saying it.
The Opium-Eater. If, by pathos, you mean mere human feeling, as
it exists unmodified by the imagination, then our opinions respecting
the two poets coincide. But in “the thoughts that do often lie too
deep for tears,” I conceive William Wordsworth unequalled among
the sons of song. Mark me—I do not say that the other poet has no
imagination ; he has a fine and powerful imagination. But
The Shepherd. You may say ony thing against him ye like; but
you needna ruze Wudsworth aboon every body, leevin or dead. Ae
thing he does excel in—the making o' deep and true observations and
reflections, that come in unco weel among dull and barren places, and
wad serve for mottoes or themes. Wudsworth's likewise a capital dis-
courser in a vivy-voce tWa-handed crack, awa’frae his ain house. About
yon Lakes, he's just perfectly intolerable,
Tickler. Come—have done with the Lakers.
North. I confess criticism is not what it ought to be, not what it
might be. But am I a bad critic, sir? * *
The Opium-Eater. No, sir, you may justly be called a good critic.
For, in the first place, you have a reverent, I had almost said a devout
Is NORTH A CRITIC 7 375
regard for genius, and not only utihesitatingly, but with alacrity and
delight, pay it homage. You feel no degradation of self in the exalta.
tion of others; and seem to me never to write such pure English, as
when inspired by the divine glow of admiration. No other critic do
I know since Aristotle, to compare with you in this great essential;
and feeling that on all grand occasions you are cordial and sincere, I
peruse your eloquent expositions, and your fervid strains of thought,
not always with entire consentaneity of sentiment, yet, without doubt,
always in a state approximating to mental unison; a state in which I
am made conscious of the concord subsisting between the great strings
of our hearts, even by the slight discords that I internally hear pro-
ceeding with an under tone, among the inferior notes of that mighty
and mysterious instrument.
The Shepherd. Gude safe us —that's grand—and it's better than
grand, it's true. I forgie the lads a' their sins, for sake o’ their free,
out-spoken, open-handed praise, when they do mean to do a kind thing,
They lauch far ower muckle at me in their Magazine; but I canna
deny, I proudly declare’t, that none o' a' the critics o' this age hae
had sic an insight into my poetical genius, or roused me wi' sic fear-
some eloquence. When they eulogize me in that gate, my blood
gangs up like spirits o' wine, and I fin' myself a' gruin’ wi' a sort o'
courageous sense o' power, as if I could do ony thing, write a better
poem than the Lay of the Last Minstrel, fecht Bonaparte gin he was
leevin, and snap my fingers in the very face o’ “The Gude Man.”
The Opium-Eater. But farther; you, sir, and some of your coadju-
tors, possess a fineness of tact and a delicacy of perception, that I in
vain look for in the critical compositions of your contemporaries. You
See and seize the beautiful evanescences of the poet's Soul; you know
the regions and the race of those fair spectral apparitions that come
and go before the “eye that broods on its own heart.” Never can
poet lament over your blindness to beauty, your deafness to the sounds
singing for ever, loud or low, from the shrine of nature;—sir, you have
no common sense, and that in this age is the highest praise that can be
bestowed on the immortal soul of man. -
The Shepherd. The deevil the like o' that heard I ever since I was
born The want o' common sense, the greatest praise o' a man's im-
mortal sowl -
North. The Opium-Eater is in the right, James; there is no com-
mon sense in your Kilmeny, in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, in Words-
worth's Ruth, in our eloquent friend’s “Confessions.” Therefore dolts
and dullards despise them—and will do to the end of time. .
Tickler. I am of the old school, gentlemen, and lay my veto on the
complete exclusion of common sense from a critical journal. But I
understand what Opium would be at; and verily believe that he speaks
the truth, when he says, that the wildest creation of genius, and the
376 NOCTES AMBROSLANA.
fairest too, pure poetry in short, and not only pure poetry, but every
species of impassioned or imaginative prose, is understood better, deep-
er, and more comprehensively, by Maga than Mrs. Roberts :
The Opium-Eater. Mrs. Roberts? Pray, who is she
Tickler. Why, My Grandmother. She edits the British Review.”
It was a whim of the proprietors to try a female; so they bought
Mother Roberts a pair of spectacles, a black Sarsnet gown, and an arm-
chair; and made her a howdy. She delivers the contributors, and
swathes their bantlings. However, she has been, it is said, rather un-
fortunate in her practice; for although most of the brats to whom she
has lent a helping hand, have come into the world alive, and cried
Justily, yet seldom have they survived the ninth day. Door things
they have all had Christian burial; but resurrection-men have grown
to a lamentable height; and several of the ricketty infant charges of
Mrs. Roberts have been traced to the dissecting-table. Lord Byron, it
is said, has bottled a brace; but there is no end of such shocking sto-
ries, so push about the toddy, Christopher. :
North. Pray, is it true, my dear Laudanum, that your “Confes-
sions” have caused about fifty unintentional suicides 3
The Opium-Eater. I should think not. I have read of six only ;
and they rested on no solid foundation.
Tickler. What if fifty foolish fellows have been buried in conse-
quence of that delightful little Tractate on Education ? Even then it
would be cheap. It only shows the danger that dunces run into, when
they imitate men of genius. T'other day, a strong-headed annuitant
drank to the King's health, standing upon his head, on the pinnacle
of a church spire. He afterwards described his emotions as most de-
lightful. Up goes his nephew (his sister's son) next morning before
breakfast; and in the excess of his loyalty, loses his heading; and at
the conclusion of a perpendicular descent of 180 feet by the quadrant,
alights upon a farmer's wife going to market with a pig in a poke;
and without any criminal intention, commits one murder and two Sui-
cides. Was his uncle to blame 3
North. The exculpation of the Opium-Eater is complete. A single
illustration has smashed the flimsy morality of all idle objectors. And
now, my dear friend, that you have fed and flourished fourteen years
on opium, will you be persuaded to try a course of arsenic 3
The Opium-Eater. I have tried one; but it did not suit my consti-
*
* Mr. Roberts, a lawyer, was proprietor and editor of a quarterly periodical called the
British Review; and, when Byron jocosely said, in “Don Juan,”
“I’ve bribed my grandmamma's Review, the British,”
Mr. Roberts was so silly as to take the matter seriously, challenge Byron to name how and
when the bribe was given, and declare that the whole was a falsehood. Byron responded in
ou amusing prose-epistle, signed “Worthy Clutterbuck,” and turned the laugh against his
apponent. It is diſlicult to realize the idea of a man being so completely what Hogg we uld
call “just a grech guse.”—M. - -
LIFE AT ALTRIVE. 377
tution either of mind or body. I leave the experiment to younger
IT1611. -
Tickler. Pray, North, tell us how you kissed the rosy hours at Hogg's?
Had you any rain } - -
Worth. I presume Noah would have thought it dry weather; but
we had a little moisture for all that. The lake rose ten feet during the
month I sorned * upon the Shepherd. First Sunday morning we
thought of going to the kirk; but looking through my snug bed-room
window, I saw a hay-rick with Damon and Phoebe sailing down the
Yarrow at about seven knots; so I shouted to them, that if they were
going to divine service, they would please apologize for me to the
minister.
The Shepherd. Lord, man, it was an awful spate lit The stirks and
the stots came down the water like straes; and in maist o' the pools,
sheep were thicker than sawmon. I heucked a toop wi' a grilsh-flee,
and played him wi' the pirn till I had his head up the Douglas-Burn,
but he gied a wallop in the dead-thraws, and brak my tackle.
North. On the twentieth day, the waters began to subside; and then
how beautiful the green hill-tops |
The Shepherd. Ay, they were e'en sae. For the flocks on a hundred
hills were snaw-white, and the pastures drenched and dighted by the
rains and the winds, till they kithed brichter than ony emerald, and
launched up to the bonny blue regions aboon, that had their flocke,
too, as quate and as white as the silly sheep o' the earth. -
Tickler. Did the Shepherd give you good prog, North ? . . -
North. Prime—choice—exquis. Short jigots of five year olds, taper
jointed and thick-thighed, furnished, but not overloaded, with brown,
crisp fat, deep-red when cut into, and oozing through every pore with
the dark richness of natural gravy that overflowed the trencher, with
a tempting tincture not to be contemplated with a dry mouth by the
most abstemious of the children of men. -
Tickler. Go on, you dog—what else?—Please, Mr. Joyeuse, ring
the bell. Mr. Ambrose must bring us a devil. Or what do you say
to supping over again?
North. To such mutton, add potatoes, dry even in such a season;
so great is the Shepherd's agricultural skill. Ay, dry and mouldering,
at a touch, into the aforesaid gravy, till the potato was lost to the eye
in a heap of sanguine hue, but felt on the palate, amalgamated with
the mountain mutton into a glorious mixture of animal and vegetable
matter; each descending mouthful of which kept regenerating the
whole man, and giving assurance of a good old age.
Tickler. Why the devil don't Ambrose answer the bell?
North. Then the salmon. In the Forest, fish follows flesh. It is
* Sorned—sojourned ; it sometimes means sponged.—M. t
t Sputó—a flood. . . . . - . . . . . . . . . “
v
378 NOOTES AMBROSIAN E.
the shoulder cut. Each flake is clear as a cairngorum —clear and
ºurdled—sappy—most Sappy. . .
| Tickler. I say, why the devil don't Ambrose answer the bell?
(Rises and pulls the worsted rope till it snaps in twain.)
North. But then the moorfowl | The brown-game ! The delicious
mulattoes | The dear pepper-backs | Savoriness that might be
Sucked without Satiety by Saint and sinner for three quarters of an
hour ! Oh James, that old cock! - -
The Shepherd. He was as gude a beast as I ever pree'l;* but I did
nae mair than pree him ; for frae neb to doup did our editor devour
him, as he had been a bit snipe—he crunched his very banes, Mr.
Tickler; and the very marrow o' the cretur's spine trinkled down his
chin frae ilk corner o' his mouth, and gied him, for the while being, a
most terrible and truculent feesionomy.
Enter MR. AMBROSE.
Tickler. Bring in the cold round, a welsh-rabbit, and a devil.
* - Evit AMBROSE.)
North. My dear Shepherd, you will be dubbing me of the Gorman-
dizing School of Oratory.
The Shepherd. Oratory ! Gude faith, ye never uttered a syllable
till the cloth was drawn. To be sure, you were gran’ company at the
cheek o' the fire, out ower our toddy. I never heard you mair pleasant
and satirical. You seemed to hate every body, and like every body,
and abuse every body, and plaud every body; and yet, through a’
your deevilry there ran sic a vein o' unendurable funniness, that, had
you been the foul Fiend himsel, I maun hae made you welcome to
every thing in the house. Watty Bryden has had a stitch in his side.
ever sin’ syne; and Fahope swears you're the queerest auld tyke that:
ever girned by an ingle. -
North. Read that aloud, James. It is an article Ebony put into
my hand this afternoon. Let us hear if it will do for next Number.
ON THE GOEMANDIZING SCHOOL OF ORATORY.
NO. II. –LAWLESS.
We were informed by an observing Whig friend, who sat within
two or three of Mr. Lawless's right or left hand at “The Glasgow
l)inner,” that never in his life did he see such a knife-and-fork played
as by the IRISHMAN: No sooner had Professor Mylne said grace,
"* …’ree—to taste.—M.
t In the autumn of 1822, at what was called “The Great Glasgow Dinner,” one of the guests
was John Lawless, editor of a paper in Belfast, called The Irishman. . He was a man to make
any quantity of speeches, being always ready, with the true copig facuavºlt, and sometimos
“HoNEST JACK LAwless.” 379
than Mr. Lawless began munching bread, till the table-cloth before
him was all over crumbs. After demolishing his own roll, nothing
would satisfy him but to clutch his neighbor's; in which act of ag-
gression, (to our minds, as unjustifiable as the partition of Poland,) he
was resisted by the patriotic and empty-stomached constitutionalist, to
whom, by the law of nature and nations, the staff of life did, beyond
all controversy, belong. At this critical juncture, a waiter clapped
down before the IRISHMAN a profound platter of warm soup, and the
vermicelli in a moment disappeared from the face of the earth. As
good luck would have it, another waiter covered the emptied trencher
with one of hotch-potch; and our informant expresses his conviction,
that Mr. Lawless, while gobbling up the mess, retained not the most
distant recollection of his own prior performance. A cut of salmon
then went the way of all flesh. The fish was instantly pursued, “with-
out stop or stay, down the narrow way,” by the spawl of a turkey. It
appeared to our astonished informant, that the IRISHMAN had swal-
lowed the shank; but in that he had afterwards reason to believe him-
self mistaken. True it was, however, that a cold tongue, half as long
as his own, but with a different twang, went down the throat of the
distinguished stranger from the sister kingdom. A dumpling, like a
beetle, followed instanter; an apple-tart, about eight inches square,
barely turned the corner before a custard, and our last fat friend was
speedily overtaken by six sprightly syllabubs. At this stage of pro-
ceedings, our excellent Whig thought it high time to look after him-
Self; and hence he was unable to keep an eye on Orator Lawless
But he distinctly remembers seeing him at his cheese. Paddy had
manifestly exchanged his own plate for one coming down the table
with a full cargo; while ever and anon a gulp of Bell's Beer swept
millions of mites into the great receptacle; and finally, a long de-
lighted “pech,” from the bottom of his stomach and his soul, told that
No. II. of the Gormandizing School of Oratory, would ere long dis-
charge a—Speech. *
In this proud state of repletion did Mr. Lawless sit for about three
hours, more or less, digesting his dinner and his harangue. The
In ISIIMAN, like most of his countrymen, has rather a pleasant appear-
ance; and now, with his brow bedeved, his cheeks greased, his eyes
starting in his head, and his stomach, God bless him 1 tight as a drum,
HE AROSE. You might have heard the faintest eructation, so dead
rising into something very like eloquence. Lawless had studied the law, but, at the instance
of Lord Clare, (the Irish Chancellor,) the benchers of the King's Inn, Dublin, reſused to call
him to the bar, because he had been the warm friend of Robert Emmett. He entered into
business after that, but settled down into the editorship of the very liberal “Irishman.” He
was an original member of the first Catholic Association, but offended O'Connell in 1825, by
opposing what were called “The Wings”—concessions from the Irish Catholics, in view of
Catholic Emancipation. In 1882 he was defeated as a candidate for Parliament, and died
in 1887. He was called “Honest Jack Lawless,” from his courage in maintaining his own :
opinion, believing it to be well-founded, notwithstanding tile dpposition of O’Connell.—M.
38) NOOTES AMBROSLANA2."
was the silence of the Assembly Room. Except that he seemed rather
a little pot-bellied—as well he might—his figure showed to no disad-
vantage after that of Mr. Brougham. Yes | “After Mr. Brougham
had concluded, Mr. LAwLESS, proprietor of the Irishman, of Belfast,
rose and addressed the Assembly in a most impressive and animated
manner.” r - -
Conscious of his own great acquirements, which our readers have
seen were great, the eloquent gormandizer exclaimed:
“I hope that I do not presume too much when I say, that I am
proprietor of a press which has some claims to independence. I am
an IRISHMAN ; and in my native country I have the conducting of a
press, which, to the inhabitants of that part of Ireland, Is ITS GREATEST
GUARDIAN AND CONSOLATION | |" -
Here Mr. Lawless put his hand to his stomach, and the room rang
with applause. Well might he have said, “I feel it here, gentlemen.”
Soon afterwards he spoke of “a starving population,” having himself,
in one single half hour, devoured victuals that would have kept ten
cabins in animal food from Mullingar to Michaelmas. But hear the
glutton after deglutition and digestion . -
“What is the situation of the Irish peasant ? Goaded to madness
by the law, he appeals for refuge to public opinion. That opinion is
to be found in the press—IT Is Found IN THIS Room ; it is found in the
proverbial generosity of Englishmen; it is discoverable in the CHARI-
TIES of THE HUMAN HEART l’ So the Irish peasant is, first of all, to
read in Mr. Lawless's Belfast newspaper what is public opinion, as it
exists in the Assembly Room of Glasgow, and what are the charities
of the human heart as they breathe from the well-lined stomach of
this most unconscionable gormandizer; and then he is to set fire to
“haggards” far and wide over a blazing country, and murder families,
father, mother, and son, in cold blood. * : * *
But now the dumpling begins to work, and the custard cries within
him. . . -
“Your illustrious guest has eloquently spoken of the wonders which
he has witnessed in his tour through Scotland, this LAND OF CHIVALRY
AND BEAUTY; but he has not touched on a much greater wonder than
this, nor has it yet been mentioned, namely, an Irishman addressing a
Scotch assembly, in defence of the civil and religious freedom of his
native land, and that Scotch assembly, not only listening to him with
the utmost toleration, but actually cheering him in his progress.”
Now, Pat, you are indeed an Irishman. How the devil could Harry
Brougham call the attention of the company to the miraculous fact
cf a speech from Mr. Lawless before you had opened your great
bawling mouth “It had not yet been mentioned,” you say; and I
again ask you, how the devil it could But where is the wonder in
an Irishman spouting before Scotch Whigs, upon the miseries of his
LAWLESS AT PAISLEY. 381
country? Both O'Connors have done so a hundred times, and many
other traitors, now hanged or expatriated. Did you expect to be
hissed for your rhodomontade, after praising the “Chivalry and
Beauty” of Glasgow ! And was your oratory a “greater wonder than
these ?” Thou art a most ungrammatical gormandizer, Mr. Lawless,
proprietor of the Irishman of Belfast; and yet so delightedly uncon-
scious is the Devourer of Dumplings of the bulls and blunders that
have come roaring out of his jaws, that he winds up his sage exordium
thus; and then we have no doubt, after cracking and creaking, lollop-
ping and laboring, stood still for a short pace of time, like an ill-
appointed jack, that seems to get rusty as the weight is wound up, and
then all at once re-commences operations, as if a brownie had got into
the wheel, and was making a fool of the machinery.
“IHERE, GENTLEMEN, IS THE TRIUMPH OF THE PRESS, AND OF REASON
AND LIBERALITY.” -
Our gormandizer then goes to Paisley, and by way of a little
variety, he dines instead of sups. At Paisley, however, he is a much
greater character; for he is the Brougham of the Saraçen Head. The
Scotsman tells us, “that the band and the spirits were excellent.” So,
we know, from the best authority, were the tripes, the black pud-
dings, the hot cockles, and the red herrings, a Dutch importation of the
1821. Mr. Lawless then made his expected speech—the sum and
substance of which was this, in his own words—“What more does a
radical reformer want than what Professor Mylne of Glasgow, in his
own modest, softened phraseology, was pleased to call a substantial
reform, at the late splendid dinner to Mr. Brougham : I have been
long an advocate for radical reform, understanding the term radical
exactly in the sense of Professor Mylne; and what then does radical
mean? It means this, that every honest man of sound mind, should
have the right to choose his representative. The election should be
frequent, and that to secure the honesty of the constituent, and the in-
dependence of the representative, the suffrage should be universal.”
Such, according to the Scotsman, is the opinion of the Reverend James
Mylne, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow,
as expounded by his gormandizing commentator, Mr. Lawless of Bel
fast. We can no more. Y-
At the request of the President, Mr. Stewart, a friend and compan-
ion of Mr. Lawless, addressed the meeting thus: “Mr. Chairman, 1
am a Catholic. Here do I stand before you, with manacles on my
hands, and chains on my legs P’ He ought to have been recommitted
On a new Wallant. -

The Shepherd. I hae read just aneuch ot. It will do for Balaam,
and that fule Lawless for the ass. - . . . . . .
North. James—James—you are getting personal.
382 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE. .
Tickle, . Why, this red-hot potato supposes itself something above
common. Only think of his bouncing up after Brougham, and claim-
ing both kindred and equality with that bird of passage. Brougham
is not a phoenix, in my opinion; but as for this braying, bragging,
bawling, bullying, brazen-faced blockhead, with his blundering blarney
from Belfast, a greater goose never gabbled on a green, nor groaned
or, a gridiron, since the first introduction of that absurdest of all fea-
thered fowls into the island of Great Britain.
The Shepherd. Stop Tickler, as weel's me, Mr. North.
Tickler. What brought the hound, with his Irish howl, into the
Lanarkshire pack #
The Shepherd. What a confusion o' a' metaphors! First, this Mr.
Lawless is a potawto—then a guse, syne a jowler—and forgie me, I
mysel ca'd him an ass. What, what'll he be neist?
Tickler. What think ye, North, of the fellow's insolence in making
free with Professor Mylne's name in that way ?
North. It would be more interesting and instructive to know what
Professor Mylne thinks of it, and also how he relishes it. Horrible
degradation, indeed, to a man of genius, learning, and virtue ! But
if l’at would drag the Professor into the Saracen's Head, how could
the Professor help it 3
Tickler. He might have helped it by holding his tongue at the
Glasgow dinner, and by being satisfied with saying grace, or, better
still, by staying away. But this is not the first time the worthy Pro-
fessor has been misrepresented ; and let us believe that Pat's report
of his speech is as incorrect as (in days of old) Barbara's note of his
prayer, and commentary on his selection of Scriptural paraphrases.
The Shepherd. That's a' utter darkness to me—some local allusion,
I suppose—like so many jokes in your Magazine that nobody kens
ony thing about, but some three or four o' yoursels; and yet the Mag-
azine is read over all the world ! I sometimes get sae angry at that,
that I think you a set o' stupid sumphs thegither. I ken the Eng-
lish folk canna thole’t. Gin Mr. Joyous werena sleeping, he wad tell
you Sae. -
North. I acknowledge the justice of your reproof; and to show
you that I mean to profit by it, there goes into the fire a long article
of fourteen pages, and a good one too, written by myself on the Glas-
gow dinner. Tickler's fragment is enough.*
The Shepherd. Eh! what a bleeze. It's maist a pity to see the low.
Nae doubt, you geed them an awful dressing ; but far, far better to
prent in its place yon gran article on Wallenstein, (is that right pro-
nounced ?) or even that ane on my own Perils; for I have observed,
* This was an article in Blackwood for October, 1828, (called “The Glasgow Dinner. A
Fragment. By Mr. Tickler,”) which undertook to be very severe on Mn. Lawless, as an ora-
tor, but was simply a strong tirade against Catholic limancipation.—M.
COLERIDGE. 383
that let the Whigs do ol dine, or drivel as they choose, none but them-
sells recollect ony thing about it, aboon a week at the farthest ; and
therefore that article, now black in the awse, might, for ony novelty
the public could hae seen in't, as weel been a description of Alexan-
der's or Belshazzar's Feast. -
North. Who, think ye, Tickler, is to be the new editor of the Quar.
terly 3 Coleridge . -
Tickler. Not so fast. The contest lies, I understand, between him
and Odoherty. That is the reason the Adjutant has not been with us
to-night. He is up canvassing. -
The Opium-Eater. Mr. Coleridge is the last man in Europe to con-
duct a periodical work. His genius none will dispute ; but I have
traced him through German literature, poetry, and philosophy; and
he is, sir, not only a plagiary, but, sir, a thief, a bond fide most un-
conscientious thief. I mean no disrespect to a man of surpassing tal-
ents. Strip him of his stolen goods, and you will find good clothes
of his own below. Yet, except as a poet, he is not original; and if he
ever become Editor of the Quarterly, (which I repeat is impossible,)
then will I examine his pretensions, and show him up as impostor.
Of Shakspeare it has been said, in a very good song, that “the thief
of all thiefs was a Warwickshire thief;” but Shakspeare stole from
Nature, and she forbore to prosecute. Coleridge has stolen from a
whole host of his fellow-creatures, most of them poorer than himself;
and I pledge myself I am bound over to appear against him.* If he
plead to the indictment, he is a dead man—if he stand mute, I will
press him to death, under three hundred and fifty pound weight of
German metaphysics. -
North. Perhaps it is a young Coleridge—a son or a nephew.
The Opium-Eater. Perhaps. Mr. North, I was most happy to see
you let Odoherty do something like justice to Don Juan. Why will
you let political animosities prevent your Magazine being a real reflec-
tion of the literature of the Tories I never saw poetry criticised ex-
cept in Blackwood. The Edinburgh Reviewers know nothing about
it. The Quarterly are hide-bound. The rest, with the exception of a
stray writer or two, are both ignorant and hide-bound. Your criti-
cisms on Shelley, in particular, did you immortal honor. Every body
of liberality and feeling thanked you. Why not be always thus
Cut up the Whigs and Whiglings, (God knows they are vulnerable
enough,) and the Radicals and Republicans, (God knows they are
* One of De Quincey’s favorite hobbies was a pretence—it may have been a belieſ—that Cole-
ridge stole ideas from German authors. So often did he charge the poet with this, (it is re-
published in the Boston edition of his works, brought out with his authority, and to a certain
extent under his supervision,) that when Coleridge's family brought out an edition of the
Biographia Literaria, a large space of the introduction was dedicated to a defence of the au-
, thor from the Opium-Eater's accusations. Even iſ Coleridge had plagiarized, it was like
stealing lead, to melt in the crucible of his own thought, and be reproduced as rich barbaric
gold, pure as from the mines of Ophir.—M. -
384 NoctEs AMBROSIANAE.
prostrate enough,) to your soul's contentment. Only don't mic politics
with literature; nor -
“To party give up what was meant for mankind.”
North. We have got back to the old story. What, my dear sir, do
you think of our personality ?
The Opium-Eater. It is the only charge I have for a long time past
heard urged against you. To me it seems a very trifling matter, and
necessarily unconnected with the chief merits or demerits of a work
so various and profound as your Magazine. Coarse attacks, if you
have any such, and you know better than I do, fail in their effect, ex-
cepting upon animals too low for gentlemen's game. As a mere affair
of taste, I should say, “use the dissecting-knife rather than the cleaver,
and leave the downright butchering business of literature to those to
whom the perquisite of the offal may be of consequence.” As a gene-
ral rule, I would say, fight a gentleman with a Damascus blade, tem-
pered with perfume; with a blackguard, why, order your footman to
knock him down ; but if you want exercise, and now and then choose
to turn to yourself, and drub him in his own way, where is the objec-
tion, I should like to know This is my personality creed,
Tickler. And a clear creed it is, thou most orthodox Opium-Eater.
One thing all must acknowledge, that people cannot help judging of
personality according to their amiable prejudices. A Whig reads a
libel on a Tory, and chuckles over it as a most midrift-moving jeu
d'esprit worthy of Moore himself, or Pirie's Chronicle, while the
pluckless Tory shows it to his friends, who tell him not to trouble his
head about it, as it is evidently a piece of low blackguardism from
some hungry hack of the Old Times.* A Tory reads a libel on a
Whig, and instantly, in the joy of his heart, gets it off by heart, per-
haps sets it to music, and sings it at Ambrose's; while the enraged
Whig consults counsel, carries the Tory before a jury of Łis country,
and bites his nails over farthing damages. All this is very perplexing
to a simple man like Timothy Tickler. -
North. In that perplexity I humbly beg leave to join. There is
good Mr. Jeffrey, of whom I shall never speak but in terns of the
highest respect, who calls Coplestone, the Provost of Oriel, a great,
awkward, clumsy barn-door fowl, foolishly flapping himself into an
unavailing effort at flight. He even changes the Provost's sex,
makes him a hen, swears he saw him lay an egg, and heard him
cackle. There, on the other hand, is good Mr. Jeffrey, as fierce as a
fiend upon me in a court of justice, because Dr. Olinthus Petre thought
* Dr. Stoddart, who had edited The Times, commenced The Wew Times, in opposition. Th:
##. paper was then usually named as the Old Times—or, as Cobbett loved to call it,
“The bloody Old Times.”—M.
t Dr. Edward Copleston was elected Bishop of Llandaff in 1827, and died in 1849.-M.
i’ERSONA f, ITIES. 385
he perceived some resemblanco, either in face, person, dress, habits, or
conversation, between a friend of his and a parrot.” What am I to
make of all this? Is a parrot an animal that ranks lower in the
scale of creation than a pullet? Again, the same lively and most
exceedingly candid and consistent Mr. Jeffrey, calls Mr. Davison, a
clergyman, (also once of Oriel,) a rat in a gutter, and all the fellows
of the same college, cats, or retromingent creatures, which Mr. Jeffrey
will confess is a most incredible accusation, if he will only try to
qualify himself for admission into that society. Now, for any thing
that I care, Coplestone may be a barn-door fowl, Davison a rat, and
Plumer a cat; but if so—you see the consequence logical. 3.
Tickler. Clearly, most noble Festus. I have long observed that
you never speak of Mr. Jeffrey but in terms of the highest respect.
So do I. For example, Baron Lawerwinkel was somewhat severe on
the late Professor Playfair, insinuating, or asserting, I forget which,
that he had ceased to be true to his early profession of faith. Up
jumps Jeff, and sallies forth cap-a-pie, against the Baron, like Jack the
Giant-Killer; but thinking better about it, he doffs his armor, buckles
his enormous two-edged sword, half as long as himself, and betakes
himself to railing as bitterly as a northeast wind on a sleepy morning.
But soft, who comes here Not a grenadier, but Jeff himself, calling
out upon Mr. Southey, “apostate,” “renegade,” and every other most
opprobrious epithet. The Baron eyes him for a while with increased,
but calm contempt, and then, like a noble-minded mastiff, lifts him
up gently by the nape of the neck, and drops him into a pool, out of
which he scrambles with ludicrous alacrity, and shaking his small
sides, barks out “Personality.” Now, Mr. North, ye may talk in high
terms of respect of whomsoever you think proper to flatter; but of
his priggish person, for this particular piece of priggery, I, Timothy
Tickler, have chosen to speak in still higher terms of pity and
contempt.
The Opium-Eater. I confess that my opinion of Mr. Jeffrey is alto-
gether different. I am rather disposed to think with Wordsworth,
“that he who feels contempt for any living thing, has faculties that
he has never used.” Mr. Jeffrey seems to me to be an amiable, in-
genious man, without much grasp and of no originality; petulant
* Dr. Olinthus Petre was the name under which (in Blackwood for November, 1820) the late
Dr. Maginn charged Professor Leslie, who had criticised the Helbrew language, with thorough
ignorance on the subject. In this article Petre said, “Am I to bow to him because he is an
Jºdinburgh Reviewer ? I question the inspiration of that worthy oracle : —and as to the Pro-
ſessor’s own part in its lucubrations, why, his impudent puffings of himself, and ignorant
sneerings at others, have often made me liken Leslie the Reviewer to some enormous over-
fed pet of the parrot species, stuck up at a gurret-window, and occupied all day with saying,
Pretty poll—pretty poll,' to itself; ‘J’oul witch—ſoul witch,’ to every passer-by.” This com-
parison gave great offence to the Edinburgh Whigs, of whom Leslie was one, and was set forth,
1 believe, in the law-prosecution of Blackwood by Leslie, as having brought him “into hatred,
contempt, and ridicule.”—M. .
; , t Baron Lawerwinkel (like Kempferhausen, Mullion, Buller, Tilns, and others) was one of
Blackwood's Messieurs de l'Imagination—M. r . -
WOL. I.-27
386 (NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
and fretted in his humors, but kind and cordial where he has a
liking—not surely a bitter enemy, and, I can well believe, an attached
friend. His great original error in life lay in his attempting to sway
the mind of England: a giant could not do that, nor twenty giants:
no wonder, then, that signal discomfiture befell one single dwarf. If
I might be allowed to use an illustration, after the manner of Mr.
Tickler, I should say that Mr. Jeffrey, being ambitious of notice, º
ceived the scheme of going up in a balloon—that the machine was
constructed of the propºr material, a light silk, and not untastily
ornamented; but that unfortunately there was a deficiency of gas, so
that the globus aérostaticus was never sufficiently inflated. The cords,
however, were cut, and the enterprising voyager began to ascend.
By and by, getting entangled somehow or other by the foot, there he
hung with his head downwards, while the balloon cleared the roofs
of the houses, but could make no approximation to the lowest strata
of clouds. Finally, Mr. Jeffrey got released, and he and his balloon
came to the earth almost together, and without any serious hurt to .
the aéronaut, but the vehicle was irremediably injured, and in all
probability will never more be able to reach the chimney-top.
The Shepherd. Odd's my life! that simile's just unco like Tickler,
wi' a great tinge o' eloquence; for, oh dear me! after all, a weel-edu-
cated Southron says things in a tosh and complete manner, that we
modern and northern Athenians canna come up to for our lives.
There's nae denying that. -
The Opium-Eater. With regard to these ludicrous, and, as many
persons may not unwarrantably call them, impertinent and insolent
expressions of Mr. Jeffrey, more especially impertinent and insolent
when applied to persons in the same rank of life as his own, and in-
deed somewhat superior, at least more dignified and authoritative, I
should say, that most probably Mr. Jeffrey employed them without
any very culpable feeling towards the parties, and merely in compli-
ance with the spirit of that vituperative system of contention with
our real or supposed opponents, which he did not originate, but which,
nevertheless, he, by his popular abilities, and by the favor which the
Edinburgh Review found with a great portion of the reading public,
helped to make of very great prevalence in the periodical literature
of this country. A high-minded, and high-facultied man, could
scarcely, I think, have written as Mr. Jeffrey has too often done; but
I do not wish rashly to assert that he might not, remembering the
vulgar virulence of Milton not truly to his equals or superiors, for
where were they, but to his inferiors indubitably, and without refer-
ence to individuals, to all that portion of mankind, or womankind,
concerning whom he wrote in a controversial or polemical spirit.
North. Wisely spoken. But Mr. Tickler chiefly despises him, as it
seems to me, for the hypocritical claim he advances to perfect freedom
THE WHIGS. 3S7
from this failing, and for the bitterness with which he arraigns that
conduct in others of which he is himself more frequently guilty than
any other man of eminence in this age. X-
The Opium-Eater...That is another matter, and therein he is with-
out defence. - e -
The Shepherd. Weel, then, Mr. Tickler, is party-spirit, think ye,
likely to rin, like a great heavy sea, ower domestic intercourse in fami-
lies, this winter ?
Tickler. Why, James, I neither know nor care. My friends, for
upwards of half a century, have been Tor1Es; and what is the sour
sulky face of a captious Whig to me, any more than his portrait in a
picture—falling from which, I turn in calm contempt, or deep disgust,
to the well-pleased countenance of some staunch lover of his country
and his King ? -
The Shepherd. But isna it a desperate pity to see mony clever chiels
keepit apart just for mere difference o' opinion about the government?
Tickler. Pray, where are all these “clever chiels?” Take away
about four Whigs, and āre not all the rest confounded dogs I can-
not really be too grateful to party-spirit for keeping such gentry in
their own circles. I hope, James, you are not going to join the
PLUCKLEss? - *
North. I am more Whiggish than you, Tickler. What can be
more amiable than the present zeal of the Whigs in the cause of
Spain } They are doing all they can to wipe off the foul stain of their
truckling to Bonaparte when he stormed Spain. They are crying
shame upon their former selves; and why not believe them to be sin-
cere? - .
Tickler. Hypocrites. - .
North. Then, have they not subscribed four thousand, three hun-
dred, sixteen shillings, and eight-pence three farthings, for the Greeks?
Tickler. Scrubs.
Worth. Did they not wish us to go to war, like a brave people?
Tickler. Fools. -
North. Did they not call Bonaparte the guardian of the liberties of
the world 3 - -
Tickler. Liars.
North. Who but they would change our criminal law Ż
Tickler. Knaves. $
North. Are they not for a “substantial reform *
Tickler. Radicals. - -
North. Are they not adverse to the prosecution of the foes to
Christianity ?
Tickler. Deists.
North. Would they not fain overlook blasphemy?
Tickler. Atheists. -
3SS MOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
North. Are they not friends to the liberty of the Press?
Tickler. Libellers. *s -
The Shepherd. You stopt me a while since, and I cry stop till baith
o' you now. I kenna wha's the worst. I hae nae notion o' sic despe-
rate bitterness in politics. What can Mr. Joyous be thinking a' this
while 3 Mr. Vivian, you haena spoken muckle the nicht, but the little
you did say was to the purpose. I dinna like folk ower furthy a' at
ance. Besides, you are sadly knocked up, man. That Gretna Green
is a sad business.
North (laying his gold repeater on the table). Twelve o'clock. Old
Chronos smites clearly, and with a silver sound. My dear Vivian, we
keep early hours, and your young bride will be in tears. I understand
your silence, and know your thoughts. You are at Barry's Hotel.
None better. Allow me to accompany you to the steps. Give me
your arm, my good boy. w
(Eveunt omnes—North leaning on Joy EUSE and the OPIUM-
EATER, Mr. AMBROSE bustling before with the blazing
branches, and TICKLER, arm-in-arm with the SHEPHERo,
towering in the rear.)
No. XIII-MARCH, 1824.
Dram. Pers.-NoFTH and TICKLER.
Tickler. Proper humbug l—but don't rail, North, for I remember
his father - - .
North. I rail —I like him better than most of them, for he has
pluck—he has the old lad's blood in him. I was only wondering that
he should again commit himself in such a way; but there really is no
accounting for Whig conduct.
Tickler. Pooh pooh ! I was joking, man; he is in private a
pleasant fellow enough, but in public, he is one of the hacks of the
party, and of course obliged to get through such things. Yet it
would be no harm, I think, if he remembered to what set of men, and
what system, his people owed their honors; and, perhaps, although
he is in the service of the Duke of Devonshire,” such a recollection
might make him less rabid on the followers of Pitt.
North. Hang it! such a cheese-paring is not worth wasting a sen-
tence about. Keep moving with the Review. The price of tea—I
think we're that length • p
. Tickler. I leave to the swallowers of Souchong, Campoi, Hyson,
Hymskin, Bohea, Congou, Twankay, and Gunpowder. This will be
a favorite article with the Cockneys—with the leafy—that is, tea- a
leafy bards, who
Te redeunté die, te decedente canebant.
It is nothing to us.
North. Nothing whatever. I leave it and the discussion on the
Holy Alliance, to be swallowed by those whom it is meant for.
Tickler. The Jeremiade over the Italian traitors is vastly interesting;
then it appears, that, after all, only one of the ruffians expiated his
crimes on the gallows.
North. God bless the Jacobins, and their child and champion. They
would have made cleaver work of it. It is, however, quite comfortable
to hear Old Bailey lawyers, like Denman and Brougham, talking of
* It would appear from this that the delinquent was James Abercromby, the Duke’s stew.
ard, and now Lord Dumferline, with a pension of £4000 a year for his own life, and that of
his son, as ex-Speaker of the House of Commons !—M.
390 *
NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
|
the savageness of the Austrian Government, when they must know,
that in a population double our own, the executions are as one to five,
if not in a still smaller proportion. A Vienna review, if there be such a
thing, could finely retort that in our faces. With respect .
Odoherty (outside). The club-room — only Mr. North and Mr.
Tickler.
Waiter (outside). That's all, Sir. There's a trifle of a balance, º
against you since
Odoherty (speaks as he enters). Tshaw—don't bother me, man,
with your balanoes. Do you think, when the interests of the world
are going be debated—Gentlemen, a pair, am right glad to see
you.
North. Sit down.
Tickler. And here's a clean glass.
North. What will ye drink?
Tickler. Champagne, Chateau-Margot, Glenlivet, or Jamaica º
North. We have got to the hot stuff this hour. Will you try our
jug, or make for yourself?
Tickler, I recommend the jug. -
Odoherty. I am quite agreeable wherever I go. Here's a bumper
to your health, and that of all good men and true.
Tickler. Ilow long are you arrived --
Odoherty. Half an hour. Knew I'd meet somebody here. Where
are the rest ? t
A'orth. Hogg is at work with his epic poem.
Odoherly. His He-pig poem you mean. Queen Hynde, if I mistake
not. A great affair, I suppose.
Tickler. Quite grand. The Shepherd has been reading it all over
the hills and far away. There are fine bits in it, I assure you. I.
heard the exordium ; it is splendid. *
Odoherty. Do you remember any of it?
Tickler. No—not enough at least to spout. -
Odoherty. I met Jemmy Ballantyne at York—we supped together
—and he told me he had heard it was to open like the AEneid or
Madoc. - -
North. The AEneid or Madoc Just as you would say Blackwood's
Magazine and the London IIow do you mean? º
Odoherty. Why, with a recapitulation of all his works—as thus –I
quote from memory
Tickler (aside). Or imagination.
Odoherty.
Come listen to my lay, for I am he .
Who wrote Kilmeny's wild and wondrous song,
Likewise the famous Essay upon Sheep,
And Mador of the Moor; and then, unlike
BYRC) N, 391
Those men who fling their pearls before the Hog,
I, Hogg, did fling my Perils before men.”
Worth. A pun barbarous,
Odoherty.
But still more famous for the glorious work,
Which I, 'neath mask of oriental sage,
Wrote and concocted in auspicious hour—
THE CIIALDEE MANUSCRIPT-which, with a voice
Of thundering sound, fulmined o'er Edinburgh,
Shook the old Calton from its granite base,
Made Arthur's Seat toss up its lion head,
And snuff the wind in wonder; while around,
Eastward and westward, northward, southward, all
The ungodly, struck with awe and ominous dread
Of the great ruin thence impending o'er them,
Fled frighted, leaving house and home behind,
In shameful rout—or, grovelling prostrate, showed
Their nether parts uncomely—
Tickler. I think you may stop there.
North. In all conscience : I shall not permit Hogg to be quizzed
He is too good a fellow, and I am sure his poem will do him credit.
Sing a song, Ensign, for you seem to be in fine voice.
Odoherty (sings). -
Would you woo a young virgin of fifteen years,
You must tickle her fancy with Sweets and Dears,
Ever toying and playing, and sweetly, sweetly,
Sing a love-sonnet and charm her ears—
Wittily, prettily, talk her down—
Phrase her and praise her, fair or brown—
Soothe her and smooth her,
And tease her and please her,
Ah! touch but her fancy, and all's your own.
I must have a glass ere I take the next stanza.
Would you woo a stout widow of forty years—
Tickler. Come, stop, stop, Odorherty, none of your stuff. Any lite-
rary news in London town -
Odoherty. Not much. Lord Byron, you are aware, has turned
Turk, º
North. Greek, you mean.t
Odoherty. Ay, ay—Greek, I meant. I always confound these
scoundrels together. But the Greeks in London have met with a sad
defeat. That affair of Thurtell's was a bore.
* Two of Hogg's prose fictions were “Three Perils of Man,” and “Three Perils of Woman.”
They are amusing enough, but often improbable in incident, and sometimes too broad in lau-
guage and sentiment.—M.
t Byron, quitted Genoa the Proud in August, 1828, for Greece, where he died on the 19th
April, 1824.—M. -
392 Noor's AMBROSLANE.
Tickler. Curse the ruffian—the name ought not to be mentioned in
decent society. But Weare was just as great a blackguard. .
Odoherty. Yes; and Sam Rogers says that that is the only excuse
for Thurtell. He did right, said Sam, to cut such an acquaintance.
North. Why, Sam is turning quite a Joe Miller. Have you seen
the old gentleman lately : .
Odoherty. About a fortnight ago—Tom Moore was with him.
North. I thought Tom was rusticating. -
Odoherty. Yes, in general; but he is now in town, bringing out a
new number of his Melodies. --
Morth. Is it good :
*-
Odoherty. Nobody except Power and his coterie has seen it yet;” but
I understand it is very excellent. It will be out in a couple of months.
There is one song in it to the tune of the Boyne Water; the great
Orangemºn tune, you know, which is making them nervous.
North. Why? s
Odoherty. Because conciliation—curse the five syllables, as Sir
Abraham King says—is carried to such a happy pitch in Ireland, that
tune, toast, statue, picture, displeasing to the majority, are denounced
as abominable. t - - - -
North. A pretty one-sided kind of conciliation with a vengeanceſ
but I am sorry Moore is so squeamish. Are the words Orange?
Odoherty. Not at all; some stuff about an angel or nymph rising
out of the Boyne, and singing a song to pacify the natives.
Tickler. And even this must not be published, for fear of offending
the delicate ears of Sheilinagigi and Co. l Is not Moore doing a jew
d'esprit about your Irish Rugantino, Captain Rock?
* James Power, a music-publisher in London, employed Moore, from 1806 to 1886. (when
Power died,) to write the Irish Melodies and other songs for him. For the Melodies alone, he
paid him £500 a-year during those 30 years. There are 124 Melodies, and as the whole amount
received by Moore was £15,000—to say nothing of loss of interest, which would more than
quadruple it, by arithmetical progression—Moore actually received £121 for each of those
songs. Their average length was twenty lines, which would make the payment over £6 or
$30 a line !—Moore's correspondence with Power, during thirty years, amounted to over
1200 letters, all of which were submitted by Power's daughters to Lord John Russell, editor of
Moore's Memoir, Journal, and Correspondence. Russell selected only 57 out of these, which
he printed with omissions. The whole collection was then sold by public auction in London,
and thus dispersed for ever. A volume was prepared, giving the gist of this correspondence,—
it was even printed. But Lord John Russell, thinking that it was not likely to exalt the char-
acter of Moore—whose conduct to Power, even while literally supported by him, was insolent
and ungrateful—threatened to apply for an injunction to restrain the publication, (as had
been successfully done, in 1824, by Iłyron's letters to his mother and to Mr. Dallas, on the 1e-
gal ground that his executors alone had a publishing property in his correspondence,) and the
appearance of the book in England was prevented. However, it has been published in this
country, with an explanatory introduction by Crofton Croker, and unhappily shows that as
nu man is a hero to his vºtlºt-de-chºt mbre, so a poet may be very “ small deer” in his rela-
tions with his publisher.—M. -
t The melody represents vanquished Erin weeping beside the river Boyne, into which Dis-
cord drops his quiver, each year to return, recover, and disperse them through Ireland;
and, when she asks the power of Good when this is to end, the Deuon replies, “Never !” It
was a puerile fancy ſeebly elaborated into song.—M.
# There is an Irish air called Sheillnagig, Qnce upon a time, in Dublin, when one of the
great Irish orators, who had accidentally injured one of his legs, was proceeding throws in
Sackville-street in a Bath chair, a bystantler, (viz. Mr. J. G. Maeuer, the musical composer
HAJJI BABA. 393
Odoherty. Yes—but he is nervous there too.” Longman & Co. are
cautious folk, and it is submitted to Denman, or some other doer, who
will bedevil it, as he did the Fables for the Holy Alliance.
Tickler. Well, Longman has published, however, one little book this
year, that bears no marks of the knife—have you seen that clever
thing—the “Stranger's Grave,” I mean?
Odoherty. I have to be sure, so has all the world—but still upon
the whole it is not to be denied, that the Divan have not half the
spunk of their rival who rules in the west of the Empire of Cock-
aigne.
North. Joannes de Moravia? Have you seen him, Odoherty, in
your travels?
Odoherty. Of course—of course—a most excellent fellow that said
bibliopole is.
North. That I know. How does he carry on the war
Odoherty. In the old style. Morier and his people are mad with
you for your blackguard review of Hajji Baba.
North. My blackguard review, Mr. Adjutant—it was you who
wrote it.
Odoherty. I / Well, that beats Banagher.
Tickler. No matter who wrote it—it was a very fair quiz—better
than any thing in the novel—though really I must say that I consider
Hajji rather an amusing book after all.
North. N'importe. IIas Murray much on hand 3
Odoherty. A good deal. Croker is going to publish with him the
Suffolk Papers.; - -
North. Heavy, I suppose.
now of New-York,) being asked by a friend from the country, who was that little man with tt 5
large flashing eyes, musically answered, “Sheil-in-a-gig.”—M.
* Moore's Memoirs of Captain Rock appeared in April, 1824—was much abused by Black-
wood and other Tory publications, but was very successful.—M. -
t The Adventures of IIajji Baba of Ispahan ; a novel, in three volumes,” was published in
London, by Murray, in 1824. It was reviewed in Blackwood for January, 1825. Oddly enough,
Ebony, which had attributed “Anastasius' to Lord Byron, who did not write it, made another
blunder in this review, by affiliating “liajji Baba " upon Thomas Hope, the actual author of
“Anastasius,” and said, “'The work is not inerely as regards matter, interest, taste, and choice
of subjects, three hundred per cent. at least under the mark of Anastasius, but the style is
never forcible and eloquent ; and, in many places, to say the truth, it is nuiserably bad.”
Again, “Of Anastasius, one would say that it seemed to have been written by some unighty
hand, from a store, full, almost to over ſlowing, with rich and curious material: of Hajji Baba,
that some imitator, of very little comparative force indeed, had picked up the remnant of the
rifled note-book, and brought it to market in the best shape that he was able.” It appeared,
after all, that James Morier was the author. In early life he had travelled extensively in the
East, and related his adventures in “Travels through Persia, Armenia, Asia Minor to Con-
stantinople.” In 1810, at the age of thirty, he was appointed British Envoy to the Court of
Persia, where he remained until 1S16, and soon after his return, published “A second Journey
through Persia.” This was followed by 11:1jji liaba, which (despite the Blackwood criticism)
is very clever. In a second series, he brought his hero—a sort of Persian picaroon, on the
Gil Blas model—into England. In Zohrab the Hostage, and other works of prose fiction, Mr.
Morier showed great knowledge of Eastern life, manners and customs, and considerable skill
in ermbodying it. He died in S48, aged sixty-eight.—M.
There is an Irish saying, “That beats lunagher, and Banagher beats the world.”—M.
John Wilson Croker edited the Letters of Lord Hervey, the Suſſolk Papers, and Lord
Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second.—M.
,
z
... 394 - NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Odoherty. No–the contrary—at least so I am told. Croker could
not, do any thing heavy. - :
North. He is fond of editing old papers—Lord Hertford, has placed
the Conway Papers in his hands; and I perceive, by a note in the
new edition of D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, that the old gentle-
man. gº \
Tickler. An excellent judge.
North. Few better—declares that they will throw much, light on
our, that is, English history. -
Odoherty. Apropos of Croker—a namesake of his, and a country.
man of mine, a fine lad, one of my chiefest chums, indeed, has brought
out with Murray a quarto on the South of Ireland.
North. I have not read it—just looked over the prints
famous lithography, by my honor. - -
Odoherty. Oh, the Nicholsons are prime fists at that kind of work.
The book has sold in great style, which is no bad thing for a lump of
a quarto.” How does Maga get on ? - -
North. As usual. Are our brother periodicals in statu quo 3
Odoherty. Yes, heavy and harmless. Whittaker is going to start a
new bang-up, to be called the Universal—a most comprehensive title.
North. It is, I understand, a second Avatar of the New Edinburgh,
with some fresh hands. God send it a good deliverance *
Tickler. Was the Universal the name originally proposed ?
Odoherty. No-the Bimensial—as it is to come out every two
months. Rogers knocked up that name by a pun. “Ay,” said he,
“you may cry Bi-men-sial, but the question is, whether. Men-shall-
buy 3" A bad pun, in my opinion.}
North. O hideous—(aside) it is his own.
Tickler. Abominable—(aside) evidently his. We'll spoil his fishing
for compliments. -
Odoherty. Why, look ye, gentlemen, I do not think it quite so bad
as that—I can tell you I have heard worse at this table.
North. Ha! haſ haſ Caught, Ensign 3–Empty your glass, man,
and don’t think to impose on w8.
Odoherty. Well, so be it. Any thing for a quiet life. Here I have
very
* This “lump of a quarto' was called “Researches in the South of Ireland, illustrative of
the Scenery, Architectural Remains, and the Manners and Superstitions of the Peasantry. . By
T. Crofton Croker.” It was reviewed more than once, with high commendation, in Black-
wood, who said it “consists in [of £1 dissertations on the civil and ecclesiastical history; the
scenery ; the architectural antiquities; the romantic superstitions; and the literature of Ire-
land, connected by a slender thread of personal adventure, in a tour through the Southern
counties, in company with Miss Nicholson and Mr. Alfred Nicholson, whose illustrations in-
§. the beauty and value of the work.” The lady here mentioned afterwards became Mrs.
rolcer.—M. •
t It is foolish to give a book a name which can be punned upon. Thus, even before No. 1
was published, a projected and since popular periodical was spoken of as Bentley’s Miss-sell-
any. That, by the way, was originally announced as “The Wits' Miscellany,” but finally ap-
peared as “Bentley's Miscellany.”éHood said, when he beard that the first name we's abandoned,
as too ambitious, “That may be a reason for not calling it the Wits' Miscellany but, my dear
Bentley, why run into the opposite eactreme #"—M.
SHEE’s ALASCO. 395
brought you Mr. Gleig's pamphlet about the Missionaries. I assure
you few things have made more noise about town. 'Tis really a pithy
performance—devilish well written too—a rising sprig of the Mitre
this, sirs. -
Tickler. Just the thing I was wanting to see—I saw it quoted in the
John Bull. Such authors are much wanted now-a-days. Any thing
else, Ensign : - -
Odoherty. Why, here's the new comedy, too—spick and span.
JWorth. “Pride shall have a Fall.” Whose is it 3 -
Odoherty. Moore's—Luttrell's—Croly's—Jones's—-Rogers's—-Soane's.
All of which names I saw in print.”
Tickler. But which is right?
Odoherty. Never dispute with the newspapers—all must be right.
I only think it proper to mention that Soane is given on the authorit
of the Old Times. -
Tickler. A lie, of course. Nothing more is needed to prove that it
is not Soane. How did it run ?
Odoherty. Like Lord Powerscourt's waterfall—full and fast. It is
the most successful comedy since John Bull. -
Worth. I shall read it in the morning. It seems to be elegantly
written.
Odoherty. Very elegantly indeed—and the music is beautiful. Al-
together it acts right well. You have heard of Shee's Alasco º
North. How George Colman suppressed it !
Odoherty. Yes, and on what grounds? .
Worth. Something political, I understand; but I do not know
exactly what. - > - - -
Odoherty. Nor I very exactly;-but it is understood that the hero
(to be enacted by Charles Kemble) was a Liberal.
Tickler. That is, a ruffian “nulla virtute redemptus.”
Odoherty. Exactly, and Shee, with no other meaning than to write
dramatically—for Shee is a worthy and right-minded fellowf-gave
this lad all the roaring, rumfustian, upper gallery, clap-trap, hullabal-
loos about liberty, emancipation, the cause of freedom all over the .
* It was written by the Rev. George Croly, and was performed in London (at Covent
Garden Theatre) with great success, partly owing to the merit of the comedy; partly to its
being written to illustrate the airs and graces of a fashionable Cavalry Regiument, so that
every line was applicable to the 10th Hussars, who had just made themselves the butt of Lon.- .
don; and partly to Frederick Yates's extraordinary personation of Cornet Count Carmine.—M.
+ Martin Archer Shee, who was at once Poet and Painter—a few degrees above mediocrity
in both professions—published a Tragedy called “Alasco,” with a preface, in which he severely
rated George Colman, the licenser of plays, for having prohibited its performance without the
omission of certain lines which he (the licenser) thought unfit for publication. On the death
of Sir Thomas Lawrence, it was intiunated that George IV. would be pleased if the Royal-
Academy would elect Sir David Wilkie to fill the Presidential chair, thus vacated. The Acade-
micians, indignant at the idea of being dictated to, almost unanimously elected Shee, who was
knighted, as a matter of course, on the occasion. The Presidents, since the formation of the
Royal Academy, in 1768, have been Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. West, Sir Thomas Lawrence,
Sir Martin Shee, and Sir Charles Eastlake. This last was elected on Shee's death, in 1850.-M.
396 NOCTES AMIBIROSLAN AE.
world, and the other fine things, on which the Breeches-maker's
Review -- - - -
North. What review, do you say? - •
Odoherty. The Westminster—but as Place, the snip of Charing-
Cross, is the great authority in it, it is never called any thing in
London but the Breeches-maker's Review. However, as I\was saying,
the effective part, acted by the effective actor, was this sort of gun-
powder stuff, while the antagonizing principle, as his holiness Bishop
Coleridge would say, was a fellow as humdrum as one of the pluck-
less Prosers of the Modern Athens, and to be performed by one Cooper
or Carpenter. So the Benthamism had it all to itself—and in English
too, a language which Jerry, you know, does not understand; and
therefore cannot corrupt the nation by scribbling in it.
Tickler. If such be the case, Colman was quite right; though, after
all, the country is so well disposed, that it might have been left to the
decision of the House.
North. Which would, I think, in the present temper of the people,
have damned any thing jacobinical or verging thereto.
Odoherty. Ay, ay, countryman O'Connell, with grief, is obliged to
confess, that “Toryism is triumphant.” Fill your glasses—Here's long
may it so continue !
Morth and Tickler. Amen, amen.
Odoherty. Any news in Edinburgh 3
North. Order up supper immediately. News in Edinburgh Bless
your heart, when had we news here ? -
Tickler. The old affair—Listen and you shall hear how it has gone,
goeth, and shall go at Ambrose's. (Sings.)
1.
Ye sons of the platter give ear,
Venter habet aures, they say,
The praise of good eating to hear,
You'll never be out of the way;
But with knives sharp as razors, and stomachs as keen,
Stand ready to cut through the fat and the lean—
A Through the fat and the lean—
Sit ready to cut through the fat and the lean.
2.
The science of eating is old,
Its antiquity no man can doubt:
Though Adam was squeamish, we're told,
Eve soon found a dainty bit out; -
Then with knives sharp as razors and stomachs as keen,
Our passage let's cut through the fat and the lean—
- &c. &c.
THE PHRENOLOGISTs. 397.
3.
Through the world from the West to the East,
Whether City, or Country, or Court,
There's no bonest man, Iaic or Priest,
But with pleasure partakes in the sport,
And with knife sharp as razor, and stomach as keen,
His passage doth cut through the fat and the lean—
. . . . . . . . &c. &c.
4.
They may talk of their roast and their boiled,
They may talk of their stew and their fry,
I am gentle simplicity's child,
And I doſe on a West Riding pie,
While with knife sharp as razor and stomach as keen,
I splash through the crust to the fat and the lean—
To the fat and the lean,
&c. &c.
5.
Let the Whigs have sour bannocks to chew,
And their dishwater namesake to swill;
But, dear boys, let the wet ruby flow
For the comfort of Torydom still. .*
Be our dishes like mountains, our bumpers like seas,
Be the fatness with us, and the leanness with these—
&c. &c.
North. I like to hear you talk of leanness!—Well, well, after all,
what an infernal bump of gluttony you must sport, Timotheus l—and
you too, Odoherty. You are not aware, that the infernal idiots have
got you into their hands, -
Odoherty. The infernal idiots—who are they —Oh, the Phrenolo-
gists How have the asses got me? :
North. It appears that you were lying on your old bench in
the watch-house, after an evening's carouse here, when a party of
Craniologists were committed for exercising the Organ of Destruc-
tiveness on the windows of somebody, whom they wanted to convince
of the truth of the theory—and one of them took a cast of your
head. -
Odoherty. The devil he did!—What did he find there?
North. Imprimis, one huge bump on the top of the forehead, de-
noting extraordinary piety. .
Odoherty. What, this bump here?—Piety with a vengeance —To
be sure I went on my knees immediately after getting it—for it is the
mark of a rap of a shillela which I got in the days of my youth from
Cornelius O'Callaghan, in a row at Ballyhooly. What else am I,
besides being pious? - * -
398. NOCTES AMBROSLAN.E.
Morth. Oh, I forgot the entire—but it is to appear in the next vol.
ume of their transactions. -
Tickler. They found the organ of punch-drinking very large, which
tends, more than any other fact I have heard, to prove the truth of
their wise Science, - -
Odoherty. Where did they find it, pray ?
Tickler. Somewhere above your eyebrow. -
Odoherty. Oh! the asses—if they found it somewhere under my
gullet, they would be nearer the mark. But come, here they go l—
(Sings.) -
1.
Of all the asses in the town
None's like the Phreno-lógers,
They sport a braver º of ears
Than all the other codgers.
There's not a jackass in the land
Can bray so true and sweetly,
Nor prove a turnip is a head
As wise as theirs completely.
2.
'Tis they who write in learned words,
By no means long or braggart;
'Tis they who proved no saint eler lived
If none was Davie Haggart.
For Davie is a favorite name
Among our northern witches;–
'Twas David Welsh who made the club,
Along with David Breeches.
I meant to say Bridges, but I could not think of a rhyme
Davie,” who is an excellent fellow in all other respects, is turned
phrenologer, and has an interesting paper on a young thief of his
acquaintance, in the Idiot Transactions, which is quite edifying to
read.
3.
They prove that Chalmers' pate across?
Is half a foot and over;
Whereas in J º Hume, M. P.,
An inch less they discover;
And therefore they declare the one
A most poetic prancer,
While Joseph they pronounced to be
No mighty necromancer.
.* David Bridges of Edinburgh, clothier, had a fine collection of paintings and sketches, and
was Secretary to the Dilettanti Society.—M.
+ See Combe's Letter to Dr. Barclay.—C. N.
TICKLER's SONG. 399
4.
But Hume, you needna fash your thumb,
Nor stint your” smuggled bottle;—
Still prove in style that three and three
Make up fifteen in tottle.
For ev’n if what these wooden pates
Have tried to prove were swallow'd,
Yet if it be a narrow skull,
Your head's a perfect solid.
5
They proved from Whig Jack Thurtell's head,
That he was kind and gentle;
And though too fond of cutting throats,
Yet still he never meant ill.
And now the seven-and-eighty wit's,t
To all our satisfactions,
Have shown it takes no brains to print
A volume of transactions.
Shall I go on ?
North. No–no—let the turnip-tops rot in quiet. (Sings.)
The Doncaster mayor, he sits in his chair—
His mills they merrily go—
His nose it does shine with Oporto wine,
And the gout is in his great toe.
And so it is in mine too. Oh oh! O dear! what a cough I have
heigh, heigh, heigh Come now, Tickler, one stave ſtom your old
mouse-trap, to conclude the ante-coenal part of our syutposium, for I
hear the dishes rattling below.
Tickler (sings & la Matthews).
Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window—
Thumpaty, thumpaty, thump;
He begg'd for admittance—she answered him no-
Glumpaty, glumpaty, glump.
No, no, Roger, no—as you came ye may go–
Stumpaty, stumpaty, stump.
O what is the reason, dear Dolly, he cried---
Humpaty, humpaty, hump-
That thus I’m cast off, and unkindly denied H. -
Trumpaty, trumpaty, trump-
Some rival more dear, I guess, has been here—
Crumpaty, crumpaty, crump.
* Wide Hume's Speech of the 12th inst.—C. N.
t The number of prenologists in the club in Edinburgh,. —C. N.
400 NOOTES AMBROSLANAE.
Suppose there's been two, sir, pray what's that to you, sir?—
Numpaty, numpaty, nump.
Wi’ a disconsolate look, his sad farewell he took—
Frumpaty, frumpaty, frump-
And all in despair jump'd into a brook—
Jumpaty, jumpaty, jump;
His courage did cool in a filthy green pool—
Slumpaty, slumpaty, slump-
So he swam to the shore, but saw Dolly no more—
Dumpaty, dumpaty, dump—
He did speedily find one more fat and more kind—
Plumpaty, plumpaty, plump-
But poor Dolly's afraid she must die an old maid—
Mumpaty, mumpaty, mump.
Enter AMBROSE with his tai, on. (Left ºating.)
No. XIV.-APRIL, 1824.
SCENE I.—Sky-Blue Parlor.
MR. NoFTH, the ETTRICK SHEPHERD, and MR. AMBROSE.
North. Just so—just so, Mr. Ambrose. No man sets a cushion
with more gentle dexterity. As my heel sinks into the velvet, my toe
forgets to twinge. Now, my dear St. Ambrosio, for l'eau médicinal /
(Mr. Ambrose communicates a nutshell of Glenlivet, and exit.) Now,
my dear Shepherd, let us have a “twa-handed crack.”
The Shepherd. What's the gout like,” Mr. North, sir? Is’t like
the stang o' a skep-bee ? or a toothacky stoun ? or a gumboil, when
you touch’t wi' het parritch? or a whitlow on ane's nose, thrab thrab-
bing a' the night through 3 or is't liker, in its ain way, till what ane
drees after thretty miles o' a hard-trotting, bargbacked beast, wi' thin
breeks on ane's hurdies?
Morth. Gentle Shepherd, “Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to
be wise.”
The Shepherd. I'se warrant now, sir, that your big tae's as red as
a rose in June.
North. There spoke the poet—the author of the Queen's Wake.
Mr. Hogg, I am happy to know that you are about to give us a new
poem, Queen Hynde. Is it very fine !
The Shepherd. Faith, I’m thinking it's no muckle amiss. I’ve had
great pleasure aye in the writing o't. The words came out, helter
skelter, ane after the other, head to doup, like bees frae a hive on the
first glimpse o' a sunny summer morn.
Worth. Again Why, that is poetry, Mr. Hogg.
The Shepherd. Fie shame! That's just what Mr. Jaffray said to
Coleridge, when walking in the wud wi' him at Keswick. And yet
what does he do a towmont or twa after, but abuse him and his genius
baith, like ony tinkler, in the Embro' Review. I canna say, Mr. North,
that I hate flattery, but, oh man I fear’t, and at the very time I swal-
low’t, I keep an e'e on the tyke that administers the cordial.
* The Frenchman's idea of the difference between gout and rheumatism would answer this
query – “You puts your fingeres in a vice and somebody does squeeze, squeeze, beyond what
Ullà. In º bear, #" is Zö rumitteeze: you get doo or dree squeeze more, and datis ze gout.”—My
OL. .—28
402 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE,
North. Queen Hynde will do, James. Tales, tales, tales, eternal
prose tales—out with a poem, James. Your prose tales are bu
The Shepherd. What kind o' a pronunciation is that, man :
North. I seldom write verses myself, now-a-days, James, but aſ I
have not bothered you much lately by spouting MSS. as I used to do
long ago, pray, be so kind as to listen to me for a few stanzas.
1.
Hail, glorious dawning! hail, auspicious morn
APRIL THE FIRST grand festival, all hail!
My soaring Muse on goosequill pinion borne,
From that wide limbo, sung in Milton's tale,
Hasteus to pay thee love and reverence due,
For thou to me a day most sacred art;
And I shall call around a jovial crew,
Who love and worship thee with single heart.
Come, crown'd in foolscap, rolling forth this lay,
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day!
2.
Which of you first shall press to show your love—
To wail your bonnet to your patron saint :
I see you hasten from the earth above,
And sea below, to pay your service quaint;
White, black and gray, in every livery decked,
The stay-laced dandy, and the Belchered blood,
The grave divine of many a jangling sect—
Lawyers and doctors, and the critic brood,
All singing out in concert, grave or gay,
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day!
3.
March in the foremost rank—'tis yours by right—
March, grenadiers of folly—march, my Whigs—
Hoist the old tattered standard to the light,
Grunting in chorus like Will Cobbett's pigs.
George Tierny holds it with unsteady paw,
Looking right hungry on the golden hill
Of Place and Power, from which his ravening maw
Hopes vainly for vittal its chinks to fill.
Dupe to himself he growls, but loud must say,
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day !
4.
Brougham, in a hated gown of stuff,” attends,
His nose up-twitching like the devil's tail.
* Up to this time, although fully entitled to it by his standing at the bar, as well as high re-
pute and large practice as a lawyer, the distinction of being made a King's Counsel (which
entitles the holder to peculiar precedence at the bar) had been withheld from Brougham, by
Lord Chancellor Eldon, because of the truly courageous and independent manner in which
Brougham had defended Queen Caroline, in 1820–1. Ordinary (that is outer or utter) barris-
ters wear black stuff gowns, and sit outsido the bar in English courts of law. Queen's Coun-
sel, and persons holding patents of precedency sit within the bar and wear silken gowns.—M.
ALL FOOLS’ DAY. - 403
There Aberdeen her learnit Ractor sends,
Joseph, at whom great Cocker's self turns pale;
There's Scarlett Redivivus, whom the band
Of bloody gemmen of the press had slain,
And Wilson (once Sir Robert) hand in hand
With Nugent lading of the Falmouth Wain,
Joining right loudly in the grand buzza,
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day!
5.
Wise Hutchinson, and Wiser Peter Moore,
Great Holland, redolent of female fist ;
Sir James, the faithful treasurer of the poor,
Mick Taylor, lord of cutlets and gin-twist;"
Frothy Grey Bennet, patron of the press,
Whose freedom is their toast in bumpers full,
And which they show, by crowding to caress
Fudge Tommy Moore, and actioning John Bull.
Shout, my old Coke!—shout, Albemarle!—shout, Grey:
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day !
6.
Apt are the emblems which the party shows—
Here's “Great Napoleon, victor over Spain,”
And “Wellington of war no science knows,”
And “Angoulême has touched his hilt in vain,”
And “We must perish if the gold's withdrawn,”
And “We must perish if the gold is paid,”
And “Chaste art thou, O Queen l as snow ere dawn,”
And “Princess Olive+ is an injured maid;”
But shining over all, in alt still say,
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day I
7.
Close by their tails see Jeff’s reviewers sneak
In buff and blue, an antiquated gang;
Jeffrey himself with penny-trumpet squeak, -
Chimes with Jackpudding Sydney's jews-harp twang;
Hallam is there with blood of Pindar wet,
And there Macculloch bellows, gallant stot,
* Michael Angelo Taylor was a member of Parliament, wealthy, and with his residence very
near the then St. Stephen's Chapel, in which the Commons used to sit. From 4 o'clock every
day, until 12 at night, Taylor kept open house for such members of the Opposition as pleased
to “eat, drink, and be merry.” On one occasion, when Lord Durham (then Mr. Lambton) had
brought in a bill—either for Catholic Emancipation or Parliamentary Reform—most of the
Opposition had retired to take refreshments, at Taylor's, during Lambton’s speech, and a
tough debate and strong struggle was expected, the Government declined making a speech in
reply, forcing on a division, before the other party could be collected from Taylor’s “cutlets
and gin-twist,” and negatived the question, for that session, by a sudden vote. This trick
was much complained of, by the Liberals, for a long time.—M. --
Mrs. Olive Serres claimed to be the legitimate daughter of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cum-
berland, (brother to George III.,) by a marriage with Miss Wilmot. She assumed the rank and
title of Princess Olive of Cumberland, and had her case brought before Parliament, where her
claims were not recognised. . This was in 1822, and most of her remaining years were spent.
within the rules of a prison, for debt. She died in 1834–Mr. . . . .7 . . . . . . . - . . . ;
404
NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
And Christian Leslie, to whom is set .
A bust of stone in Stockbridge shady grot.
In puppy chorus yelps the full array, -
Hail, mighty mother, haill—hail, glorious ALL Fools day !
8.
Still impudent their gestures—still their mien
Swaggers beneath the load of self-conceit;
Yet all in spite of vanity is seen
Graven on each brow disorder and defeat;
Still ByRoN's canister, too deftly tied, -
Rings “kling-ling-ling,” bedraggling at their taill
Still NoFTH's stout cowhide, to each back applied,
Makes even the stoutest of the crew to quail;
Yet boldly still they cry with brave hurra—
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day!
9.
Whom have we next —I note the gesture trim,
The throat unkerchiefed, and the jaunty air,
The yellow silk that wraps the nether limb,
And all the singing robes that poets wear—
Hail, Bohea-bibbing monarch of Cockaigne!
Who is more fit than thou to join the song
Of glory to Tom-foolery, the strain
Thou and thy subject tribes have trolled so iong f
Shout o'er thy bumpered dish, hip ! hipſ hurra !
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day!
10.
For the remainder of this rabble rout,
. Their names I know not, nor desire to know.
For aught I care, each long-eared lubber lout
May march to Orcus on fantastic toe,
Save Barry Cornwall, milk-and-water bard,
Lord of the fitinky clad in livery green
To send so sweet a poet 'twere too hard,
To the chaise-percée of old Pluto's queen.
No, here as Cockney-Laureate let him stay,
Singing, hail, mother, hail!—hail, glorious ALL Fools' day!
11.
Make way, make way, in plenitude of paunch,
; See London's learned livery waddling on.
Lord Waithman heads the rumpled ayalanche,”
Tailed by Teautamen's hero—Whittington I
Oh, Huckaback the Great, alike sublime
In measuring speech or gingham by the ell,
* Alderman Waithman, who was a strong Liberal, carried on the business of a linen-draper
in the premises, corner of Fleet-street and Bridge-street, Blackfriars, now partly occupied by
He filled the office of Lord Mayor, and was elected four
After his death, his friends erected an
the Sunday Times newspaper office.
times to represent the city of London in Parliament.
obelisk, in his honor, opposite that raised in commemoration of Jöhn Wilkes, at the foot of .
Ludgate Hill, and within view of the place where he long had kept a shop.–M,
Town AND COUNTRY. '405
Worthy alike of poet's lofty rhyme, -
The stuff you utter, and the stuff you sell!
Sing with that voice which can e'en kings dismay,
Hail, mighty mother, hail!—hail, April ALL Fools' day !
The Shepherd. That'll do—Ohe ſ jam satis. I ken naething about
tae half o' the chiels, and the little I do ken about the lave is na worth
kenning. But the verses sound weel, and seem fu'o' satire. They'll
no be popular, though, about Ettrick. . . . . . . . . . .
North. I must occasionally consult the taste of the people in Lon-
don, and the neighboring villages. They are fond of their little local
jeers, and attach mighty importance to men and things, that in the
Forest, James, are considered in the light of their own native insignifi-
CàIlC6. - - : - . -
The Shepherd. That's God's truth! In London you'll hear a soun',
like laigh thunder, frae a million voices, growl-growling on ae subject,
for aiblins a week thegither; a' else is clean forgotten, and the fate o'
the world seems to hang on the matter in han’;-but just wait you till
the tips o' the horns o' the new moon hae sprouted, and the puir silly
craturs recollec' naething ava’, either o' their aim fear, or their ain folly,
and are aff on anither scent, as idle and thochtless as before. In the
kintra, we are o' a wiser, and doucer, and dourer nature; we fasten
our feelings rather on the durable hills, than on the fleeting cluds; to-
morrow kens something about yesterday, and the fifty-twa weeks in
the year dinna march by like isolated individuals; but like a company
strongly mustered, and on an expedition or enterprise o’pith and moment.
North. So with books. In a city they are read—flung aside—and
forgotten like the dead. - --
The Shepherd. In the pure air o' the kintra, beuks hae an immortal
life. I hae nae great leebrary—feck o't consists o' twenty volumes o'
my ain writing; but, oh! man, it is sweet to sit down, on a calm sim-
mer evening, on a bit knowe, by the lochside, and let ane's mind gang
daundering awa down the pages o' some volume o' genius, creating
thochts alang with the author, till, at last, you dinna Weel ken whilk
o' you made the beuk. That's just the way I aften read your Maga-
zine, till I could believe that I hae written every article—Noctes and a .
Worth. How did the Border games go off this Spring Meeting,
Shepherd? - - . . . . .
The Shepherd. The loupin' was gude, and the rinnin' was better,
and the ba' was best. Oh, man that ye had but been there ! .
North. What were the prizes 3 " . . . . . -
The Shepherd. Bunnets. Blue bunnets—I hae ane o' them in my
pouch, that wasna gien awa’. There—try it on.
- (The Shepherd puts the blue bonnet on Mr. Worth's head.)
North. I have seen the day, James, when I could have leaped any
man in Ettrick. - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -
406 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE. ------,
The Shepherd. A' but ane. . The Flying Tailor would hae been
your match ony day. But there's no denying you used to take awfu'
spangs. Gude safe us, on springy meadow grun, rather on the decline.
you were a verra grasshopper. But, wae's me—the crutches 3 Ehew /
fugaces, Posthume, Posthume, labuntur anni /
Morth. Why; even yet, James, if it were not for this infernal gout
here, I could leap any man living, at hop, step, and jump
The Shepherd. Hech, sirs —hech, sirs but the human mind's a
strange thing, after a’ſ Here's you, Mr. North, the cleverest man, I'll
say’t to your face, noo extant, a scholar and a feelosopher, vauntin' o'
your loupin'! That's a great weakness. You should be thinkin' o'
ither things, Mr. North. But a you grit men are perfet fules either
in ae thing or anither.
North. Come, James, my dear Hogg, draw your chair a little closer.
We are a set of strange devils, I acknowledge, we human beings.
The Shepherd. Only luk at the maist celebrated o' us. There's
Byron, braggin' o' his soomin', just like yourself o' your loupin'. He
informs us that he swom through the streets of Venice, that are a'
canals, you ken—nae very decent proceeding—and keepit ploutering
on the drumly waves for four hours and a half, like a wild guse, diving,
too, I'se warrant, wi' his tail, and treading water, and lying on the back
o' him—wha’ the deevil cares 3
North. His lordship was, after all, but a sorry Leander ?
The Shepherd. You may say that. To have been like Lander, he
should hae swom the Strechts in a storm, and in black midnight,
and a' by himself, without boats and gondolas to pick him up gin he
tuk the cramp, and had a bonnie lass to dicht him dry, and been
drown'd at last—but that he'll never be. -
North. You are too satirical, Hogg.
The Shepherd And there's Tammas Mure braggin' after anither
fashion o' his exploits amang the lasses. O man, dinna you think it
rather contemptible, to sit in a cotch wi' a bonnie thochtless lassie,
for twa three lang stages, and then publish a sang about it?” I ance
heard a gran’ leddie frae London lauching till I thocht she would hae
split her sides, at Thomas Little, as she ca'd him. I could scarcely
fadom her—but ye ken’t by her face what she was thinking, and it
was a quite right—a severe reproof. -
North. Mr. Coleridge Is he in the habit, Hogg, of making the
Public the 20mfidants of his personal accomplishments?
The Shepherd. I canna weel tell, for deevil the like o' sic books
* The Shepherd must here allude to one of Moore's songs, (not included in the collective
edition of his poety,) which commences thus:-
“Sweet Fanny of Timmol when first I came in
To the dear little carriage in which you were hurled,
I thought to myself, if it were not a sin, -
I could teach you the prettiest things in the world.”—M.
COLERIDGE. - 407
as his did I ever see wi' my een beneath the blessed licht. I'm no
speakin’ O’ his Poems—I’ll aye roose them—but the Freen” and
the lay Sermons are aneuch, to drive ane to distraction. What's
logic 3 • ‘ - - , º -
North. Upon my honor as a gentleman, I do not know; if I did, I
would tell you with the greatest pleasure.
The Shepherd. Weel, weel, Coleridge is aye accusing folk o' hae-
ing nae logic. The want o' a' things is owing to the want o' logic,
it seems. Noo, Mr. North, gin logic be soun' reasoning, and I jalouse
as much, he has less o't himself than ony body I ken, for he never
sticks to the point twa pages; and to tell you the truth, I aye feel as
I were fuddled after perusing Coleridge. Then he's aye speaking o'
himsel—but what he says I can never mak out. Let him stick to his
poetry, for, oh! man, he's an unyerthly writer, and gies Superstition
Sae beautifu'a countenance, that she wiles folk on wi' her, like so many
bairns, into the flowery but fearfu' wildernesses, where sleeping and
wauking seem a' ane thing, and the very soul within us wonders
what has become o' the every-day warld, and asks hersel what crea-
tion is this that wavers and glimmers, and keeps up a bonnie wild
musical sough, like that o' swarming bees, spring-startled birds, and
the voice of a hundred streams, some winpling awa’ ower the Elysian
meadows, and ithers roaring at a distance frae the clefts o' mount
Abora. But is't true that they hae made him the Bishop of Barba-
does 3 " .
North. No, he is only Dean of Highgate. I long for his “Wan-
derings of Cain,” about to be published by Taylor and Hessey. That
house has given us some excellent things of late. They are spirited
publishers. But why did not Coleridge speak to Blackwood? I sup-
pose he could not tell if he were questioned. -
The Shepherd. In my opinion, sir, the bishops o' the Wast Indies
should be blacks.
North. Prudence, James, prudence,—we are alone, to be sure, but
the affairs of the West Indies t
The Shepherd. The bishops o' the Wast.Indies should be blacks.
Naebody 'll ever mak me think itherwise. Mr. Wilberforce, and Mr.
Macaulay, $ and Mr. Brougham, and a' the ither saints, have tell't us
* “The Friend’” was a weekly periodical, edited by Coleridge, which lived through six months
or so, and died from the irregularity of its issue, and the very unbusiness-like manner in
which it was carried on. This was one of the many failures of S. T. C., (es re as, he liked to
write it,) and, De Quincey informs us, was chiefly made so by Coleridge's use of opium.—MI.
+ It was one of Coleridge's nephews who was made Bishop of Barbadoes, which he ceased to
be, by resignation, in 1842. Coleridge resided at Highgate, near London.—M.
f “The Wanderings of Cain,” a poem in prose, originally appeared in an Annual, I believe,
and is now included in the Works of Coleridge.—M. - - - *
§ William Wilberforce, long the leader of the Anti-Slavery party in the House of Commons
He died in 1833. His son, Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, is now bishop of Oxford.—Zachary Macaulay
was for forty years associated with Wilberforce in the Britisl: Anti-Slavery movement. He
died in 1838, and was the father of Thomas Babington Macaulay, the poet, orator, critic, and
bistorian.—MI. - - -
4.08 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
that blacks are equal to whites; and gin that be true, make bishops
o' them—what for no 3 - - * :
North. James, you are a consistent poet, philosopher, and philan-
thropist. Pray, how would you like to marry a black woman How
would Mr. Wilberforce like it 3 \ -
The Shepherd. I canna answer for Mr. Wilberforce; but as for my
self, I Scunner at the bare idea.
North. Why, a black skin, thick lips, grizzly hair, long heels, and
convex shins—what can be more delightful ?—But to be serious,
James, do you think there is no difference between black and white :
The Shepherd. You're drawing me into an argument about the
West Indies, and the neegars. I ken naething about it. I hate
slavery as an abstract idea—but it's a necessary evil, and I canna be-
lieve a' thae stories about cruelty. There's nae fun or amusement in
whipping women to death—and as for a skelp or twa, what's the
harm 3–Hand me ower the rum and the sugar, sir.
North. What would Buxton the Brewer say, if he heard such sen-
timents from the author of Kilmeny ? But what were we talking
about a little while àgo? .
The Shepherd. Never ask me siccan a like question. Ye ken weel
aneuch that I never remember a single thing that passes in conversa-
tion. But may I ask gin you're comin’ out to the fishing this season ?
North. A propos. Look here, James. What think you of these
flies Phin's, of course. Keep them a little farther off your nose,
James, for they are a dozen of devils, these black heckles. You ob-
serve, dark yellow body—black half heckle, and wings of the mal-
lard, a beautiful brown—gut like gossamer, and the killing Kirby.
The Shepherd. I'll just put them into my pouch. But, first, let
me see how they look sooming. .
(Draws out a fly and trails it slowly along the punch in his
tumbler, which he holds up to the argand lamp—a present
to Mr. Ambrose from Barry Cornwall.)
O man that's the naturallest thing ever I saw in a' my born days.
I ken whare there's a muckle trout lying at this very moment, below
the root o' an auld birk, wi' his great snout up the stream, drawing in
slugs and ither animalculas, into his vortex, and no caring a whisk o'
his tail for flees; but you'se hae this in the tongue o' you, my braw
fellow, before May-day. He'll sook’t in saftly, saftly, without showing
mair than the lip o' him, and then I'll streck him, and down the pool
he'll gaung, snoring like a whale, as gin he were descending in a' his
power to the bottomless pit, and then up wi' a loup of lightning to
the verra lift, and in again into the water wi' a squash and a plunge,
like a man gaun in to the douking, and then out ae pool into anither,
like a kelpie gaun a-coorting, through alang the furds and shallows,
and ettling wi' a' his might at the waterfa’ opposite Fahope's house,
IIookING Hogg, 409
Luk at him luk at him there he glides like a sunbeam strong and
steady, as I give him the butt, and thirty yards o' the pirn—nae stane
to stumble, and nae tree to fankle–bonnie green hills shelving down
to my ain Yarrow—the sun lukin’ out upon James IIogg, frae behint
a cloud, and a breeze frae St. Mary's Loch chanting a song o' tri-
umph down the vale, just as I land him on the gowany edge of that
grassy-bedded bay, • ,
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky. -
North. Shade of Isaac Walton - - -
The Shepherd. I’m desperate thirsty—here's your health. Oh,
Lord! What's this ; what's this? I've swallowed the flee
North (starting up in consternation). Oh, Lord! What's this
what's this ; I’ve trodden on a spike, and it has gone up to my
knee-pan —O my toe my toe But, James—James—shut not your
mouth—swallow not your swallow—or you are a dead man. There—
steady—steady—I have hold of the gut, and I devoutly trust that the
hook is sticking in your tongue or palate. It cannot, must not be in
your stomach, James. Oh
The Shepherd. Oh for Liston,” wi' his instruments
Morth. Hush—hush—I see the brown wings.
Enter AMBROSE.
Ambrose. Here, here is a silver spoon—I am all in a fluster. O
dear, Mr. North, will this do to keep dear Mr. IIogg's mouth open,
while you are * --
North. It is the soup-ladle, sir. But a sudden thought strikes me.
Here is my gold ring. I shall let it down the line, and it will disen-
tangle the hook. Don't swallow my crest, my dear Shepherd. There
—all's right—the black heckle is free, and my dear poet none the
WOl'SQ. -
The Shepherd (coughing out Mr. Worth's gold ring). That verra
flee shall grip the muckle trout. Mr. Ambrose, quick-countermand
Liston. (Mr. Ambrose vanishes.) I'm a' in a poor o’sweat. Do you
hear my heart beating ? - . •
North. Mrs. Phin's tackle is so excellent that I felt confident in the
result. Bad gut, and you were a dead man. But let us resume the
thread of our discourse. -
The Shepherd. I have a sore throat, and it will not be weel till we
Soop. Tak my arm, and we'se gang into the banqueting-room. Hush
—there's a clampering in the trance. It's the rush o' critics frae the
* Robert Liston, then of Edinburgh, and the best operator there. He removed to London,
where he established the highest character as a surgeon, and died in 1847–M.
410 NOCTES AMIBIROSLAN AF.
pit o' the theatre. They're coming for porter—and let's wait ill
they're a' in the tap-room, or ither holes. In five minutes you'll hear
nae ither word than “Wandenhoff,” “Wandenhoff.” ; . .
North. The shower is over, let us go; and never, James, would old
Christopher North desire to lean for support on tºwn of a better
[1]:l 11.
The Shepherd. I believe you noo—for I ken when you're serious
and when you're jokin', and that's mair than every ane can say.
North. Forgive, James, the testy humors of a gouty old man. I
am your friend. . . -
The Shepherd. I ken that fu' brawly. Do you hear the sound o'
that fizzing in the pan 3 Let's to our wark. But, North, say nothing
about the story of the flee in that wicked Magazine. -
North. Mum's the word. Allons.
SCENE II.-The Banqueting-Room.
Enter MR. NoFTII, leaning on the arm of the SILEPHERD, and MR.
- AMBROSE. M.R. TICKLER in the Shade.
North. By the palate of Apicius ! What a board of oysters —Ha,
Tickler | Friend of my soul, this goblet sip, how art thou ?
Tickler. Stewed—foul from the theatre. Ah, ha! Hogg—your
paw, James. -
The Shepherd. How's a' wi' ye!—how's a' wi' ye, Maister Tick-
ler? Oh, man, I wish I had been wi' you. I'm desperate fond o'the-
atricals, and Vandenhoff's a gran’ chiel—a capital actor.
Tickler. So I hear. But the Vespers of Palermo won't do at all at
all; so I shan’t criticise any actor or actress that strutted and spouted
to-night. Mrs. Hemans, I am told, is beautiful—and she has a fine
feeling about many things. I love Mrs. Hemans; but if Mrs. He-
mans loves me, she will write no more tragedies. My dear Chris-
topher, fair play's a jewel—a few oysters, if you please.
North. These “whiskered Pandours,” as Campbell calls them in
his Pleasures of Hope, are inimitable.
The Shepherd. God safe us a', I never saw a man afore noo put.
* John Wandenhoff, the actor, was an especial favorite with Edinburgh play-goers. They
cherished a fond recollection of John Kemble, something of whose style of acting Wandenhoff
had adopted.—M.
+ “The Vespers of Palermo,” beautiful as a dramatic poem, made slight impression on the
public mind either in London or Edinburgh. At the latter place it was brºught out on the
especial solicitation of Sir Walter Scott, who was urged to take an interest in it by Joanna
Baillie. Before its production in Edinburgh, Scott wrote to Say, “I trust the piece will succeet) ;
but there is no promising, for Saunders is meanly jealous of being thought less critical than
John 13ull, and may, perhaps, despise. to be pleased with what was less fortunate in London.”
Be subsequently said, in allusion to this play, that, in Edinburgh, it was “situation, passion,
... and rapidity of action, which seem to be the principal requisites for securing the success of a
modern drama.”—“M. -
“THE BAILLIE’s GUSE.” 411
ting sax muckle oysters in the mouth o' him a' at aince, but yoursel,
Mr. North. - -
Tickler. Tray, North, what wearisome and persevering idiot kept
mumbling monthly and crying quarterly about Mrs. Hemans, in the
‘Baillie's Guse,” for four years on end ? -
The Shepherd. The Baillie's Guse !—wha's he that ? Is’t ane o' the
periodicals you're misca’ing
Tickler. Yes—Waugh's Old New Edinburgh Review.” It was
called so, for the first time, by the Shepherd himself—and most apt-
ly—as it waddled, flapped, and gabbled, out of the worthy Baillie's
shop, through among the stand of coaches in IIunter Square.
North. It was indeed a bright idea to fight a gander against a
game-cock—Pool versus Jeffrey !
The Shepherd. Weel, do you ken, I thought it a gay gude review
but it was unco late in noticing warks. The contributors, Ijalouse,
werena very original-minded lads, and lay back till they heard the
general Sugh. But when they did pronounce, I thought them, for the
maist part, gude grammalians.
Tickler. The ninny I allude to, who must be a phrenologist, could
utter not a syllable but “Hemans, Hemans, Hemans !” The lady must
have been disgusted.
Shepherd. No she, indeed. What leddy was ever disgusted even by
the flattery o' a fule 3
Tickler. They were a base as well as a stupid pack. Low mean
animosities peeped out in every page, and with the exception of our
most excellent friend R., and two or three others, the contributors were
scarcely fit to compile an obituary. The editor himself is a weak well-
meaning creature, and when the Baillie's Guse breathed her last, he
naturally became Taggar to the I’hrenological Journal.
North. I should be extremely sorry to think that my friend Waugh,
who is a well-informed gentlemanly man, has lost money in this ill-
judged business. The Guse, as you call it, occasionally quacked, as
if half afraid, half angry, at poor innocent Maga, but I never gave the
animal a single kick. Was its keep expensive to the Baillie?
Tickler. Too much so, I fear. These tenth-raters are greedy dogs.
Do you not remember Tims? -
North. Alas! poor Tims I had forgot his importunities. But I
thought I saw his Silliness in Taylor and Hessey, a month or two ago
—“a pen-and-ink sketch of the late trial at Hertford.”
Tickler. Yes—yes—yes—Tims on Thurtell!! By the way, what a
most ludicrous thing it would have been had Thurtell assassinated
Tims' Think of Tims's face when he found Jack was serious. What
small, mean, paltry, contemptible Cockney shrieks would he have
emitted 1 'Pon my honor, had Jack bond fide Thurtellized Tims, it
- * The New Edinburgh Review was published by Waugh & Innes.—M. a
412 - NOOTES AMBROSIANA.
would have been productive of the worst consequence to the human
race; it would have thrown such an air of absurdity over murder.”
Shepherd. What! has that bit Cockney cretur Tims, that I fright-
ened sae in the Tent at Braemar, when he offered to sing “Scots wha
hae wi' Wallace bled,” been writing about ae man mºdeling anither ?
IIc wasma blate.
Tickler. Yes, he has—and his account is a curiosity. Tims thinks,
that the most appalling circumstance attending the said murder was,
that every thing was “in clusters.” “It is strange,” quoth he, “that,
solitary as the place was, and desperate as was the murder”—the actors
—the witnesses—all but the poor helpless solitary thing that perished,
“were in clusters I’’ -
Shepherd. Hout, tout, Tims' - t
Tickler. “The murderers were in clusters,” he continues—“the
farmer that heard the pistol had his wife, and child, and nurse with
him ; there were two laborers at work in the lane, on the morning
after the butcher-work; there was a merry party at the cottage on
the very night, singing and supping, while Weare's mangled carcass
was lying darkening in its gore in the neighboring field; there were
hosts of publicans and hostlers witnesses of the gang's progress on their
blood-journey; and the gigs, pistols, even the very knives ran in pairs.”
Quod Tims, in Taylor and Hessey, for Feb. 1, 1824—for here is the
page, with which I now light my pipe. By all that is miraculous,
these candles are in clusters. -
Shepherd. That's ae way, indeed, o' makin' murder ridiculous. But
it's a lee. The gigs did not run in clusters. Only think o' ca'ing ae
gig passing anither on the road, a cluster o' gigs | Neither did the
actors run in clusters, for Thurtell was by himself when he did the job.
And then the pistols | Did he never hear before o' a pair o' pistols?
Tims, if you were here, I wad thraw your nose for you, ye conceited
prig. - - -
Tickler (reading). “It seems as though it were fated, that William
Weare should be the only solitary object on that desperate night, when
he clung to life in agony and blood, and was at last struck out of
existence as a thing, single, valueless, and vile.” He was, it seems, a
bachelor. -
Shepherd. The only solitary object on that desperate night. Was
nae shepherd walking by himsel’ on the mountains? But what kind
o' a Magazine can that o' Taylor and Hessey be, to take sic writers as
Tims ? I hope they don't run in clusters. - -
AWorth. Give me a bit of the sheet—for my cigar (Heaven defend
}
* The murder of William Weare, a London gambler, by Thurtell, Probert, and Hunt:--this
last was brother of the late Henry Hunt, a dramatic vocalist in New-York, and father of
Mrs. or Madame Thillon, the operatic singer.—M. -
f The London Magazine.—M. -
THURTELL's DEFENCE. - 4:13
me, the cigars run in clusters) is extinct. Let me see. Hear Tims
on Thurtell's speech, -
“The solid, slow, and appalling tone in which he rang out these last
words, can never be imagined by those who were not auditors of it.
fie had worked himself up into a great actor—and his eye, for the
first time during the trial, became alive aud eloquent; his attitude was
expressive in the extreme. He clung to every separate word with an
earnestness which we cannot describe, as though every syllable had
the power to buoy up his sinking life—and that these were the last
sounds that were ever to be sent unto the ear of those who were to
degree his doom | - - *S
“The final word, God was thrown up with an almost gigantic
energy—and he stood, after its utterance,” with his arm extended, his
face protruded, and his chest dilated, as if the spell of the sound were
yet upon him, and as though he dared not move, lest he should dis-
turb the still-echoing appeal | He then drew his hands slowly back—
pressed them firmly to his breast, and sat down, half exhausted, in the
dock.” -
Omnes. Ha! haſ haſ haſ ha haſ haſ ha / hall ha lla 1 ha.
North (gravely). “When he first commenced his defence, he spoke
in a steady, artificial manner, after the style of Forum orators—but as
he warmed in the subject, and felt his ground with the jury, he became
more unaffectedly earnest, and naturally solemn—and his mention of
his mother's love, and his father's piety, drew the tear up to his eye
almost to falling. He paused—and, though pressed by the judge to
rest, to sit down, to desist, he stood up, resolute against his feelings,
and finally, with one fast gulp, swallowed down his tears | He wrestled
with grief, and threw it / When speaking of Barber Beaumont, the
tiger indeed came over him, and his very voice seemed to escape out
of his keeping. There was such a savage vehemence in his whole
look and manner, as quite to awe his hearers. With an unfortunate
quotation from a play, in which he long had acted too bitterly,–The
Revenge —he soothed his maddened heart to quietness, and again
resumed his defence, and for a few minutes in a doubly artificial seren-
ity. The tone in which he wished that he had died in battle reminded
me of Kean's farewell to the pomp of war in Othello—and the follow-
ing consequence of such a death was as grandly delivered by Thurtell
as it was possible to be: ‘Then my father and my family, though
they would have mourned my loss, would have blessed my name; and
shame would not have rolled its burning fires over my memory !’”f
*To strengthen his protestation of innocence, Thurtell closed with the common adjuration,
“So help ine God.”—MI.
t In 1824, when Thurtell was tried for the murder of Weare, the law expressly forbade that
persons accused of such a crime should be allowed the privilege, extended to prisoners in all
other cases, (except in courts-martial,) of being heard by counsel. The law has since been
altered. It was stated and believed that Thurtell's defence, which he read remarkably well,
414 - NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
Omnes. Ha! haſ haſ ha! haſ haſ haſ haſ hal ‘.
Shepherd. Weel, I dinna ken the time I hae Jaucht so muckle. I'm
tair exhausted. Gie's a drink. The English folk gaed clean mad
a'thegither about that fallow. I never could see ony thing very
remarkable about his cutting Weare's Craig. It was a puir murder
yon. There was that deevil-incarnate Gordon, that murdered the bit
silly callant o' a pedlar on Eskdale muir, the ither year, and nae sic
sugh about it in a' the papers. -
Tickler. I forget it. The particulars?
Shepherd. Oh! man, it was a cruel deed. He foregathered wi'the
laddie and his bit pack, trudging by himsel’ among the hills, frae
housie to housie; and he keepit company wi' him for twa hail days,
ane o' them the Sabbath. Nae doubt he talked, and lauched, and
joked wi' the puir creature, wha was a bonnie boy they say, but little
better in his intellects than an innocent, only haftlins wise; and when
the ane stapped, the ither stapped, and they eat bread thegither by
different ingles, and sleepit twa nichts in ae bed. In a lanesome place
he tuk the callant and murdered him wi' the iron-heel o' ane of his
great wooden clogs. The savage-tramper smashed in the skull wi' its
yellow hair, didna wait to shut the bonnie blue een, put the pack over
his ain braid shouthers, and then, demented as he was, gaed into the
verra next town as a packman, and Selt to the lassies the bits o' rib-
bons, and pencils, and thumbles, and sic like, o' the murdered laddie.
I saw him hanged. I gaed into Dumfries on purpose. I wanted them
no to put ony night-cap over the ugly face o' him, that we might a'
see his last girns, and am only sorry that I didna see him dissecked.
Tickler. A set of amusing articles might, I think, be occasionally
compiled from the recorded trials of our best British murderers. We
are certainly a blood-thirsty people; and the scaffold has been mounted,
in this country, by many first-rate criminals. &
North. One meets with the most puzzling malefactors, who perpe-
trate atrocious deeds upon such recondite principles, that they elude
the scrutiny of the most perspicacious philosophers. Butlers, on good
wages and easy work, rise out of comfortable warm beds, and cut the
throats of their masters quite unaccountably; well-educated gentlemen
of a thousand a-year, magistrates for the county, and praeses of public
meetings for the redress of grievances, throw their wives over bridges
and into coal-pits; pretty blue-eyed young maidens poison whole
families with a mess of pottage; matrons of threescore strangie their
sleeping partners with a worsted garter; a decent well-dressed person
meets you on your evening stroll, and after knocking out your brains
with a bludgeon, pursues his journey; if you are an old bachelor, or a
single lady advanced in years, you may depend upon being found
was written for him by Charles Phillips, the Irish Barrister.—The article in the Londor: Maga-
Bine was attributºd to Iſazlitt.—M. - -
- MURDER-DREAMS. . . 415
Some morning stretched along your lobby with your eyes starting out
of their sockets, the blue marks of finger-nails indented into your wizen,
and your os frontis driven in upon your brain, apparently by the blow
of a sledge-hammer, - - -
Shepherd. Haud your tongues, haud your tongues, yetwa ; you're
making me a' grew.
Tickler. A beautiful variety of disposition and genius serves to
divest of Sameness the simple act of slaughter; and the benevolent
reader never tires of details, in which knives, daggers, pistols, clubs,
mallets, hatchets, and apothecaries' phials, “dance through all the
mazes of rhetorical confusion.” Nothing can be “more refreshing”
than a few hours' sleep after the perusal of a bloody murder. Your
dreams are such as Coleridge might envy. Clubs batter out your
brains;–your throat is filled with mud, as three strong Irishmen
(their accent betrays them) tread you down seven fathoms into a
quagmire. “You had better lie quiet, sir,” quoth Levi Hyams, a
Jew, while he applies a pig-butcher's knife to the jugular vein; you
start up like Priam at the dead of night, and an old hag of a house-
keeper chops your nose off with a cleaver. “Oh what a pain me-
thinks it is to die,” as a jolly young waterman flings you out of his
wherry into the Thames, immediately below Wellington Bridge.
“Spare—spare my life, and take all I have " has no effect upon two
men in crape, who bury you, half dead, in a ditch. “He still breathes,”
growls a square thickset ruffian in a fustian jacket, as he gives you the
coup-de-grace with a hedge-stake.
Shepherd. Haud your tongues, I say. You'll turn my stomach at
this dish o' tripe. The moniplies and the lady's hood are just excel-
lent. Change the conversation. $ --> *
Tickler. .You are huddled out of a garret-window by a gang of
thieves, and feel yourself impaled on the area spikes; or the scoun-
drels have set the house on fire, that none may know they have mur-
dered you; you are gagged with a floor-brush till your mouth yawns
like a barn-door, yet told, if you open your lips, you are a dead man;
outlandish devils put you into a hot oven; you try to escape from the
murderer of the Marrs, and other households, through a common-sewer,
and all egress is denied by a catacomb of Cats, and the offal of twenty
dissecting-tables. “Hoize him into the boiler, and be d–d to him;”
and no sooner said than done. “Leave off haggling at his windpipe,
Jack, and scoop out his bloody eyes.”
North. How do you like to be buried in quick-lime in your back-
court, heaving all the while like a mole-hill, above your gashes, and
puddled with your slow-oozing heart-blood 3 Is it a luxury to be
pressed down, neck and crop, Scarified like bacon, into a barrel below
a water-spout, among dirty towels, sheets, and other napery, to be dis-
covered, six weeks hence, in a state of putrefaction ? What think you

416 MoCTES AMBROSLANAE.
of being fairly cut up like a swine, and pickled, salted, barrelled, and
shipped off at fourpence a pound, for the use of a blockading squadron ? .
Or would you rather, in the shape of hams, circumnavigate the globe
with Cook or Vancouver ? Dreams—dreams—dreams. “I wake in
horror, and dare sleep no more P’ y - -
Tickler. Could it have been believed, that in a country where mur-
der has thus been carried to so high a pitch of cultivation, its fourteen
million inhabitants would have been set agape and aghast by such a
pitiful knave as Jack Thurtell killing and bagging one single miserable
sharper ? Monstrous ! -
North. There was Sarah Malcolm, a sprightly young charwoman of
the Temple, that murdered, with her own hand, a whole household.
Few spinsters, we think, have been known to murder three of their own
sex; and Sarah Malcolm must ever stand in the first class of assassins.
She had no accomplice; her own hand held down the gray heads of
the poor old women, and strangled them with unflinching fingers. As
for the young girl of seventeen, she cut her throat from ear to ear,
while she was perhaps dreaming of her sweetheart. She silenced all
the breath in the house, and shut by the dead bodies; went about her
ordinary business, as sprightly as ever, and lighted a young Irish gen-
tleman's fire at the usual hour. - .
Tickler. What an admirable wife would Sarah have made for Wil-
liams, who, some dozen years ago, began work as if he purposed to
murder the metropolis Sarah was sprightly and diligent, good-look-
ing, and fond of admiration. Williams was called “Gentleman Wil-
liams,” so genteel and amiable a creature did he seem to be; so pleas-
aut with his chit-chat, and vein of trifling, peculiar to himself, and not
to be imitated. He was very fond of children, used to dandle them
with a truly parental air, and pat their curled heads, with the hand
that cut an infant's throat in the cradle. Williams was a sober man,
and no brawler; he preferred quiet conversation with the landlady
and her family within the bar, to the brutal mirth of the tavern-boxes;
and young and old were alike delighted with the suavity of his smile.
But in his white great-coat—with his maul—or his ripping-chisel—
or his small ivory-handled penknife, at dead of night, stealing upon a
doomed family, with long silent strides, while, at the first glare of his
eyes, the victims shrieked aloud, “We are all murdered " Williams
was then a different being indeed, and in all his glory. His ripping-
chisel struck to the heart the person whose cheek he had patted two
hours before. Charles Martell himself, or the Pounder, smashed not a
skull like Williams, the Midnight Malletteer—and tidily and tenderly
did he cover up the baby with its cradle-clothes, when he knew that
he had pierced its gullet like a quill. He never allowed such trifles
long to ruffle his temper. In the evening, he was seen smiling as be-
fore ; even more gentle and insinuating than usual; more tenderly did
SURGEON CONOLLY. 417
he kiss little Tommy, as he prepared to toddle to his crib; and, as ho
touched the bosom of the bar-maid in pleasing violence, he thought
how at one blow the blood would spout from her heart.* -
North. Sarah Malcolm was just the person to have been his bride.
What a honey-moon How soft would have been their pillow, as they
recited a past, or planned a future murder | How would they have
fallen, asleep in each other's blood-stained arms with the ripping-
chisel below their pillow, and the maul upon the hearth !
The Shepherd. I wadna walk by myself through a dark wood the
night, gin ony body were to gie me a thousand pounds. I never heard
you in sic a key before. It's no right—it's no right !
North. What do the phrenologers say about Thurtell? I have not
seen any of their Transactions lately. -
Tickler. That he had the organ of Conscientiousness full, a large
Benevolence, and also a finely-developed organ of Veneration, just as
it might have been expected, they say, from his character. For the
phrenologer thinks that Jack would not have cheated an honest man,
that he was another Howard in benevolence, and had a deep sense of
religion.
The Shepherd. I canna believe they would speak sic desperate hav-
ers as that. - -
Tickler (ringing the bell, enters Ambrose). Bring No. II. of the Phre-
nological Journal, Mr. Ambrose. You know where to find it. Per-
haps the article I allude to may not yet be destroyed.
North. What can the Courier mean by talking such infernal non-
sense, Tickler, about that murderous desperado, Surgeon Conolly ?
Tickler. A puzzle. The Courier is an excellent paper—and I never
before knew it, in a question of common sense and common morality,
obstinately, singularly, and idiotically in the wrong.
Worth. Why, the cruel villain would have shot others besides poor
Grainger—and after his blood was cooled, he exulted in the murder
of that unfortunate man. The gallows was cheated of Conolly, by a
quirk of the law. -
Tickler. Judge Best saw the thing in its true light; and the coun-
try is indebted to him for his stubborn justice. Why, the Courier
says, that not one man in a hundred, but would have done as Conolly
did.}–Oh monstrous ! is murder so very ordinary a transaction ?
North. No more, no more. Iłut to be done with it, listen to this:
-—“We are informed that this unfortunate gentleman has directed his
friends to supply him with a complete set of surgical instruments, with
* There was no actual proof, but the strongest presumption, that Williams really was a
wholesale murderer. He died before the time appointed for his trial, and the London popu-
lace, solemnly taking his corpse to the places where the murders had been committed,
treated it there with unheard of ignominy, and then shot it into a hole dug in a ditch, pour-
ing over it as much quicklime as would have built a moderate-sized house.—M.
# I am ignorant of the circumstances here referred to.—M.
WOL. I.-29
418 NOOTES AMBROSIANAE.
all the new inventions, and a complete chamber medicine chest. There
is no doubt that he will be of the greatest utility to the colony, from
the great want of medical men there ; but there is less doubt that he
will be one of the first in the country, as he is covered with misfor-
tunes, and unpolluted by crime.” )
Tickler. That cannot be from the Cowrier.
North. Alas! it is—although quoted from the Medical Adviser. .
Tickler. I shall row Mudford for this, first time I dine with him in
town. Here is another folly, although of a different character, from
the same excellent paper of our excellent friend,” an account of the
Stot's Introductory Lecture on what is called Political Economy. The
Ricardo Lecture | | “Mr. M'Culloch began his lecture by pointing out
the importance of the study of Political Economy, and observed, that
the accumulation of wealth could alone raise men from that miserable
state of society, in which all were occupied in providing for their im-
mediate physical wants, by affording them the means of subsistence
when employed in the cultivation of mental powers, or in those pur-
suits which embellish life.”
North. Most statistical of Stots I had quite forgotten the stupid
savage—but, look here, Tickler—here is a flaming account of his sec.
ond display, in the Morning Chronicle. “He showed that objects de
rive their value from labor alone, and that they are more or less valu-
able in proportion as labor is expended on them ; that the air, and the
rays of the sun, however necessary and useful, possess no value; that
water, which at a river's side is of no value, acquires a value when re-
quired by persons who are at some distance, in proportion to the labor
employed in its conveyance.” .
Shepherd. I aye thocht M’Culloch a dull dour fellow, but the like
o' that beats a'. It's an awfu' truism. The London folk 'ill never thole
sic havers frae sic a hallanshaker.
North. On Mr. Canning's appointment to the Secretaryship, the Cow-
zier honored us by gracing its chief column with a character of that
distinguished person from our pages, but without acknowledgment.
He never quotes us, therefore why did he steal?
Tickler. Poo! poo! be not so sensitive. Nothing uncommon in
that. It's the way of the world; and I am sure if Odoherty were here,
he would laud Mudford for knowing a good thing. Here's that gen-
tleman's health—I respect and esteem him highly.—James, you are a
most admirable carver. That leg will do.
Shepherd. No offence, sir, but this leg's no for you, but for mysel. I
thought I wad never hae gotten't aff. Naething better than the roasted
* William Mudford was Editor of the London Cowrier for many years, and author of a ro-
mance called “Five Nights of St. Albans.”—M.
t J. R. M’Culloch had been appointed Professor of Political Economy in London University,
then just founded.—M. . . . -
CORNET BATTIER. ,419
leg o' a hen. Safe us! she's fu' o' eggs. What for did they thraw
the neck o' an eerock when her kame was red, and her just gaen to fa'
a-laying Howsomever, there's no great harm done. Oh man, this
is a grand sooping-house, Rax ower the porter. Here's to you, lads,
baith of you. What's a' this bizziness that I heard them speaking
about in Selkirk as I came through, in regard to the tenth company o'
Hoozawrs ?
Tickler. Why, I cannot think Battier a well-used man. They sent
him to Coventry.*
Shepherd. I would just as soon gang to Coventry as to Dublin city.
But what was the cause o' the rippet 2 .
Worth. Why, the Tenth is a crack regiment, and not thinking Mr.
Battier any ornament to the corps, they rather forgot their good man-
ners a little or so, and made the mess mighty disagreeable to him;
so, after several trifling occurrences too tedious to bore you with, Hogg,
why, Mr. Battier made himself scarce, got himself rowed a good deal
by the people at the Horse-guards, sold his horses, I presume, and now
sports half-pay in the pedestrian service.
The Shepherd. But what for was he nae ornament to the corpse ?
Wasna he a gentleman Ż w
Morth. Perfectly a gentleman; but somehow or another not to the
taste, of the Tenth ; and then, such a rider
The Shepherd. What I wasna he a gude rider upon horseback?
North. The worst since John Gilpin. In a charge, he “grasped
fast the flowing mane,” gave tongue, and involuntarily deserted. So
says his colonel; and Mr. Battier, aithough he has published a denial
of being the son of a merchant, has not, so far as I have observed,
avowed himself a Castor. - - -- *
Shepherd. Na, if that be the case, the ither lads had some excuse.
But what garr'd Mr. Battier gang into the Hoozawrs, gin he couldna
ride? I hope, now that he has gaen into the Foot, that he may be
able to walk. If not, he had better leave the service, and fin’ out some
genteel sedentary trade. He wadna like to be a tailor
Tickler. Why, Battier, I am told, is a worthy fellow, and as I said
before, he was ill used. But he ought not to have gone into the Tenth,
and he ought not to have made use of threatening inuendos after leav-
ing the regiment, and crossing the Channel. -
North. Certainly not. No gentleman should challenge a whole regi-
ment, especially through the medium of the public press.
Shepherd. If Mr. Battier were to challenge me, if I were ane of the
* Mr. Battier obtained a Cornetcy in the 10th Fiussars, a dandy regiment, commanded by a
gallant soldier, the late Marquis of Londonderry. The officers, on finding that Mr. Battier's
father had been in trade, agreed to cut him. Of course, he did not tauno!y submit to this, but
his complaints being useless, he left the regiment, challenging Lord Londondery to the duello,
on the plea that he was to be held responsible for, because he could and ought to have check-
ed, the ill conduct of the officers. Shots were exchanged, and this ended the aſſair.—M,
420 NOCTES AMBROSLANE.
offishers o' the Tenth, I wad fecht him on horseback—either wi' sword
or pistol, or baith; and what wad my man do, then, wi' his arms around
the neck o' his horse, and me hewing awa’ at him, head and hurdies :
North. It was a silly business altogether, and is gone by—but, alas,
poor Collier | That was a tragedy indeed.
Tickler. Confound that lubber, James. If he has feeling at all, he
must be miserable. - -
North. His account of the affair at first was miserably ill-written—
indeed, incomprehensible—and grossly contradictory—extremely inso-
lent, and in many essential points false. All were to blame, it seems,
commodore, captains, crews, and Admiralty. A pretty presumptuous
brig •
Shepherd. Puir chiell puir chiel ! I saw’t in a paper—and couldna
help greeting; a' riddled wi' wouns in the service o' his country, and
to come to that end at last! Has that fallow James bitterly lamented
the death o' the brave sea-captain,” and deplored having caused sic a
woful disaster ?
North. Not as he ought to have done. But the whole country must
henceforth despise him and his book. I could pardon his first offence,
for no man could have foreseen what has happened ; but his subse-
quent conduct has been unpardonable. He owed to the country the
expression of deep and bitter grief, for having been the unintentional,
but not altogether the innocent cause of the death of one of her noblest
heroes.
Tickler. I see Phillimore has been bastinadoing James—impru-
dently, I opine. You have no right to walk into a man's house with
your hat on, like a Quaker, supported by a comrade, and then in the
most un-Friendly manner, strike your host over the pate with a scion
from an oak-stump. . - - -
North. Certainly you have not. I am sorry that my friend Philli-
more, as brave a fellow as ever walked a quarter-deck, did not consult
his brother the doctor. But I believe the captain had no intention of
assaulting the naval historian when he entered the premises; and that
some gross impertinence on the part of the scribe, brought the switch
into active service.
Tickler. The public will pardon Phillimore: A Naval History is
a very good thing, if written by a competent person, which James is
not, although the man has some merit as a chronicler. But the very
idea of criticising in detail every action, just as you would criticise a
volume of poems, is not a little absurd. Southey's Life of Nelson is
good.
* Mr. James not the novelist) had written a Naval Biography in which he did less than
justice to a brave officer—Collier. This led to the fearful catastrophe, which is alluded to here.
t James frequently received Striking criticisms of this nature. Captain Phillimore was
brother of Dr. Phillimore, Government Advocate in the Admiralty Court, London, and Chan
cellor of Worcester, Oxford, and Bristol.—M.
Thurrºu. - - 421
Morth. Excellent. Look at James's History after reading that admi-
rable Manual, and you will get sick. w -
Shepherd. He's just a wonderfu' man, Soothey ; the best o' a' the
Lakers. -
Tickler. Bam the Lakers. Here's some of the best Hollands that
ever crossed the Zuyder Zee. Make a jug, James.
Shepherd. Only look, what has become of the supper ? Mr. Tickler,
you've a fearsome appetite. Hear—hear—there's the alarm-bell—and
the fire-drum ! Saw na ye that flash o' licht? I hope it may turn out
a gude conflagration. Hear till the ingines. I’m thinking the fire's
on the North Bridge. I hope it's no in my freen’ Mr. John Anderson's
shop. . . . . g
%rt. I hope not. Mr. Anderson is a prosperous bibliopole, and
these little cheap editions of the Scottish Poets, Ramsay, and Burns,
and Grahame, are admirable. The prefaces are elegantly and judi-
ciously written—the text correct—type beautiful, and embellishments
appropriate. -
Tickler. The “Fire-Eater,” lately published by Mr. Anderson, is a
most spirited and interesting tale—full of bustle and romantic inci-
dents. I intend to review it. - '. -
Shepherd. The “Fire-Eater” is a fearsome name for ony Christian;
but how can you twa sit ower your toddy in that gait, discussing the
merits o' beuks, when I tell you the whole range o’ buildings yonder's
in a bleeze : . . - *
Enter MR. AMBRose with the Phrenological Journal.
Ambrose. Gentlemen, Old Levy the Jew's fur-shop is blazing away
like a fury, and threatening to burn down the Hercules Insurance
Office. . . . . . .
Tickler. Out with the candles. I call this a very passable fire.
Why, look here, the small type is quite distinct. I fear the block-
heads will be throwing water upon the fire, and destroying the effect.
Mr. Ambrose, step over the way and report progress.
Shepherd. Can ye see to read thae havers, by the fire-flaughts, Mr.
Tickler ? - - . . - -
Tickler. What think ye, James, of the following touch “Yet the
organ of benevolence is very large; and this is no contradiction, but a
confirmation of phrenology. Thurtell, with all his violence and dissi-
pation, was a kind-hearted man "
Shepherd. You're making that. Nae man can be sic a fule as
write that down, far less edit it. Do they give any proofs of his
benevolence 3
Tickler. Yes—yes. He once gave half-a-sovereign to an old bro-
ken black-leg, and “upon witnessing a quarrel which had nearly
ended in a fight, between Harry Harmer and Ned Painter, at the house
422 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
of the former pugilist—the Plough in Smi thfield—and which origin-
ated through Thurtell, he felt so much hurt, that he shed tears in
reconciling them to each other " f -
Shepherd. The blackguard's been greetin' fu'. - -
Tickler (reading). “His behaviour in prison was of so affecting and
endearing a nature, that the account of the parting scene between him
and the jailer, and others who had been in the habit of great inter-
course with him, during his confinement, is affecting enough to draw
tears from every one whose heart is not made of stone !”
Shepherd. Weel, then, mine is made o' stane. . For it was to me
just perfectly disgustful and loathsome. Sir James Mackintosh
broached preceesely my sentiments in the House O’ Commons. A man
may weel greet, in a parting scene wi' a jailer, when he is gaun out
to the open air to be hanged, without ony great benevolence. -
Tickler. “His uniform kindness to Hünt, after Probert had escaped
punishment as king's evidence, up to the moment of his execution,
was of the warmest nature. Although Hunt was probably drawn into
a share of the bloody transaction by Thurtell, the affectionate conduct
of Thurtell towards him so completely overpowered him, that had
Thurtell been the most virtuous person wipon earth, and he and HUNT
of oppositE SEXEs, Thurtell could not have rendered himself more
beloved than every action of Hunt proved he was.” -
Shepherd. A fool and a phrenologist is a ae thing, Mr. Tickler—I
admit that noo. Hunt did all he could to hang Thurtell—Thurtell
abused Joe constantly in prison—and in his speech frightened him
out of his wits by his horrid faces, as Hunt tells in his confession to
Mr. Harmer. Ten minutes after Jack is hanged, Hunt declares that
he richly deserved it—his whole confession is full of hatred (real of
affected) towards Thurtell. During his imprisonment in the hulks,
his whole behaviour is reckless, and destitute of all feeling for any hu-
man creature, and at last he sails off with curses in his throat, and
sulky anger in his miserable heart. It’s a shame for Dr. Pool to edit
sic vile nonsense, and I’ll speak to him about it mysel'.
Tickler. Hear the Doctor himself. “That Thurtell, with a large
benevolence, should commit such a deed, was reckoned by many
completely subversive of the science. Do such persons recollect the
character of one Othello, drawn by William Shakspeare? Is there
no adhesiveness, no generosity, no benevolence in that mind so por-
trayed by the poet? and was a more cool and deliberate murder ever
committed ?” -
Shepherd. That beats Tims. Othello compared to Thurtell; and
what's waur, wee Weare in the sack likened, by implication, to Des-
demona | That's Phrenology, is't'. I canna doubt noo the story o'
the Turnip. *
; : Tickler. This Phrenologist admires Thurtell as one of the bravest
TEIE FIRE. 423
of men. “No murder,” says he, “was ever committed with more
dāring.” Do you think so, James? •,
Shepherd. Oh the wretched coward | What bravery was there in
a big strong man inveigling a shilly-shally feckless swindler into a gig,
a Sweddled up in a heavy great-coat, and a' at aince, unawares, in a
dark loan, shooting him in the head wi' a pistolº And then, when
the puir devil was frighted, and stunned, and half dead, cutting his
throat wi' a penknife. Dastardly ruffian
Tickler. “The last organ stated as very large is Cautiousness.
This part of his character was displayed in the pains he took to con-
ceal the murder, to hide the body, &c.”
Shepherd. What the devil! wad ony man that had murdered
anither no try either to conceal the body, or to avoid suspicion ?
Was it ony mark of caution to confide in twa such reprobates as Hunt
and Probert, both of whom betrayed the murderer? Was it ony mark
o' caution to tell the Bow Street officer, when he was apprehended,
that he had thrown Weare's watch over a hedge? Was it ony mark
o' caution to lose his pistol and penknife in the dark? Was it ony
mark o' caution to keep bluidy things on and about him, afterwards
for days, in a public house? Fule and phrenologist are a' ane, sir,
truly enough. . .
Tickler. “A martyr could not have perished more heroically.”
Shepherd. That's no to be endured. Thurtell behaved wi' nae mair
firmness than ony ither strong-nerved ruffian on the scaffold. Was
his anxiety about the length o' rope like a martyr', Naebody be-
baved sae weel at the last as the honest hangman.
Tickler. The ass thus concludes: “I will not detain the reader any
longer; but trust enough has been said to show, that if ever head
confirmed Phrenology, it is the head of Thurtell.”
Shepherd. Fling that trash frae you, and let us out-by to the fire.
The roof of the house must be falling in belyve. Save us, what a
hum o' voices, and trampling o' feet, and hissing o' ingines, and
growling o' the fire | Let's out to the Brig, and see the rampaging
element. -
Tickler, You remind me, Hogg, of Nero surveying Rome on fire,
and playing on the harp.
Shepherd. Do ye want a spring on the fiddle ; See till him,
North's sleeping ! Let's out amang the crowd for an hour. He'll
never miss us till we come back, and crutches are no for a crowd.
424 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
SCENE III.-The Worth Bridge.—Mr. TICKLER and the SHEPHERD
incog. in the crowd.
Tickler. Two to one on the fire. -
Shepherd. That's a powerful ingine. I wad back the water, but
there's ower little o't. (Addressing himself generally to what Pierce
Egan calls the audience.)—“Lads, up wi' the causeway, and get to
the water-pipes.” ... " . *
(The hint is taken, and the engines distinguish themselves
greatly.)
Tickler. Hogg, you Brownie, I never thought you were the man to
throw cold water on any night's good amusement.
Shepherd. I’ll back the water, noo, for a gallon o' whisky.
Tickler. Young woman, it's no doubt a very pretty song of old
Bector Macneil's, L º &
“Come under my plaidie, the night's gaun to fa',
There's room in't, dear lassie, believe me, for twa.”
But still, if you please, you need not put your arm under mine, till I
whisper into your private ear. *
Shepherd. What's the limmer wanting
Female. What!—Is that you, Mr. Hoggº Ken ye ocht o' your
friend, Captain Odoherty :
Shepherd. There—there's half-a-crown for you—gang about your
business, you slut—or I'll brain ye. I ken nae Captain Odoherties.
Tickler. I remember, James, that a subscription-paper was carried
about a few years ago, to raise money for pulling down this very
range of buildings, which had just been carried up at a considerable
expense. .
Shepherd. And you subscribed ten pounds?
Tickler. I should as soon have thought of subscribing ten pounds
for Christianizing Tartary. - -
Shepherd. There's an awfu' wark in Embro' just now, about raising
monuments to every body, great and small. Did you hear, sir, o' ane
about to be raised to Dubisson the dentist : -
Tickler. I did. It is to be a double statue. Dubisson is to be re-
presented in marble, with one hand grasping a refractory patient by
the jaw-bone, and with the other forcibly introducing his instrument
into the mouth.-I have seen a sketch of the design, and it is equal
to the Hercules and Antaeus. g * * *
Shepherd. Whaur's it to be erected ?
Tickler. In the Pantheon, to be sure.
Shepherd. Houts—it maun be a joke. But Mr. Tickler, have you
seen a plan o' the monument built at Alloa to Robert Burns?
Tickler. Ay, James, there is some sense in that. My friend Thomas
THE CONFLAGRATION. 425
Bamilton's design is most beautiful, simple, and impressive. It stands
where it ought to stand, and the gentlemen of Coila deserve every
praise. I have heard that a little money may be still needed in that
quarter—very little, if any at all. And I will myself subscribe five
ounds.
Shepherd. So will I. But the Monument no being in Embro', you
see, nor Mr. Thomas Hamilton a man fond o' putting himself forward,
ane hears naething about it. I only wish he would design ane half as
gude for mysel.
Tickler. Ah! my beloved Shepherd, not for these thirty years at
ast. Your worthy father lived to ninety odd–why not his son?
Some half century hence, your effigy will be seen on some bonny
green knowe in the Forest, with its honest brazen face looking across
St. Mary's Loch, and up towards the Gray-mare's tail, while by moon-
light all your own fairies will weave a dance round its pedestal.
Shepherd (in amazement). My stars l yonder's Odoherty
Tickler. Who?—The Adjutant }
Shepherd. Odoherty l—look at him—look at him—see how he is
handing out the furniture through the window, on the third flat of an
adjoining tenement. How the deevil got he there ! Weel, siccan a
deevil as that Odoherty l—and him, a' the time, out o' Embro', as I
hae’t under his ain hand - -
Tickler. There is certainly something very exhilarating in a scene
of this sort. I am a Guebir, or Fire-worshipper. Observe, the crowd
are all in most prodigious spirits. Now, had it been a range of houses
tenanted by poor men, there would have been no merriment. But
Mr. Levy is a Jew—rich probably—and no doubt insured. Therefore,
all is mirth and jollity. & -
Shepherd. Insurance offices, too, are a' perfect banks, and ane canna
help enjoying a bit screed aff their profits. My gallon o' whisky's
gane; the fire has got it a' its ain way noo, and as the best o' the
bleeze is ower, we may return to Ambrose's. -
Tickler. Steady—there was a pretty tongue of fire flickering out of
the fourth story. The best is to come yet. What a contemptible af-
fair is an illumination
Shepherd. Ye may say that—wi' an auld hizzie at every window,
left at hame to watch the candle-doups. -
Stranger (to the Shepherd). Sir, I beg your pardon, but you seem
to be an amateur !
Shepherd. No, sir, I am a married man, with two children.
Stranger. 'Tis a very so-so fire. I regret having left bed for it.
Shepherd. What I were you siccan a fule as leave your warm bed
for a fire? I’m thinking you'll be nae mair an amateur than mysel,
but a married man.
Stranger. I have seen, Sir, some of the first fires in Europe. Drury-
426 NOCTES AMIBIROSIAN AE.
|
Lane, and Covent-Garden Theatres, each burned down twice—Opera-
house twice—property to the amount of a million at the West India
Docks—several successful cotton-mill incremations of merit at Man-
chester—two explosions (one with respectable loss of life) of powder-
mills—and a very fine conflagration of shipping at Bristol.
Shepherd. Mr. Tickler—heard ye ever the like
Tickler. Never, Hogg.
Shepherd. I’m the Eſtrick Shepherd—and this is Mr. Tickler, sir.
Stranger. What! can I trust my ears—am I in presence of two of
the men who have set the whole world on fire ? - -
Shepherd. Yes—you are, sir, sure enough, and yonder's the Adju-
tant Odoherty, wi' his face a covered wi' coom, getting sport up yonder,
and doing far mair harm than good, that's certain. But will you come
with us to Ambrose's Whare is he, Tickler ?—whare is he Whare's
the gentleman gone? t - -
Tickler. I don't know. Look at your watch, James. What is the
hour !
Shepherd (fumbling about his fob). My watch is gone my watch
is gone —he has picket my pocket o' her —Deevil burn him —I.
niffered wi' Baldy Bracken, in the Grass-market, the day before yester-
day, and she didna lose a minute in the twenty-four. This is a bad
job—let us back to Ambrose's. I’ll never see her face again.
SCENE IV.-The Banqueting-Room.
NoRTH (solus, and asleep).
Enter on tiptoe MR. AMºnose.
Mr. Ambrose. This fire has made me anxious about my premises.
All right. He is fast as a nail; and snores (first time I ever heard
him) like the rest of his species. Bless my soul!—the window is open
at his very ear. (Pulls down the sash.)
North (awakening). Ambrose ! I have had a congelating dream.
Ice a foot thick in my wash-hand basin, and an icicle six inches long
at my nose !
Ambrose. I am glad to have awakened you, sir. Shall I bring you
a little mulled port
North. No–no–Ambrose. Wheel me towards the embers. I hear
it reported, Ambrose, that you are going to gut the tenement.-Is it
so : ~
Ambrose. It is an ancient building, Mr. North, and somewhat incom-
modious. During the summer months it will undergo a great change
and thorough repair. -
GUTTING THE EIOUSE. 427 . .
North. Well, well, Ambrose, I rejoice to know that a change is de-
manded by the increase of resort; but yet, methinks, I shall con-
template any alteration with a pensive and melancholy spirit. This
very room, Mr. Ambrose, within whose four walls I have been so often
lately, must its dimensions be changed ? Will this carpet be lifted
That chimney-piece be removed ? I confess that the thought affects
me, Mr. Ambrose. Forgive the pensive tear. -
(Takes out his square of India, and blows his nose in a
hurried and agitated manner.)
Ambrose, Mr. North, I have frequently thought of all this, and
rather than hurt your feelings, sir, I will let the house remain as it is.
I beseech you, sir, be composed. -
North. No “Ambrose, thou reasonest well,” it must be so. The
whole city undergoeth change deep and wide, and wherefore should
Gabriel's Road, and the Land of Ambrose, be alone immutable % Down
with the partitions ! The mind soon reconciles itself to the loss of
what it most dearly loved. But the Chaldee Chamber, Ambrose !
the Chaldee Chamber, Ambrose !—must it go—must it go, indeed,
and be swallowed up in some great big wide unmeaning room, desti-
tute alike of character and comfort, without one high association
hanging on its blue or yellow walls R
Ambrose. No, Mr. North; rather than alter the Chaldee Chamber,
would I see the whole of Edinburgh involved in one general conflagra-
tion. - -
North. Enough—enough—now my mind is at rest. With ham
mers, and with axes both, let the workmen forthwith fall to. You
must keep pace, Mr. Ambrose, with the progress, the advancement of
the age. *
Ambrose. Sir, I have been perfectly contented, hitherto, with the ac-
commodation this house affords, and so, I humbly hope, have been my
friends; but I owe it to those friends to do all I can to increase their
comforts, and I have got a plan that I think will please you, sir.
North. Better, Ambrose, than that of the British itself. But no
more. Think you the lads will return ? If not, I must hobble home-
wards. . . -
Ambrose. Hearken, sir—Mr. Tickler's tread in the trance.
- (Ea.it susurrans.)
Enter TICKLER and the SHEPHERD.
Tickler. Have you supped, North ? .
North. Not I, indeed. Ambrose, bring supper. (Exit Ambrose.)
The Shepherd. I think I wull rather take some breakfast. Mr. North,
I’m thinking you're sleepy; for you’re lookin' unco gash. Do you
want an account o' the fire ? {
North. Certainly not. Mr. Ambrose and I were engaged in a very
428 NOCTES AMBROSIANAF,
\
interesting conversation when you entered. We were discussing the
merits of the Exhibition. .
The Shepherd. O' the pictures? I was there the day. Oh I man,
yon things o' Wulkie's are chief endeavoors. That ane frae the Gentle
Shepherd is just nature hersel. I wush he would illustrate in that gait
some o' the bonniest scenes in the Queen's Wake.
Tickler. Worth all the dull dirty daubs of all the Dutchmen that
ever vomited into a canal. Nauseous ninnies a coarse joke may pass
in idle talk—a word and away—but think, James, of a human being
painting filth and folly, dirt and debauchery, vulgarity and vileness,
day after day, month after month, till he finally covered the canvas
with all the accumulated beastliness of his most drunken and sensual
‘magination º -
North. Stop, Tickler—remember Teniers, and .
The Shºpherd. Remember nae sic fallow, Mr. Tickler; Wulkie's
wee finger's worth the hail o' them. “Duncan Gray cam here to
woo,” is sae gude, that it's maist unendurable. Yon's the bonniest
lass ever I saw in a' my born days. What a sonsy hawse But in-
deed, she's a' alike parfite. -
Tickler. Stop, Shepherd, remember. I saw a Cockney to-day look-
ing at that picture, and oh what a contrast between the strapping
figure of Duncan Gray, his truly pastoral physiognomy, well-filled top-
boots, (not unlike your own,) and sinewy hands that seem alike ready
for the tug of either love or war—and the tout-ensemble of that most
helpless of all possible creatures. -
North. John Watson is great this year. Happy man, to whom that
beautiful creature (picture of a Lady) may be inditing a soft epistle :
What innocence, simplicity, grace, and gaieté du coeur ! Why, if that
Sweet damosel would think of an old man like the - -
The Shepherd. Haud your tongue. Why should she think o' an
auld man “Ye might be her gutcher, you're threescore and twa.”
Tickler. Mr. Thomson of Duddingston is the best landscape-painter
Scotland ever produced—better than either Nasmyth, or Andrew Wil-
son, or Greek Williams.
North. Not so fast, Tickler. Let us discuss the comparative
merits— S
The Shepherd. Then I'm aff. For o' a' the talk in this world, that
about pictures is the warst. Iwud say that to the face o' the Director-
General himsel. -
North. A hint from my Theocritus is sufficient. What think you,
Bion, of this parliamentary grant of £300,000 for repairing old Wind-
sor 2 " . . - - - -
. The Shepherd. I never saw the Great House o’ Windsor Palace,
but it has been for ages the howf o' kings, and it maunna be allowed.
to gang back. If £300,000 winna do, gie a million. Man, if I was
THE NORTH POLE. 429
but in Parliament, I would gie the niggarts their fairings. Grudge a
king a palace | .
North. What say you, my good Shepherd, to a half million more
for churches : -
Shepherd. Mr. North, you and Mr. Tickler is aiblins laughing at
me, and speering questions at me, that you may think are out o' my
way to answer; but, for a’ that, I perhaps ken, as weel's either o' you,
what's due to the religious establishments of a great and increasing
kintra, wi' a population o’ twal millions, mair or less, in or owne. Isn't
it sae :
Morth. Well said, James. This is not the place, perhaps, to talk
much of these serious matters; but no ministry will ever stand the
lower in the estimation of their country, for having enabled some
hundred thousands more of the people to worship their Maker publicly
once a-week. * - * -
Shepherd. I’m thinking no. Nane o' the Opposition wad oppose a
grant o' half a million for bigging schools, the mair's their merit; and
if sae, what for no kirks? Edication and religion should gang hand in
hand. That's aye been my thocht. (Enter Ambrose, with supper.)
Howsomever, here's sooper; and instead o' talking o' kirks, let us a'
gang oftener till them. Put down the Sassages afore me, Ambrose.
Ye're looken unco weel the moo, man ; I hardly ever saw ye sae fat.
How is the mistress and the bairns ? • ‘
Ambrose. All well, sir, I thank you, Mr. Hogg.
The Shepherd. Od, man, I wush you would come out at the preach
ings, when the town's thin, and see us at Altrive. -
Ambrose. I fear it is quite impossible for me to leave town, Mr.
Hogg ; but I shall always be most happy to see you here, sir.
The Shepherd. I’ve been in your house a hunder and a hunder
times, and you ken I lodged ance inºhe flat aboon; and never did I
hear ony noise, or row, or rippet, below your rigging. I dinna repent
a single hour I ever sat here; I never saw or heard naething said or
done here that michtna been said or done in a minister's manse. But
it's waxing early, and I ken you dinna keep untimeous hours; so let
us devoor supper, and be aft. That fire taigled us. -
North. I had been asleep for an hour, before mine host awakened
me, and had a dream of the North Pole.
The Shepherd. North Pole ! IIow often do you think Captain
Parry intends howking his way through these icebergs, wi' the snout
o' his discovery ships ? May he never be frozen up at last, he and a
his crew, in thae dismal regions !
North. Have you read Franklin and Richardson 3
The Shepherd. Yes, I hae. Yon was terrible. Day after day mae-
thing to eat but tripe aff, the rocks, dry banes, auld shoon, and a god-
\
*
430 • NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
send o' a pair of leathern breeches | What would they no hae given
for sic a sooper as this here ! . ..
Tickler. Have you no intention, James, of going on the next land-
expedition ?
The Shepherd. Na, na; I canna do without vittals. I was ance for
twenty hours without tasting a single thing .. bit cheese and half
a bannock, and I was close upon the fainting. Yet I would like to
see the North Pole.
Tickler. Where's your chronometer, James :
The Shepherd. Whisht, whisht; I ken that lang-nebbit word.
Whisht, whisht. Safe us! is that cauld lamb –We'll no hae lamb
in Yarrow for a month yet.
Tickler. Come, North, bestir yourself, you're staring like an owl in
a consumption. Tip us A, my old boy. - -
The Shepherd. Mr. Tickler, Mr. Tickler, what langish is that to use
till Mr. North ? Think shame o' yoursel’.
North. No editor, James, is a hero to his contributors.
The Shepherd. Weel, weel, I for ane will never forget my respect
for Mr. Christopher North. He has lang been the support o' the liter-
ature, the pheelosophy, the religion, and what's o' as great importance
as ony thing else, the gude manners o' the kintra.
Tickler. Forgive me, North, forgive me, James. Come, I volun-
teer a song.
The Shepherd. A sang! Oh man, you're a bitter bad singer--
timmer-tuned, though a decent ear. Let's hear the lilt.

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“DRINR AWAY.” 431

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2.

Give way to each thought of your fancies,
That dances,
Or glances, or looks of the fair;
And beware that from fears of to-morrow
You borrow
No sorrow, nor foretaste of care.
Drink away, drink away, drink away !
For the honor of those you adore:
Come, charge! and drink fairly to-day,
Though you swear you will never drink more.
3.
I last night, cut, and quite melancholy,
Cried folly! -
What's Polly to reel for her fame?
Yet I’ll banish such hint till the morning,
And scorning .
Such warning to-night, do the same.
Drink away, drink away, drink away!
"Twill banish blue devils and pain;
And to-night for my joys if I pay, - - -
Why, to-morrow I'll go it again.
Enter MR. AMBRose, with alarm.
Mr. Ambrose. As I live, sir, here's Mr. Odoherty. Shall I say
you are here, for he is in a wild humor ? -
Jºhnter ODOHERTY, singing.
I've kiss'd, and I’ve prattled with fifty fair maids,
And changed them as oft, do ye see, &c.
(Worth and Tickler rise to go.)
Odoherty. What, bolting
The Shepherd. Ay, ay, late hours disma agree wi' snawy pows,
But I'se sit an hour wi' you.
(The Adjutant and the Shepherd embrace. Worth and
Tickler disappear.)
No. XV-JUNE, 1824.
Present—TIMOTHY TICKLER, Esq., ENSIGN ODoHERTY, the Ern RICR
SHEPHERD, and MR. JonATHAN SPIERs.
Odoherty. Yes, Tickler, you are, after all, quite in the right—I took
the other side merely for the sake of conversation. -
Tickler. Ay, and if my young friend here had happened to be
called away half-an-hour ago—ay, or if I had happened not to be
in the exact humcr fol squabashing, and particularly for squabashing
vow—what would have been the consequence, Mr. Morgan 8–what
would have been the consequence, you care-me-devil -
Odoherty. Why, I suppose, I should have helped to
“Give to the press one preux-chevalier more,”
as the old zig-zag of Twickenham says, or ought to say. Pope was
decidedly the Z of Queen Anne's time.*—lis dunces were the pro-
genitors of the present Cockneys. {
JHogg. Wheesht—wheesht—for heaven's sake dinna name thaë
creatures again—I’m sure they're doon enough at ony rate. But
really, Mr. Tickler, are ye no ower hasty ?—Od, man, (whispering
Timothy,) the lad might have turned out a genius.
Tickler. No whispering at Ambrose's, Hogg. Here, Jonathan, boy
--here's the Great Boar of the Forest grunting in my ear, that we
Amay be spoiling a genius in your honorable person. What say ye
to this, my hearty ?—Do you really now—but Sans phrase now—do
you really take yourself to be a genius 3
Bogg (aside to Odoherty). He takes his toddy brawlie, at ony
‘ate.
Odoherty. Hogg remarks that our youthful friend is a promising
punchifier. But this, even this, I fear, may still leave the matter a
little dubious—bibimus indocti doctique.
Hogg. Jeering at me, I daursay—but what signifies that ? Here
Mr. Jonathan, you're a very fine douce lad—never ye heed what thae
proud-nosed chiels tell you—put out the poem or the novell—whilk
of them said ye it was ?
Mr. Spiers. A romantic tale, sir, interspersed with verses.
* The articles in Blackwood against Ilunt, IIazlitt, &c., were signed “Z.”—M.
'TUTE CII. A.I.T.) E); M.S., 433
Hogg. Is there a gay feck o' verses :
Mr. Spiers. A considerable number, sir, Several of the charac-
ters, sir, give vent to their feelings in a poetical form, sir.
JHogg, Ay, that's a gude auld fashion. A real novell young leddy
bas aye her keelavine in her pouch, and some bit back of a letter, or
auld mantual maker's count, or something or other, to put down her
bit sonnet on, just after she's been stolen, or robbed, or, what's waur
maybe— •
Tickler, Hold your tongue, IIogg. Jonathan Spiers' book is a very
pretty book, I assure you—and his verses are very well introduced—
very well indeed,
Odoherty, Why, Hogg himself, in one of his recent masterpieces,
has given the finest example of the easy and unaffected introduction
of the ornament of occasional verse, in a prose romance.
Tickler (aside to Odoherty). I forget what you are alluding to.
Is this in the “Confessions of the Justified Sinner,” which I see ad-
vertised ? * -
Odoherty. No, 'tis in the “Three Perils of Man.” One of the chief
characters of that work is a bond fide poet, and this personage never
opens his mouth, but out comes a bond fide regular psalm measure
stanza of four lines. In the Pirate, to be sure, old Norna spouts most
unconscionably; but even she must knock under to the poet of Hogg.
Tickler (rings—enter Ambrose). Mr. Ambrose, have you the Three
Perils of Man in the house? If yea, bring them forthwith.
Ambrose (indignantly). Sir, Mr. Hogg's works form a part of the
standing furniture of the tap-room.
Odoherty (*). Standing furniture, I will be sworn. -
Ambrose. I rather think Mr. Macmurdo, the great drover from
Angus, has one of the volumes just now; but he seemed getting very
drowsy, and I shall perhaps be able to extract it. (Ecit.)
Flogg (aside). Honest man he's surely been sair forfaughten the
day at the market.
Odoherty. Hogg has another character in the same book—a priest;
and what think ye is his dialect? Why, pure Chaldee, to be sure.
Tickler. Chaldee manuscript, you mean, I suppose. Well, I see no
harm in this. - -
Hoag. It's a' perfect nature. If I liked I could speak nothing but .
poetry—deil a hait of prose—frae month's end to month's end. It
would come like butter.
Odoherty. In a lordly dish, to be sure. Come, Hogg, I take you
at your word. Stick to your psalm-tune then, 8
Hogg, -
Now steadfastly adhere will I,
Nor swerve from this again,
But speak in measured melody
For ever more, Amen
WOL. I.-30
434 . NOCTES AMBROSIANAE,
Tickler. Hurra! Hogg for ever ! that's a thumping exordium, James,
Could you match him there, Jonathan }
JHogg.
There is no poet, no, not one,
Nor yet no poetess,
Whose ready rhymes like those Carl I'llul,
Which my lips do express,
Yea, all the day continually
Out from my mouth they go,
Like river that not waxeth dry,
But his waves still do flow. .
Sith it be so that Og, the King
Of Bashan—
Tickler. Cone, Hogg, in virtue of the power which Christopher
gave me when he took the gout, you are absolved, and hereby I do
absolve you. One rhyme more, you great pig, and I’ll have you scald-
ed on the spot.
Hogg. The pitcher's getting cauld, at ony rate, Ye had better ring,
and bid Ambrose have on the big boiler at ance. And as for you,
Jonathan Spiers, they were deaving us wi' saying there was nae open-
ing in the literary world. Me away, that canna be said, my braw lad,
Odoherty. Come, Hogg, a joke's a joke—we've had enough of this,
There is no opening in the literary world.
Flogg. Weel, Jonathan, if Byron and me canna make an opening
between us, I’m thinking ye maun just ca' canny, and wait till ye see
out Odoherty and the Author of Waverley—I reckon them about the
next to Byron and me.
Tickler (aside). Either of their little fingers well worth you both.
But, however—Come, Hogg, supposing Jonathan really to reject my
poor advice, what would be your counsel ? Come now, remember 'tis
a serious concern:-so be for once the sagacious master of the sagacious
Hector. *
Hogg. I wonld be for Jonathan trying a good, rousing, independent
Tory paper. Deil a paper I see's worth lighting one's pipe wi'. It
would surely do.
Tickler. I dare say Jonathan's ambition aimed at rather higher con-
cerns; but no matter, what have you to say against the papers, Jemimy?
Hogg. Just that they're a' clean trash—the Scots anes, I mean,
There's the Scotsman—it was lang the only ame that had ony bit spice
of the deevil in’t, and it's noo turned as douce and as doited as the very
warst of them, since that creature turned Ricardo Professor, or what
ca' yet. He was a real dour, tigly, stilky beast, but still he was a
beast; now they’re mere dirt the lave o them—just the beast's leav-
ings—-perfect dirt.
Odoherty. What say ye to the Weekly Journal, James?
“THE BEACON.” 435
Hogg. Too-too—too—too—too ! By’r Lady, good Master Lieu-"
tenant—too !—too !—too !—too !—too !—pheugh
Tickler. The Courant, IIogg
JHogg. An edificationing paper, I'll no deny. It has a the farms and
roups. I couldna do without the Courant.
Tickler. What sort of paper did you wish Jonathan to set up—a
Beacon,” perhaps,
Iſogg. A Beacon Gude pity us, Timotheus, are you gaun de-
mentita'thegither ? I thought ye said Jonathan was a prudent, quiet,
respectable laddie—wishing to make his way in the warld—and “your
ain sense tells you,” as Meg Dods says about the lad remaining in the
room with Miss Mowbray, that, though your Antijacobins, and John
Dulls, and Twopenny Post-Bags, and sae on, do very weel in the great
Babel of Lunnun, the like o' thae things are quite heterogeneous in
this small atmosphere of the Edinbro’ meridian—the folk here canna
thole’t.
Tickler. Jonathan might try a good daily paper in London—that is
much wanted at present. Indeed, a new one is wanted every three or
four years, for the chaps that succeed soon get too rich and fat for
their business. Stoddart is quite a Bourbon man now. The Courier
is verging to conciliation.
Odoherty. By the by, some dandies always pronounce Courier, as
* a
if it were a French word, Courié. Did you hear our friend Peter's joke
upon this at Inverness? > -
Tickler. Not I. What was it 3
Odoherty. Why, a young Whig wit asked some witness before the
venerable Jury Court, “Are you in the habit of taking in the Courié,
sir?” Upon this, Patrick, in cross-examination, says, “Are you in the
habit, sir, of taking in the Morning Po- ?” -
Tickler. Very well, Peter —but enough of the papers. I wonder
you, Odoherty, don’t think of patching up the Memoirs of Byron—you
could easily guess what sort of stuff they were; and, at any rate, an
edition of 10,000 would sell ere the trick could be discovered.
Odoherty. Why, I flatter myself, if it were discovered, the book
* “The Beacon.” was a newspaper, the publication of which commenced in Edinburgh in
January, 1821, and was abruptly discontinued in August of the same year. The sympathy
felt in Scotland for Queen Caroline, in 1821), would lead, it was feared, to the extension of
antipathy towards her husband, George IV. and his ministers. The Edinburgh Tories sub-
scribed money to establish a strong newspaper on their own side,-a publication even more
personal and libellous than the London John Bull was produced, and when, at last—after
being suddenly put an end to–The Beacon was noticed in Parliament, it was shown,
that even the Law-officers of the Crown were part proprietors l On its ashes arose The Glas-
gow Sºmtºvel, principally edited by the late Robert Alexander, (afterwards of the London
Morming Jowrmal and the Liverpool iſºtil) a powerful, but indiscreet writer. More person-
alities than had made the B2a.com notorious were introduced, and the end was that an edito-
rial quarrel resulted in the betrayal or theft of a box of MSS., by which the late Sir Alex-
ander Boswell of Auchinleck (son of Johnson's biographer) was discovered to be author of
:*: truculent pasquinades against James Stuart of Dunearn, who challenged and shot
1In, -Ml,
436 - NOCTES AMIBIROSIANAE.
would still be good enough to sell on its own bottom.” But the book-
sellers are turning so deucedly squeamish now a-days, there's really no
opening for a little fair quizzification. There was Hook went to Col-
burn about his Foote; Colburn remarked, it was a pity there was none
of Foote's private correspondence to be got hold of “Pooh, pooh!”
quoth Theodore, “I’ll make a volume of it in three weeks” dolburn
took fright at this, and the thing stopped. What a pity now I Would
not the letters have been all the better for being not Foote's but the
Grand-Master's - -
Tickler. To be sure they would ; and, after the Memoirs of Byron
that Colburn did publish—old paste-and-scissors work—he need not
have been quite so sensitive, I would have thought. But there's no
saying as to these people. Colburn's getting deuced rich upon the
Literary Gazette, Lady Morgan, The Writer Tam, and the rest of these
great Guns of his, I have a notion. & -
Odoherty. To be sure he is. But, as for Byron's Memoirs, why, I
can tell you I have read the book myself, twice over; and, what is
more, you will read it yourself within a month or six weeks' time of
this present. - - x
Tickler. Ay?—how 7–indeed?—Well, you surprise me ! -
Odoherty. Why, the fact is, that the work had been copied, for the
private reading of a great lady in Florence ; and it is well known in
London, that Galignani has bought the MS., and that it will be out in
Paris forthwith. But is this really news for you? -
Hogg. It's news—and blythe news too—to me, for ane. But, I say,
Ensign, speak truth now—am I mentioned ?
Odoherty. Frequently.
Hogg. Dear me ! what does he says of me?—nae ill, I'll be sworn
—I aye took his part, I’m sure.
* At that time, had he been so minded, Maginn (Odoherty) could have got up a popular Life of
Byron as well as most men in England. Immediately on the account of Byron's death being
received in London, John Murray proposed that Maginn should bring out Memoirs, Journals,
and Letters of Lord Byron, and, with this intent, placed in his hands every line that he (Mur-
ray) possessed of Byron's handwriting. Whatever, therefore, is here put into Odoherty's
mouth, may be taken as authentic. The strong desire of Byron's family and executors that
the Autobiography should be burned, to which desire Murray foolishly yielded, made such an
hiatus in the materials that Murray and Maginn agreed it would not answer to bring out the
work then. Eventually, Moore executed it.—M.
t The “great lady in Florence,” for whose private reading Byron's Autobiography was
copied, was the present Countess of Westmoreland, then Lady Burghersh. Her husband had
been Fnvoy Extraordinary to the Court of Tuscany. Of the copy sent to her, I have heard that
a transcript was made and retained. Wo copy was sent to Galignani by Murray. Lady Blessing-
ton had the Autobiography in her possession for weeks, and confessed to having transcribed
every line of it. Moore remonstrated, and L'udy B. committed her manuscript to the flames;
but she did not tell him that her sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, (now Wiscountess Canterbury,) had
also made a copy. In fact, several people had been allowed the like opportunity, and it is
hard to believe that, out of at least ten or twelve persons, only three, and these women, had
taken the trouble of transcribing. From the quantity of “copy” which I have seen, (and
others were more in the way of falling-across it than myself.) I surmise that at least half a
dozen copies were made, and that five of these are in existence. Some particular transac-
tions--such as the marriage and the separation—were copied separately; but I think there
causart be less than five full copies yet to be found.—M.
BYRON’s “DICTIONARY.” - 4%
Odoherly. Why, he takes your part on the whole—he puffs your
Queen's Wake and Chaldee most stentoriously; and on the whole does
you justice—you are in the Dictionary.
Hogg. The Dictionary 1–was he at an English Dictionary too ! Od,
I would like to see myself quoted in the English Dictionary—a bit of
Iſogg in below a bit of bacon may be—it would look very well.
Odoherty. In the next Dictionary that appears, no question, you will
be gratified with abundance of such compliments—but the Dictionary
of Byron is quite another sort of thing. One volume of his Memoirs,
in short, consists of a dictionary of all his friends and acquaintances,
alphabetically arranged, with proper definitions of their characters—
criticisms on their works (when they had any)—and generally a few
specimens of their correspondence. To me this volume seemed, on the
whole, the most amusing of the three. s
Hogg. I dinna doubt it. Oh, the ne'er-do-weels, to gang awa and
burn sic, a book as this.
Otto.º.e, ty. I’och I tell you 'tis not burnt”—you will see it in the .
course of the summer. -
Tickler. After all, it could not well have been published by Murray.
Galignani, or some foreigner or other, was the only plan. ..
Ouloherty. Why, there may be two opinions as to this. It was at
one time understood that Murray was to have employed my excellent
friend Tegg to bring the thing forth—but perhaps Tom would have
been over nice. |
Tickler. O, as to that, you know Davison's name could have stood
alone, as in the case of the first canto of the Don.
Odoherty. Hang it, you are forgetting that infernal narrow-minded
old quiz of a Chancellor—his abominable punctilios about the injunc-
tioning law, you know, have entirely done away with the temptation to
publish improper books. There is an English judge and cabinet-man
for you ! Discountenancing Don Juan—strangling Byron's Memoirs,
(so far as the English MS. was in question)—Fine doings—fine doings
—we shall be a pretty nation soon, I calculate.
Hogg (sings)—
My blessings on your auld pow,
John Anderson, my joe, John.
And yet, I’m doom'd glad that the lady in Florence had had a copy of
Byron's MS. I have a gay hantle letters o' Byron's in my ain dask. 1
* Byron’s “Dictionary” was not among the manuscripts burnt at the instance of Lord
Byron's executors. It has been very fully described to me as written on long foolscap,
bound together or stitched with narrow pink ribbon, and covered with stiff whitey-brown
paper. What Odoherty calls “specimens of the correspondence,” were actual letters from
the parties treated of in the book, wafered upon the page opposite that on which Byron wrote.
This “Dictionary,” which was the bulkiest of these three volumes of manuscript, extended to
nearly 250 written pages.—M.
4.38 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
wonder what the trade would give a body for a small volume of his
epistolary correspondence wi' his friends ! -
Odoherty, Not one rap—his letters to John Murray will be quite
a sufficient dose of themselves, but, to be sure, they mayn’t be printed
just immediately, -
Tickler. Not in my day, I calculate—you yºung dogs may expect
to outlive both me and John Murray—you will see the whole of it, En-
sign—and you, Jonathan. But I, long ere then, shall be enjoying the
conversation of Byron himself
Ev0a ye Kippeotov avópov ºntogre Toxtore,
Hept kut vepeAn kekuxuppevot, 80s Tor' avrs;
Hextos pueta v cittàepkerat, aktive eggiv
Ovö’ 6707' au o're. Xmat Toos &pavov dis-epoevra
Outſ' bruv d'p eſti yatav diſ' épavo0sv rporpann rat—
lielas ! helas ! (p=0, afoojo, tº och och
Hogg. Hech, sirs what's a' this rumbleterow —what's ailing Mr.
Tickler ? * --
Odoherty. You upon pale Cocytus' shore l—you old piece of whip-
cord —I’ll back you to ninety-five as readily as if you were a sinecurist.
And besides, to be serious, I hope you don't mean to keep company
with people down yonder, whom you've done nothing but abuse while
£aſ X&ovi Öspxov.
Tickler. Come, Odoherty—I know very well you and I can never
agree as to this. But, now that Lord Byron is dead, you must really
stint in your gab, Morgan Odoherty. We have lost a great man, sir
—a truly great man—one of the very few really great men of might
that our age has witnessed. -
Odoherty. Not at all, my dear youth—by no manner of means.
Byron was a very clever man, and a very clever poet; but, as to his
being either a truly great man, or a truly great poet, I must altogether
differ from you. Why, sir, he has left no truly great work behind him;
and his character was not great. #
Tickler. I don't admit all that. But, taking the first thing you say
to be so for a moment, what is the great work we have of Alcaeus, of
Sappho—even of Pindar, or of Sallust, or of Petronius' and yet these,
I take it, were great people, and are so even in your estimation.
Bogg. I never heard tell of one of them afore since ever I was born.
Did ye, Jonathan }
Mr. Spiers. O fie, Mr. Hogg —never heard of Sallust 3
Odoherty. Yes, Tickler, my good fellow, but you are not stating
your case fairly. These people have left glorious fragments—enough.
to make us believe what other great people say of the works that have
perished: but, misery on that infernal engine the press —the next
worst thing after gunpowder—Byron's fragments never can exist. Spite
ByRON's RANK, - 439
of fate, the whole mass of lumber exists, and will exist, and nobody, in
modern times, will take the trouble to pick out the few fine bits Byron
really may have produced and place them before the eyes of the
world, to the exclusion of his portentous balaam, This is the true
devilry of your modern authorship,
Tickler. Has Candide, then, no separate existence of its own º Does
any body, when they read that glorious thing, or the Princess of Baby-
lon, or Zadig, trouble their heads with thinking of the existence of
CEdipe, the Universal History, and all the rest of Voltaire's humbug.- .
ging Tragedies and Histories? Not at all, my hearty. Or, when
people read Manon Lescaut, does it diminish their delight that the
Abbé wrote and published fifty volumes, or more, of bad novels, which
no human creature above the calibre of a Turnipologist would now
endure three pages of? Or do I, in reading Goldsmith's Essays, bother
myself with his History of Animals, or his History of Rome? Or do
any of us enjoy Tam o'Shanter the less, because Dr. Currie's edition
contains all that stuff of Burns's Epistles to Mrs. Dunlop, George
Thomson, &c. : Or who the devil has ever even heard the name of
the five-hundredth part of the trashy productions which flowed from
the pens of Fielding and Smollett, or their great masters, Le Sage and
Cervantes? The critiques of the Doctor, the plays of the Justice, the
many bitter bad plays and novels of the Author of Don Quixote, and
the myriads of bad plays and bad books of all kinds, of the author of
the Devil on Two Sticks—these matters are all pretty well forgottºn, I
suppose; and what signifies this to the student of Sancho Panza,
Asmodeus, Commodore Trunnion, or Parson Trulliber 8 Come, come
—own yourself beat now, like a fair man, º 2. --> *
Odoherty, You spout nobly when your, breath is once up ; but,
seriously, then, what are the works of Byron that you think will be
remembered in honor ; and what is the sort of name altogether that
you think he will bear,
“When we're all cold and musty,
A hundred years hence?”
Tickler. I think Byron's Childe Harold, Corsair, Lara, and Don
Juan (in part) will be remembered in the year of grace, 1924; and I
think the name of Byron will then be ranked as the third name of one
great era of the imaginative literature of England; and this I think is
no trifle.
Aſogg. After Sir Walter and me?
Tickler, No, Hogg, to be honest, before you, my dear creature. Yes,
before you. Before every body else in the line, my dear James, except
the author of the Bride of Lammermoor, and the author of Ruth.* I
* Scott and Wordsworth.-M,
440 • NoCTES AMBROSTANA.
name the two best and most pathetic works of the two best, and, to
my feeling, most pathetic writers of our day—the only two—I speak
with disparagement to no one—that have opened up absolutely new
fields of their own. For, after all, I do not uphold Byron so much on
the score of original invention, as on that of oyiginal energy.
Hogg. Original energy what means that, Being interpreted ?
Tickler. Why, I mean to say, that mere energy of thought and
language may be carried so far as to make, I do not say a poet of the
very highest class, but a poet of a very high one—and I say that
Byron's energy was of this kind—and I say that his place is imme-
diately behind the all but Homeric magician of the North, and the all
but Miltonic prophet of the Lakes. There's my apophthegm—for that,
I think, Jemmy, is your name for any thing you don't understand,
Hogg. Many thousand thanks to you, Mr. Timothy Tickler, of
Southside. * - -
Odoherty. The fact is that Byron was a deuced good rattling fellow;
a chap that could do most things he had seen any body else do before
him, just as I could write five hundred first-rate songs, & la Tom Moore,
or & la James Hogg, if I had a mind. The far greater part of his com-
position was decidedly of this class—his short narrative octosyllabic was
as decidedly a copy of Walter Scott, as that of the Queen's Wake.
His “deep feeling of nature”—ha! haſ ha –in the third canto of
Harold, and other subsequent concerns, was the result of his having .
read then—and a hint that he had not, more shame to him, read
before—the poetry of that old Pan of the woods, W. W. His Beppo
was the visible by-blow—a vigorous one, I admit—of Whistlecraft—
his Manfred was a copy of Goethe–and his Deformed Transformed
was at once a half-formed and a deformed transformation of the Devil
and Doctor Faustus, of the same unintelligible, cloud-compelling, old
Meerschaumite. Shall I go on ? -
Bogg. As lang as you like, my dear fellow—but you wunna make
out Wordsworth to have written Parisina for a’ that—no, nor Frere to
have ever had one canto of Don Juan in his breeks. Pooh pooh'
Odoherty, you might as weel tell me that Shakspeare was the copyist
of the auld idiots that wrote the original Henry Fifths, King Johns,
and so forth. Byron was the great man, sir. • * - -
Odoherty. I'll give you this much—I do believe he might have been
a great man, if he had cut verse fairly, and taken to prose. My humble
opinion is, that verse will not thrive again in our tongue. Our tongue
is, after all, not an over-melodious one. I doubt if even Shakspeare
would not have done well to cut it—at least, it always appears to me,
that when he writes what the critics call prose, he is most poetical.
What say you to Hamlet's talk with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern ?
“This overhanging vault, look ye, fretted with golden fires,” &c. &c.
&c. Is not that poetry, sir? At any rate, the fact is, that Byron
BYRON's PROSE. 441
never could versify, and that his Memoirs and his private letters are
the only things of his that I have ever seen, that gave me, in the least
degree, the notion of a fine creature enjoying the full and unconstrained
swing of his faculties Hang it! if you had ever seen that attack of
his on Blackwood—or, better still, that attack of his on Jeffrey, for
puſting Johnny Keats—or, best of all, perhaps, that letter on Hob-
house—or that glorious, now I think of it, that inimitable letter to
Tom Moore, giving an account of the blow-up with Murray about the
Don Juan concern—oh, dear! if you had seen these, you would
never have thought of mentioning any rhymed thing of Byron's—no,
not even his epigrams on Sam Rogers, which are well worth five dozen
of Parisinas and Prisoners of Chillon, and
Tickler. Stuff! stuff! stuff!—But I take it you're quizzing within
the club—which you know is entirely contra bonos mores. Drop this,
Ensign. - -
Odoherty. I am dead serious. I tell you, Byron's prose works,
when they are printed, will decidedly fling his verse into total oblivion.
You, sir, that have merely read his hide-bound, dry, barking, absurd,
ungrammatical cantos of Don Juan, and judge from them of Byron's
powers as a satirist, are in the most pitiable position imaginable. One
thumping paragraph of a good honest thorough-going letter of his to
Douglas Kinnaird, or Murray in the olden time, is worth five ton of
that material. I tell you once again, he never wrote in verse with
perfect ease and effect—verse never was his natural language, as it
was with Horace or Boileau, or Pope or Spenser, or any of those lads
that could not write prose at all. When he wrote verses, he was
always translating—that is to say, beastifying—the prose that already
existed in his pericranium. There was nothing of that rush and flow
that speaks the man rhyming in spite of himself, as in the Battle of
Marmion, or Hamilton's Bawn, or any other first-rate poem. No, no
—he counted his feet, depend upon it—and, what is less excusable, he
did not always count them very accurately. Of late, by Jupiter, he
produced tooth-breakers of the most awful virulence. I take it the
Odontists had bribed him. -
Tickler. Why, whom do you call a good versifier, then }
Odoherty. We have not many of them. Frere and Coleridge are,
I think, the most perfect, being at once more scientific in their ideas
of the matter than any others now alive, and also more easy and
delightful in their melody which they themselves produce. We have
no better things in our language, looking merely to versification, than
the psychological curiosity—
“A damsel, with a dulcimer,
In a vision once I saw,
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on a dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Ahora,” &c.
442 - NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
|
Or Frere's translation of the Frogs, printed long ago in Ebony. Do
you remember the verses, in particular, which old North used to read,
with a few literal alterations, as a fine cut at Joseph Hume, Peter
Moore, and the other grand leaders of the Whig party now % -
“Foreign stamp and vulgar mettle raise tiºn to command and place,
Brazen, counterfeit pretenders, flunkies of a flunky race; -
Whom the Whigs of former ages scarce would have allowed to stand,
At the sacrifice of outcasts, as the scape-goats of their band.”
Byron seldom or never made verses equal, merely guó verses, to the
like of these. When he did, it was by a strict imitation of something
his ear had caught in the versification of some preceding poet. As
for the Spenserian, you well know that whenever his sweep of stanza
did not vividly recall Thomson or old Edmund himself, the stanza
was execrably hard, husky, and unswallowable. -
Tickler (solemnly).
“Tambourgi, tambourgi, thy larum afar
Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war!”
Odoherty. Come, come, Timotheus, don't throw your chair back in
that abominable Yankee-doodle fashion. Stick to the argument, sir—
don't lounge and spout. *-
Tickler.
“It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lover's vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word;—
And gentle winds and waters near
Make music to the lonely ear;--
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stal's are met;
And on the waves a deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the heavens that clear obscure,
So softly dark and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day,
As twilight melts beneath the moon, away.”
Hogg. Ay, ay, man, these are verses. (Aside to Spiers.) Do you
think they’re as good as Kilmeny ?
Tickler. Listen to me one moment more, Odoherty. The fact, sir,
stands simply thus:–It is obvious to any one who is capable of cast-
ing a comprehensive eye over things, that there are three different
great veins of thought and sentiment prevalent in this age of the
world; and I hold it to be equally clear, that England has furnished
at least one great poetical expositor and interpreter for each of the
three. This, sir, is the Age of Revolution. It is an age in which
earth rocks to and fro upon its foundations—in which recourse is had
BYRON, SCOTT, AND WORDSWORTH. 443
to the elements of all things—in which thrones, and dominations, and
principles, and powers, and opinions, and creeds, are all alike subjected
to the sifting of the winds of Intellect, and the tossing and lashing of
the waves of Passion. Now, there are three ways in which the mind
of poetic power may look at all this—there are three parts among
which it may choose. First, there is the spirit of scorn of that which
is old—of universal distrust and derision, mingled up with a certain
phrenzy of indignation and innovating fury—here is Byron. Then
there is the high heroic spirit of veneration for that which has been—
that still deeper, that infinitely more philosophical distrust, which has
for its object this very rage and storm of coxcombical innovation which
I have been describing. This is Scott—the noble bard of the noble—
the prop of the venerable towers and temples, beneath which our
fathers worshipped and did homage in the days of a higher, a purer, a
more chivalrig race. This is the voice that cries—Zn defence /–
‘Faster come, faster come
Faster and faster,
Page, Vassal, squire, and groom,
Tenant and master:
Come as the winds come,
When forests are rending;
Come as the waves come,
When navies are stranding !”
And there is yet a third spirit—the spirit of lonely, meditative, high-
souled, and yet calm-Souled men—of him who takes no part in sound-
ing or obeying the war-pipe of either array—the far-off, philosophic
contemplator, who, turning from the turmoil, out of which he sees no
escape, and penetrated with a profound loathing of all this mighty
clamor, about things, at the best, but fleeting and terrestrial, plunges, as
it were, into the quiet, serene ocean-depths of solitary wisdom, there to
forget the waves that boil upon the surface—there to brood over the
images of eternal and undisturbed truth and beauty. This is Words-
worth; hear how he describes a poet's tomb—
“A convent—even a hermit’s cell—
Would break the silence of this dell.
It is not quiet—is not ease,
But something deeper far than these.
The separation that is here
Is of the grave—and of austere
And happy feelings of the dead: -
And therefore was it rightly said,
That Ossian, last of all his race,
Lies buried in this lonely place.”
Hogg. Hech me !—I’ll be buried beside Yarrow mysel
Odoherty. And dug up, no doubt, quite fresh and lovely, like this
444 - NoCTES AMBROSIANA.
new hero of yours, one hundred summes hence. I hope you will take
care to be buried in the top boots, by the by—they will gratify the
speculators of the year two thousand and two.
Tickler. So Byron is, after all, to be buried in Greece—quite right.*
His suspiration was originally from thence—his muse always spread a
broader pinion whenever she hovered over the blue AEgean. Proudly
let him lie on Sunium ! loftily let his spirit gaze at midnight upon the
rocks of Salamis I e
Odoherty. So be it. But I have still one word to say to you anent
his lordship of Byron. Byron was by no means, Mr. Timothy, the
Jacobin Bard that you seem to hold him. I’ll be shot if he ever pen-
ned one stanza without feeling the coronet.—Ay, ay, sir, he was indeed
“Byron my Baron,” and that to the backbone.
Tickler. You are quite right, Odoherty, and I would have said the
same thing if Hogg had not interrupted me. The fact is, that Byron
took the walk I mentioned, but he did not take it in that singleness of
heart and soul with which the two other gentlemen took to theirs.
No, sir, he was too good by nature for what he wished to be—he could
not drain the blood of the cavaliers out of his veins—he could not
cover the coronet all over with the red nightcap—he could not forget
that he was born a lord, a gentleman, an English gentleman, and an
English lord;—and hence the contradictoriness which has done so
much to weaken the effect of his strains—hence that self-reproaching
melancholy which was eternally crossing and unnerving him—hence
the impossibility of his hearing, without a quivering pulse, ay, even
after all his thundering trumpets about Washington, America, repub.
lics, and fiddle-de-dees, the least echo of what he in his very last poem
so sweetly alludes to— -
“The home
Heart ballads of green Erin or gray Highlands,
That bring Lochaber back to eyes that roam
O'er far Atlantic continents or islands—
The calentures of music that o'ercome -
All mountaineers with dreams that they are nigh lands
No more to be beheld but in such visions.”
Eſence the dark heaving of soul with which he must have written
in his Italian villezgiatura, that description of his own lost, forfeited,
ancestral seat. I can repeat the glorious verses.
“It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,
Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak
* It was originally intended that Byron's heart, at least, should be retained in that Greece
which he had loved so well, which obtained his early sympathy, aud received his latest breath.
This was not fulfilled. All that was mortal of him rests in the humble church of Hucknall, not
far from that Newstead Abbey which he so exquisitely described.—M.
NEWSTEAD ABBEY. - 445
8tood like Caraciacus in act to rally -
His bost, with broad arms, 'gainst the thunder-stroke;
And, from beneath his boughs were seen to Sally
The dappled foresters—as day awoke,
The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.
“Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,
Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soften’d way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around: the wild fowl nestled in the brake
And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed;
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix’d upon the flood. .
* Its outlet dash’d into a deep cascade,
Sparkling with foam, until, again subsiding,
Its shriller echoes—like an infant made
Quiet—sank into softer ripples, gliding
Into a rivulet; and thus allay’d,
Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding
Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue,
According as the skies their shadows threw. .
“A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile
(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart
In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle.
These last had disappear’d—a loss to art:
The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,
Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march,
In gazing on that venerable arch. -
“Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,
Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone,
But these had fallen, not when the friars fell, -
But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,
When each house was a fortalice—as tell
The annals of full many a line undone,
The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign,
“But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,
The Virgin Mother of the God-born child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round,
Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd;
She made the earth below seem holy ground.
This may be superstition, weak or wild,
But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine.
“A mighty window, hollow in the centre,
Shopn of its glass of thousand colorings,
446 NOOTES AMBROSTANAE.
|
Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wit:gs,
Now yawns all desolate: now ioud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sing
"...he owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd #. #.
“But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is wingéd from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical—a dying accent driven -
Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again,
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall,
“Others, that some original shape, or form
Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm
In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix’d hour)
To this gray ruin with a voice to charm.
Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower:
The cause I know not, nor can solve ; but such
The fact:-l’ve heard it, once perhaps too much.
“Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,
Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaint—
Strange faces, like to men in Inasquerade,
And here perhaps a monster, there a saint :
The spring gush'd through grim mouths, of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent .
Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, -
Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles.”
Hogg. It is there—it is nowhere but there, that Byron's ghost will
linger. Ye may speak about Greece, and Rome, and America; but
his heart was, after all, among the auld mouldering arches and oaks
of his forefathers. I would not, for something, stand ae hour of black
night below the shadow of that awful auld Abbey. Ghosts indeed
I could face the spectres of auld priests and monks enow, I daursay
but od, man, what a ghost of ghosts will Byron's bel -
Tickler. Well said, James Hogg I Go on.
Hogg (having drunk off a tumbler). I canna express what my feel-
ings are as to some things—but I have them, for a’ that. I ken nae-
thing about your grand divisions and subdivisions, about old things and
new things, and contemplative spirits and revolutionary spirits, and
what not—but this I ken, sirs, that I canna bide to think that Byron's
dead. There's a wonderful mind swallowed up somewhere. Gone
and gone so young —and may be on the threshold of his truest glory,
baith as a man and as a poet. It makes me wae, wae, to think o't.
Ye'll laugh at me, Captain Odoherty; but it's as true as I’m telling ye,
RYRON. 44'ſ
I shall never see a grand blue sky fu' of stars, nor look out upon the
Forest, when all the winds of winter are howling over the wilderness
of dry crashing branches, nor stand beside the sea to hear the waves
roaring upon the rocks, without thinking that tile spirit of Byron is
near me. In the hour of awe-in the hour of gloom—in the hour of
sorrow, and in the hour of death, I shall remember Byron 1
Tickler. Euge | Let no more evil be said of him. Mo. Tºg av M&0&
ãov, Topog.cºxævgovr&g—Peace be to the illustrious dead
Odoherty. By all, means, gentlemen—by all manner of means.
IIere, then, fill your glasses to the brim—and rise up—To the Memory
of Byron
Omnes (rising). THE MEMORY or ByRoN
Odoherty (sings).
Air—The Last Rose of Summer.”
No reproaches from me
On thy course shall be thrown,
1.
Lament for Lord Byron,
In full flow of grief,
As a sept of Milesians
Would mourn o'er their chief
With the loud voice of weeping,
With sorrow's deep tone,
We shall keen o'er our poet,
“All faded and gone.”
2. *A
Though far in Missolunghi
His body is laid;
Though the hands of the stranger
His lone grave have made;
Though no foot from Old England
Its surface will tread,
Nor the sun of Old England
Shine over its head;
3.
Yet, bard of the Corsair,
High-spirited Childe;
Thou who sang'st of Lord Manfred
The destiny wild!
Thou star, whose bright radiance
Illumined our verse,
On 1 Souls cross the blue seas,
To mourn o'er thy hearse.
4.
Thy faults and thy follies,
Whatever they were,
Be their memory dispersed
As the winds of the air;
Let the man who is sinless
Uplift the first stone.
5.
In thy vigor of manhood
Small praise from my tongue
Had thy fame or thy talents,
Or merriment wrung;
For that church, and that state, and
That monarch I loved,
Which too of thy hot censure
Or rash laughter moved. '
6.
But I hoped in my bosom
That moment would come,
When thy feelings would wander
Again to their home.
For that soul, O lost Byron
In brillianter hours,
Must have turn'd fo its country—
Must still have been ours.
7.
Now slumber, bright spirit!
Thy body, in peace,
Sleeps with heroes and sages,
And poets of Greece;
While thy soul in the tongue of
Even greater than they,
Is embalm'd till the mountains
And seas pass away.
* Written by Maginn—as was the whole of this “ Noctes.”—M.
448 |NOCTES AMBROSIANAE,
Tickler. Very well, indeed, Odoherty; I am glad to see that you
really have some feeling about you still. Oh yes, man, that is what
every body must feel.
Odoherty. Feel what?—why, what a proper old humbug you are,
after all (Sings.) )
1.
Oh! when I am departed and passed away,
Let's have no lamentations or sounds of dismay—
Meet together, kind lads, o'er a three-gallon bowl,
And so toast the repose of Odoherty's soul.
Down, derry down.
2.
If my darling girl pass, gently bid her come in,
To join the libation she'll think it no sin;
Though she choose a new sweetheart, and doff the black gown,
She'll remember me kindly when down—down—down—
Down, derry down.
Were you deep in for it about the battle, Tickler ? I won five
ponies on Spring—that was all. I had done. -
Tickler. I have cut the pugilistic mania ever since the Thurtell busi-
ness—it quite disgusted me with the ring.
Odoherty. Pooh stuff of stuffs;–you're getting crazy, I believe.
I suppose you shut Redgauntlet, whenever you came to that capital
murder of Nanty Ewart and Master Nixon—the best thing in the
book, in my humble opinion.
Hogg. An awfu' gruesome business, in truth. Weel, I think it's a
very gude book, now, Redgauntlet. I consider it a very decent novel.
I read him through without stopping; and it was after supper, too,
ere I got haud o' the chiel.
Tickler. Why, that's not the worst way of judging of such affairs,
James. My case was pretty much the same. 'Tis a very excellent
book, a spirit-stirring one, and a spirit-sustaining one. It never flags.
Odoherty. I wish to God it had been written on in one even strain,
no matter whether in the first or in the third person; but I hate all
that botheration of Mr. Latimer's narrative, Mr. Fairford's narrative,
and the Author of Waverley's narrative. Indeed it is obvious he had
got sick of that stuff himself ere he reached the belly of the second
volume, and had the sheets not gone to press, no doubt he would
have altered it.
Iſogg. I really never noticed that there was ony thing out of the
ordinary in this particular. I read it clean on, till I got baith sair een
and sair heart. *
Tickler. Yes, yes—these are mere trifles. Give me such a stream
of narrative, and give me one such glorious fellow as Auld Willie, and
IREDGAUNTLET. | 449
I am pretty well off, I calculate. What a most terrific piece of dia-
blerie that is, the story of the old Baron and his Baboon. By Jupiter,
they may talk of their Sintrams and their Devil's Elixirs as long as
they please. That's the best ghost story ever I read. I speak for my-
self—and how gloriously the Fiddler tells it, which, by the way, is, all
things considered, not the smallest part of the feat. To make a cat-
witted, old, blind creature like that tell such a tale, without for a
moment using an expression out of his own character, and yet tell it
with such portentous thrilling energy, and even sublimity of effect—
'his, sirs, is the perfection, not of genius merely, but of taste and con-
July]]nate alt.
Odoherty. Nanty Ewart for my money ! Why, Byron might have
written for fifty years without digging the fiftieth part so deep into
the human heart—ay, even the blackguard human heart he is so fond
of. The attempt to laugh—and the stammered “Poor Jess /"—and
then that fearful sarcasm, “he is killing me—and I am only sorry he
is so long about it.” These, sir, are the undying qu'il mowruts that
will keep this lad afloat, although he should write books enough to
fill the James Watt steamboat.
Hogg. I kent Peter Peebles brawlies—I’ve seen the doited body
gaun gaping about the Parliament-House five hundred times—I forget
his real name though. Peter's really a weel-drawn character—he's a
very natural delineation, to my fancy.
Tickler. Natural delineation | Well-drawn character, indeed!—
Come, come, Jamie, he's a prince, a king, an emperor of characters.
Give us one such a character, sir, and we will hoist you up till old Stod-
hard's ridiculous caricature be realized, and the top-boots of the Ettrick
Shepherd are seen plaited in the most intimate and endearing famil-
iarity with the point-hose of Will Shakspeare. He's quite as good,
sir, as any Malvolio, or Slender, that was ever painted by the hand of
man. I build, in the true Catholic phrase, Super hunc Petram.
Odoherty. Nothing is so disgusting to me as the chat of these cock-
neyfied critics about those books. Prating, prating about fallings off,
want of respect for the public, absurd haste, repetitions of Meg Mer-
rilies, &c. &c. &c.—I trouble them to show me the man that can give
us a Meg Dods, or a Clara Mowbray, or one of these characters we
have just been discussing. Till then, I spurn their Balaam with my
heels. The only person I really was sorry to see joining in the beastly
stuff was Tom Campbell—but to be sure, his dotage is sufficiently
evident from many things besides that.
Tickler. Ay, ay, poor Ritter Bann (* He has gone down hill with a
vengeance, to be sure. &
Odoherty, Spurn we with our heels the Balaam and the Balaam-
* A very inſerior ballgd, by Campbell, so named.—M.
WOL. I.-31
*,
\
450 NOCTES AMBROSLAN AB.
ites —North, I suppose, will be squabashing them in the shape of a
Review of Redgauntlet.
Tickler. Not he, i' faith. He was in a deuced rage with Ebony, for
wanting him to have a review of it. IIe Said he supposed the next
thing would be to review Homer's Iliad, and the Psalms of David.
And after all, Kit is so far right—every body has read a book of that
sort as soon as yourself, and there being nothing new in the kind of
talent it displays, most people are just as able as any of us to make a
decent judgment. When another Ivanhoe, or any thing ranking as
the commencement of another flight altogether, makes its appearance,
then, no doubt, the old lad will touch the trumpet again—not, I think,
till then.
Odoherty. He is getting crustier and crustier every day. One can
scarcely get him to put in the least puff now, merely to oblige a friend.
Ebony does not like to speak to him on the subject, particularly when
his gout is flying about in this horrid way; but entre nous, he is by no
rueans satisfied with old Christopher. He seldom or never mentions
any of Blackwood's books, which to me, I must own, seems deuced un-
fair. But he's so capricious, the old cock. There is Gilbert Earle,
now, a really clever thing too—but that ought to have been nothing,
either here or there, when I asked him so small a favor-I sent him
one of the handiest little articles on Master Gilbert you ever saw, and,
by Jupiter, back it came by return of the caddie, with jnst this
scrawled on the top in red ink, or beet-root sauce, I rather think:
“Out upon novels P−these were the words of the curmudgeon.
IHogg. Out upon novels keep us a'ſ
Tickler. Gad I almost sympathize with Christopherus—here pos-
itively is too great a crop—but Sans phrase, now, what sort of a con-
cern is this same Gilbert Earle %
Odoherty. Why, it is a work of real talent—I assure you—'pon
honor it is—a very clever work indeed—and besides, it is published by
Knight, a lad for whom I have a particular regard. 'Tis a most mel-
ancholy tale—both the subject and the style are after Adam Blair, but
that does not prevent the author's exhibiting great and original talent
in many of the descriptions. By the by, he would suit you exactly
in one thing, Hogg. Such a hand for describing a pretty woman, has
not often fallen in your way, I calculate. Upon my soul, I'm not very
inflammable, you know, and yet some of his pieces of this kind almost
took away my breath. But read the book, lads, for yourselves—ask
for “Some Account of the late Gilbert Earle, Esq.,” written by himself,
and published by Mr. Knight. You will find the author to be one of .
these true fellows who blend true pathos with true luxury. Some of
his bits, by the by, may have caught your eye already, for he published
one or two specimens of the affair in the Album.
Tickler. A clever and gentlemanlike periodical, which I am Puly
- JEFFREY AND SOUTHEY. 451
sorry to find stopped—at least I suppose it is so, for I have not lately
heard the name. There were some capital contributors to that con-
C01"E].
Odoherty, I believe North has now enlisted some of the best of
them; but not the author of the said Gilbert Earle,” he being a Whig.
He is a devilish nice lad, however, for all that.
Tickler. I perceive, Odoherty, that you have no notion of impartial
criticism, You always sit down with a fixed resolution to abuse a
fellow up hill and down dale, or else to laud him to the Empyrean.
I suspect you are capricious as to these matters.
Odoherty. Not at all. I always abuse my enemies, and puff m
friends. So do all the rest of the lads “of the we,” if they had the
candor to confess things—but that they have not, wherefore let per-
dition be their portion. I, for my part, have no hesitation in avowing
that I consider Burns's best, truest, and most touching line to be,
“They had been fu' for weeks together.”
How could one hesitate about puffing him whose cigar-case has never
been closed upon his fingers? Do you know why Jeffrey has been so
severe of late upon Doctor Southey
Tickler. Impertinence, that's all—though I admit there is a pretty
considerable d–d deal of humbug about him (wt Yankicé logwar).
Odoherty. The reason of Jeffrey's spleen is obvious. The laureate
invited him to tea ſ—invite a literary character of rank to a dish of
catlap, and a thin, scraggy, dry, butter-brodt, as the Germans call it in
their superb and now popularish dialect. Why, there's no saying what
might have happened, had he set down the little man to a plate of hot
kipper, or some nice fried trouts, and then a bowl of cold punch, or a
bottle of sauterne or markebrunner. That is the way to treat an
editor of that magnitude, when he calls on you in your country house
in the evening of a fine summer's day—more particularly when, as I
believe Jeffrey's case really was, the said editor has dined at an earlier
hour than he is accustomed to, and when, as I also understood to have
been the fact on this occasion, the lad is evidently quite sober. In
such circumstances the notion of the tea was a real bătise. Southey
was always a spoon; but I wonder Coleridge could sit by without re-
collecting what sort of an appearance it would have, and tipping Betty
a hint to bring in the broth.
Bogg. The broth ! Eſet kail to the four-hours, Captain
Odoherty. Was broth the word I used? I have been in Glasgow
lately, you know. It has..the same meaning there with punch—cold
lime and rum punch, I mean—the best liquefier, perhaps, that has yet
* Barry St. Leger, an Irishman, was author of “Gilbert Earle,” and of “Selections from
Alr. Blount's MSS,”—M, .*
4.52 NOCTES AMBROSLANAC.
w
been invented for this season of the year. I prefer it, I confess, both to
Sangaree and Brandy Panny. These are morning tipples decidedly.
Tickler. Come, you're getting into your Maxim vein, I think. You
are becoming a perfect Solomon of Soakers, Ensign. You should have
called it the Code Odoherty, sir, and produćed it at once in a handy,
little, juridical-looking, punchy double duodecimo. The work would
be much referred to.
Odoherty. I am great in my legislatorial capacity, I admit. No-
thing equal to me in my own department. As Byron has expressed
it, I am at present
The Grand Napoleon of the realm of punch;
or rather it should be of paunch, for of late I’ve been patronizing both
sides of the victualling office. x -
Tickler. Yes, you've been poaching in every corner of Kitchener's
preserve. By the way, how does the Doctor take up with your inter-
ference 3
Odoherty. Oh I admirably. We understand each other thoroughly.
Kitchener—his name, by the by, settles all disputes about the doctrine
of predestination—Kitchener is a prime little fellow—an excellent
creature as earth contains. Why, here's a man that has written three
or four of the very best books our age has witnessed, as the puff-maker
says; and what's far better, my hearties, he gives one of the very best
feeds going—quite the dandy—such sauces ! By jingo, I admire a
man of this stamp.
Bogg. Deil doubts you. Wha doesna admire them that can give
ye baith a gude book, and a gude dinner ? For my part, I admire a
man that gives me the bare bit dinner, just itsell, without ony books.
Odoherty. The bare bit dinner! Oh, you savage You have no
more right, sir, to open that cod's-mouth of yours, for the purpose of
uttering one syllable on any subject connected with eating or drinking,
than Macvey Napier has to mention Bacon, or Professor Leslie to
stand for the Hebrew chair,” or a Negro or a Phrenologist to be classed
among the genus rationale.—The bare dinner Oh, ye beast !
JHogg. Some folk have a braw notion of themsells, Captain.
Odoherty. If I could choose now—if I had Fortunatus's cap in good
earnest—I’ll tell you how I would do—by Jericho, I would breakfast
with Lord Fife at Marr Lodge. Such pasties such cakes what a
glorious set out, to be sure l—I should then keep stepping southwards
take my basin of mulligatawny and glass of cherry-brandy at Mrs.
Montgomery's here en passant—get on to Belvoir, or Burleigh, or
* Napier's Essay on Bacon and Leslie's ignorance of Hebrew were Blackwood's standing
subjects.--M.
t Belvoir. Castle, Rutlandshire, the residence of the Duke of Rutland; Burgley House, Lin.
colnshire, the mansion of the Marquis of Exeter.--M.
opoHERTY AS A BARONET. 453
some of these grand places on the road, in time for dinner, and tap
just about twelve at the door of the Blue Posts”—Prime whisky-punch
there, sirs. If you were here, I might probably trace back a bit so as
to drop in upon your third bowl.
Hogg. Hear to the craving ne'er-do-weel !—You'll not be a lang
liver, I can tell you, Captain, if you go on at this rate. You ought to
marry a wife, sir, and sit down for a decent, respectable head of a
family—you've had your braw spell of devilry now. Marry some bit
bonny body of an heiress, man, and turn over a new leaf.
, Odoherty. With a gilt edge, you propose. Well, I have some
thoughts of the thing ; the worst of it is, that I am getting oldish now,
and deucedly nice—and I really distrust myself too. I have serious
apprehensions that I might turn out rather a quisquis sort of a Bene-
dict. EIang it! I've been too long on the hill—they could never
break me now——but I’ll try some day, that's obvious.
Hogg. You’ll easily get an heiress, man, wi' that grand lang nose o'
yours, and thae bonny, bonny legs, and that fine yellow curly head of
hair.
Odoherty (aside). Bond Street growth—but no matter.
Hogg. And, aboon a', your leeterary name. Od, man, I ken twa
leddies in the Cowgate that wad fain, fain have me to bring ye some
night to tea. Bonny birds, Captain—will ye gang !
Odoherty. You be skinned
Tickler. I’ll tell you what my real views are, Odoherty.—Hang it,
I don’t see why you should not take up a Scots baronetcy as well as the
Bishop of Winchester, or, as Johnny Murray called him, Mr. Winton.
I suppose this sort of concern don't stand one much higher than an
Aberdeen degree. I really would have you think of it. Sir Morgan
and Lady Odoherty request the honor Lady Odoherty's carriage
stops the way —Sir Morgan Odoherty's cabriolet!!—By Jove, the
thing is arranged —You must be a baronet, my dear Signifer.
Odoherty. Hum !—Well, to oblige you, I shan’t much object to such
a trifle. How shall I set about it, then, Timothy ?
Tickler. Poo!—Find out that there was some Odoherty, of course
there were many—but no matter for that—in the army of M'Fadyen,
the lad that flung his own head after Lieutenant-General Sir William
Wallace, Baronet, K.T. and C.G.B.--—or in the armies of Montrose—
which, by the by, were almost all of them Irish armies; secundo, Find
out that this glorious fellow—being, of course, (as all gentlemen in
those days were,) a Knight-Bachelor—had been once—no matter from
what beastly ignorance, or from what low, fawning vulgarity, addressed
* A well-known public house, in London, nearly opposite the Haymarket Theatre.—M.
+ In 1823, Dr. Tomline, Bishop of Winchester, made a claim, which was allowed, to a Nova
Scotia haronetcy, which had been conferred by Charles I. on one of his ancestors. His son,
however, has not assumed the title.— M.
454. NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
\
as a Baronet. Then, tertio, have a few of us assembled at Ambrose's
some day at five o'clock, and the job is done.—I myself have fre-
quently acted as Chancellor.—I am quite aw fait. !
Odoherty. Why, as to the first of these points, I have no doubt
there must have been some Odoherties heré in Montrose's time. As to
the second, it obviously must be so ; and as to the third, by Jupiter,
name your day ! , ‘s &
Tickler. This day three weeks—six o'clock sharp. I stipulate for a
green goose, and a glass of your own genuine usquebaugh.*
Odoherty. Thou hast said it!—stinginess would ill beseem a man
of my rank. I trust his Majesty the King of the Sandwich Islands
will be here in time to join us. I am told he is a hearty cock.
Tickler. To be serious—I was really amazed to see John Bull,
honest lad, going into the Prettyman humbug. It is very likely,
indeed, that the worthy Bishop himself is by no means aware of the
absurdity of the system under which he supposes himself to have
acquired the orange ribbon of Nova Scotia. He has probably been
led—but no matter, as to one particular case. The fact is, that if they
wished to give us a real boon, they ought to look to this subject—the
people above stairs, I mean. . . They ought to bring in a bill, requiring
that the man who wishes to assume any title of honor in Scotland
ought to do the same thing which the House of Lords demands when
a man wishes to take up a peerage of Scotland. If that were done,
the public would be satisfied, and the individual would be safe from
that annoyance to which he must be subjected so long as matters are
managed in the present ridiculous and most unlawyer-like method.
Why, only consider what it is that the jury (Heaven bless the name !)
does in such a case. The claimant appears, and demands to be recog-
nised as the heir of such a man, who died two, three, or four centuries
ago. Well, he proves himself to have some blood relation to the
defunet. The factio juris is, that when a man makes such a claim,
those, if there be any, that have a better title—a nearer propinquity—
will of course appear and show fight; and, in the absence of any such
appearance, the work of the said noble jury is at once finished. Now,
in the case of a man making a claim, which, if allowed, will give him
a certain number of acres, no doubt the chances are infinitesimally
small, that any person, concerned from his own interests in the redat-
guing of the said claim, will fail to come forth to give battle. Nay,
even in the case of a Scotchman, of a Scotch family well known in the
history, or at least in the records of the country, coming forward with
a claim, the object of which is a mere honorary matter, such as a title
of baronet, the chances are not very great, that, in a small nation
* From this date, the Adjutant is always mentioned in Blackwood as Sir Morgan Odoherty,
Barouet !—M.
t It is from such a “source” as this that Mr. Humphreys has claimed the Earldom of
Stirling.—M.
NOVA SCOTIA BARONETCIES. 455
where every body knows every body, and where all are very much
taken up about titular trifles—the chances are not great, that even a
claimant of this order will be allowed to walk the course; but in the
case of an Englishman, of whose family nobody in Scotland ever heard
a word, coming down and wanting a title, to which nobody in Scotland
can of couse have any claim—in this case, no doubt, the most perfect
apathy must prevail. The Bishop may be in the right; but I, and all
the world besides, must continue to regard with suspicion the assump-
tion of a title, the patent for which is not produced, unless the clearest
evidence as to the tenor of the patent be produced. -
Odoherty. Then, what is the Bishop's way to get out of the scrape'
Tickler. Why, in the present state of matters, I see but one. He
ought to bring an action before the Court of Sessions against Some
friend of his, no matter about what, assuming the style of baronet in
his “summons,” as we call it—that is, in his original writ. The friend
may put in his objection to the style under which the Bishop sues, and
then the Court will be oper, to hear him defend his right to use the
said style. In this way the whole matter may be cleared up.
Bogg. There's maebody cares ae boddle about sic matters—they're
a’ just clean havers. I own I do like to hear of a real grand auld
name like the house of MARR being restored to their ain. That is a
thing to please a Scottish heart. The Earl of Marr There's not a
nobler sound in Britain.
Tickler. Quite so, Hogg. But was there ever such beastliness as
Brougham's Why, in seconding Peel's motion for dispensing with
the personal appearance of an old gentleman of near ninety in London,
what topic, think ye, does this glorious fellow dare to make the ground
on which he (Brougham) solicits the indulgence of Parliament’ Why,
this—that Mr. Erskine of Marr is distinguished for his liberal opin
ions / / / Egregious puppy what had old Marr's politics to do with
the matter ? They are Whig, and so much the worse for him ; but
conceive only the bad taste—the abominable taste—of this fellow's
lugging in the old man's whiggery as a recommendation of him to
the House of Commons, at the very moment when the House was
about to pass a bill conferring high honors on the old man—a bill
originating, no doubt, in the high personal feelings of the King, but
wtill owing its existence there to the support of the King's Tory minis.
ters. Such insolence is really below all contempt. I wonder Peel did
not give him a wipe or two in return.
Odoherty. The sulky insolent
Hogg. The born gowk |
Tickler. For cool, rancorous, deliberate impudence, give me, among
all Whigs, Brougham | Only think of his daring, after all that has
happened, to say one word in the House of Commons, when the topic
before them referred, in any degree, however remote, to an act of
t
456 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
generous and magnanimous condescension of that monarch whom, on
the Queen's trial, he and his friend Denman dared to speak of as, we
can never forget, they did ſº t
Odoherty. I confess Brougham is a fine specimen. By the way,
what is all this piece of work about chänges in your Scots Courts of
Law Ż
Tickler. It is a piece of work originating in the by no manner of
means unnatural aversion of the Chancellor to a law of which he is
ignorant, and carried on by the base and fawning flattery (which he
should have seen through) of certain low Scotch Whigs, who, nourish-
ing the vile hope that, change once introduced, changes may be mul-
tiplied, are too happy to find, in the best Tory of England, their ally
in a plan which has for its real object the destruction of all that is
most dear and valuable to Scotland, and of course held and prized as
such by the Tories of Scotland. But the low arts by which the whole
affair has been got up and got on—the absurdity of the proposed inno-
vations, and in particular, the pitiable imbecility with which the whole
real concerns of the Jury Court—that job—are blinked—all these shall
ere long be exposed in a full, and, I hope, a satisfactory manner. I
shall demolish them in ten pages. Down—down—down shall they
lie—never to rise again—or my name is not Timothy.
Odoherty. A letter to Jeffrey, I suppose ? -
Tickler. Even so let it be. My word, I’ll give him a dose.
IHogg. It's aye a pleasure to you to be paiking at him—I wonder
you're not wearied o't.
Tickler. I am wearied of it—but duty, Hogg, duty
JHogg. It's my duty to tell you, that the bottom of the bowl has
been visible this quarter of an hour. (Rings.)
* As “Worse than the Roman Nero.”—M.
&
No. XVI-AUGUST, 1824.
Odoherty. By the way, North, have you seen a little book lately
put forth by Hurst and Robinson, “On the Present State of the Peri-
odical Press” The subject is worth your notice, I should think.
North. Certainly, Ensign. I have considered the subject pretty
seriously, I believe, and I have also seen the duodecimo you mention.”
But I am not so well skilled in the minutiae of these affairs as to be
able to give any opinion as to its minute accuracy.
Odoherty. I don’t mean to swear for all the particulars neither, for
I have only dipped into it; but it seemed to me that there was an air
of credibility over what little I read of it. How did you find it as to
the Journals with which you are really acquainted ?
North. Really, I cannot pretend to be really acquainted with many
of them. Blackwood and the Quarterly are the only ones of the
greater class that I always read; and as for the papers, you know, I
have long been contented with the Courier, New Times, John Bull,
and Cobbett. I used to take the Chronicle while Jamie Pirie lived,f
and I took in the Examiner till his Majesty of Cockaigne went to
Italy. Of late I see none of these trash.
Odoherty. Pooh that's nonsense—you should see every thing.
Worth. Sir, I can’t read without spectacles now-a-days; and I am
very well pleased to let Tickler read the Edinburgh and Westminster
for me, and you may do the same for me, if you have a mind, quoad
the minor diurnals of the same faction. Cobbett I always must read,
because Cobbett always ruust write. I enjoy my Cobbett.
* This brochwre, published anonymously, was written by the late Robert Alexander, at one
time connected with two scandalous Scottish papers, (The Beacon, in Edinburgh, and The
Sentinel, in Glasgow,) and afterwards successively editor of Flindell's Western Lwmimary,
in Exeter, the Watchman, in London, the London Mormºnſ, Jowrmal, the Liverpool Stand-
ard, and the Liverpool Matil. Alexander was conducting the Morming Jowrmal when Wel-
lington and Peel astonished their own Tory party by introducing and carrying the Catholic
Relief Bill in 1829. He was bitterly personal on the Ministry, for what he called their
“treachery.” His animadversions must have deeply galled them, for it was determined to
prosecute him for libel, whenever a good casus belli should occur. Alexander, who was au-
dacious and imprudent, wrote an article accusing the Duke of Wellington of an intention of
making himself Dictator, for the purpose of marrying his eldest son, then 24, to the present
Queen Victoria, a child aged 11. For this he was tried, convicted, and imprisoned. The re-
sult was the suppression of the Mormºnſ, Jowrmatl. In 1883, he went to Iliverpool to conduct
a local paper called The Standard. In 1836, he commenced the Liverpool Matil, on which he
continued until his death, in February, 1854, aged fifty-eight. He was a strong, hard-hitting
Writer; a man of simple tastes ; a faithful friend ; a consistent politician ; and extremely
fond of the innocent prattle of children.—M.
+ James Perry, proprietor of the London Morning Chronicle, was a native of Aberdeen,
and his original name was Pirie.--M.
45S NOCTES AMBROSTANAſ.
Odoherty. Surely, surely. But what think ye of the proposal which
this new scribe sets forth 3 I mean his great plan for having the duties
on the newspapers lightened? What will Robinson* say to that ?
North. I have very little doubt that the Chancellor of the Exchequer
will, in the course of a few sessions, bring in and carry through a bill
for this purpose. It is the only way to level the arrogance of those
great a-thousand-times-over-be-cudgelled monsters—I mean the Old
Times and such like—the worst disgrace of the nation.
Odoherty. It would do that, to be sure, with a vengeance; but
would not the revenue get some sore slaps?
North. Not one cuff, I honestly believe. These overgrown scampish
concerns are, at present, enabled to brave, not merely the influence of
government, for it is no evil, but a great good, that newspapers should
be independent of this—no, no, that is not what I think of—but the
general indignation of all honest men of all parties, the wide, the deep,
the universal scorn with which the whole virtue and sense of the British
people regard the unblushing, open, avowed, acknowledged, even
boasted profligacy, of some of those establishments.
Odoherty. They are so to a certain extent, I admit; but, Surely, the
little book exaggerates their triumphs.
North. I don't know that, nor do I care for a few hundreds or
thousands, more or less. But this I am certain of, that if the duty on
the advertisements were considerably lowered, and also the duty on
the newspapers themselves, two consequences would infallibly be the
result. People would advertise in more papers than they do at pre-
sent, and people would take in more papers. These are clear and
obvious consequences, and from them I hold it scareely less certain,
that two others would ensue. I mean, that an honest new paper
would contend on more equal terms with a dishonest old one and that
the far greater number of advertisements published, and the far greater
number of newspapers circulated in the country, would more than
atone to the Exchequer for the loss Mr. Robinson might at first sight
apprehend, from a measure so bold and decided as that of striking off
one-half of the newspaper tax, and of the tax on advertisements.
Odoherty. Which are
North. Threepence-halfpenny on each copy of each newspaper—
and three and sixpence on every thing, however trifling, that assumes
the character of an advertisement.
Odoherty. I confess it appears a little hard to tax journals of ong
sort so heavily, and journals of another sort not at all. Why not tax
a Magazine or a Review, as well?
Morth. Certainly. The excuse is, that newspapers are carried post-
age-free; but this is, of course, quite inapplicable to the enormous pro-
* Frederick Robinson, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now Earl of Ripon.—M.
LONDON NEWSPAPERS. 459
portion of all papers circulated exclusively in London and its suburbs
—and it is far too much to make a man living in Bond Street pay
threepence-halfpenny, in order that a man living in the Orkney Islands
may get his newspaper so much the cheaper.”
Odoherty. Viewed in one light it may seem so ; but do you not see
the policy in those days of trying to make the provinces balance the
capital, by equalizing their condition as to all such things, in so far as
it is by any means possible to do so?
North. Very true too, sir. But I can tell you this, Odoherty, that
I see very great danger in this same balancing and equalizing you talk
of, and nothing so likely to meet the danger as the adoption of the
plan I am lauding. It is obvious, that the speedy conveyance of the
papers published in the capital into every part of the empire, is grad-
ually enabling those who influence the political feelings of the capital
to influence also, and this almost in the same moment of time, the feel-
ings of the remotest provincialists. Thus, in another way to be sure,
London bids fair to become to Britain, what Paris has so long been to
France;—and that London never can become, sir, without the whole
character, not only of the Constitution, but of the nation, suffering an
essential and most perilous change. To check the danger of this, I
again tell you, I see nothing half so likely, as the adoption of a scheme
which will at once deprive old hard determined villany of its exclusive
means of lucre, and soon reduce all papers whatever under a decent
measure of subjection to the general opinion of decent society. Sir,
had there been no three-and-sixpence duty on advertisements, the
thirty or forty traders who own the Times would not have dared to
meet together in a tavern, and decide by a vote, whether that already
infamous journal should, or should not, double its load of infamy, by
fighting the battle of the late miserable Queen. This mazimum op-
probrium had been spared.
* In 1824, upon every single newspaper there was a stamp which cost four pence, (eight
cents,) less 20 per cent. discount. At that time, there was a duty of three shillings and six-
pence (S4 cents) upon each advertisement. A slight equivalent for the stamp-duty was
aſſorded by allowing all newspapers to be carried, free of charge, through the post-office. In
September, 1836, a remission of these duties, commonly called “Taxes upon Knowledge,”
came into eſſect. The newspaper duty was diminished to one penny (two cents) on each
newspaper, and one cent for supplements. At the same time, the duty was reduced from 84
to 36 cents on each advertisement. In August, 1853, the advertisement duty was wholly
abolished, and the supplement stamp further reduced. As The Times has not abated its
charges, it thus gains 36 cents eastra, on each advertisement, and the reduction in the supple-
ment duty has enabled it to extend its daily sale from 44,000 (beyond which it previously
could not print, to sell at 10 cents each copy, without loss) to 73,000, which are its numbers at
the present daie [July, 1854]. These changes have put £100,000 per annum extra profit in
the treasury of The Times, inasmuch as it has wholly appropriated to itself the benefits of the
reduction legislatively intended for the public. All British newspapers continue to be carried
free by the post-office, but it is probable that the law will be further amended, so as to pro-
vide that newspapers which do not pass through the post-office shall be unstamped, and that
only those which are so conveyed shall bear a penny Stamp, or be charged with a penny
postage.—M.
+ It was reported, and obtained many believers, that, early in 1820, on the accession of
George IV., when a difficulty appeared likely to arise about his wife, the proprietors of The .
Tºmes met and had a long discussion as to the part that journal should take in the coming :
460 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Odoherty. I don't follow you exactly—why?
Worth. I can't help it, if you can't see what is to me as plain as any
pike-staff. A groom out of place advertises in only one paper, because
he can’t afford to pay two three-and-sixpences to the King—make the
duty only one shilling and ninepence, and he will give himself the
benefit of two advertisements, and a clever lad is he if he finds means
to patronize another paper as blackguard as the Times. But I take
much wider ground than all this, sir. If the newspaper press, partic-
ularly the Sunday one, were as free and unshackled (I mean as to
taxes) as every other press is, we could not see it so infinitely above
any other press that exists on the score of profligacy. We could not
see it the daily, the hourly practice of a newspaper to take BRIBES, if
the bribers were, in consequence of a greater competition, compelled
to bribe many more than they at present have to do with. Thus, for
example, we should see no more of the scandalous subjection to the
interests of particular Stock-jobbers and brokers”—we should have no
more of those egregious lies which every day shows and detects—we
should have no more of those attacks on men who pay ten guineas next
day or next week, to have their characters vindicated. This most cry-
º of open venality would at least be greatly, very greatly dimin-
Odoherty. Well, I had rather see than hear tell of it, as Hogg's
phrase is. - -
North. You remember what Clement of the Observer did about the
trial of Thistlewood. The court prohibited in the most solemn manner
the publication of any part of the evidence, in any one of that batch
of trials, until the whole had been terminated. Mr. Clement was the
only one who disobeyed this. Well, he was ordered into court, and
fined £500 for the contempt—and what followed ?
Odoherty. I can't charge my memory, i'faith, with such doings.
North. Why, he paid the money, and after he had done so, very
coolly informed the public, that he had not only paid the fine out of
the extra profits of the paper containing the offensive matter, but put,
over and above, a very handsome sum into his own pocket. This
was as it should be -
Odoherty. Quite so.
contest. It was decided, by a majority of one, that it would side with the Queen, which it did,
with great force and success, from the time her name was first mentioned in Parliament, in
February, 1820, until and after her death in August, 1821.--M.
* It has never been attributed to The Times that it took advantage of its peculiar sources
of information for stock-jobbing purposes. On the contrary, the Morning Chronicle, under
Sir John Easthope, himself a member of the Stock Exchange, was strongly suspected as hav-
ing been used by him to bull or bear particular stocks as his interests required.—M.
t Mr. Clement sold over 200,000 copies of the Observer, with the report of Arthur Thistle-
wood's trial for high treason. Taking the nett profit on each number to be three cents, the
amount would be £1250 on that single issue, (to say nothing of its actiug as the very best
;ºn of the paper,) so that, by disobeying the order of the Court, he cleared
9.—M. * * * • * * : . .
NEWSPAPER STAMPS 461
North. The second part of my plan would, however, tell quite as
severely on many other quacks, as on the quacks of the Daily and
Weekly papers. If it cost less to advertise, more would advertise.
Your King Solomon would have brothers nearer the throne. In short,
the thing by being egregiously overdone at the first would soon and
effectually correct itself. This is very well argued in the little book
you have tabled.
Odoherty. Be it so. But things will go on in the old way, notwith-
standing. To tell you the truth, I skipped all that affair at once, as
unquestionable balaam. What I looked to was the individual history
of the different Journals—their comparative sales, &c. &c. &c.
North. All which, much distrusting, I scarcely gave one glance to.
Odoherty. Distrusting % Why?
Worth. Why? for this simple reason, sir, that there is no means of
ascertaining the actual sale of any one newspaper in existence. They
themselves, to be sure, pretend, that, when they refer you to the Stamp
Office, which will prove incontestably the issuing of so many thousand
stamps, for such and such a paper, it is impossible for any man in his
senses to doubt that that number of the Times, the Chronicle, or what-
ever it be, was actually distributed among the British public on the
day alleged. But this is all the nerest bam. The fact, sir, is—and I
know it—that it is the daily custom of the London papers to send and
pay for a vast number of stamped sheets more than they want. Some
provincial paper or other is happy to make use of their surplus paper,
provided the London office will only save them the trouble of having
a separate agent of their own in town, to get their stamps for them.
One paper, one of the principal proprietors of which confessed the fact
to me t'other day, supplies regularly no less than fifteen different pro-
vincial prints with their stamped paper in this way: but, although I
did not exactly put that question, it cannot be doubted the whole ag-
gregated sale of the said fifteen is made to figure as part and parcel of
the circulation of my friend's own concern, in the yearly or half-yearly
statements thereof, which you are in the habit of staring over.”
Odoherty. All this is, I confess, news to me. So you believe nothing,
then, of the statements they all do put forth ?
North. Nothing; unless I happen to know of my own knowledge,
that the property and management of the paper (for I don't speak at
present of either of these taken separately) are united in the hands of
a man above having any connections with the promulgation of any
* No doubt this was done, and thus a ſictitious circulation was claimed by some papers. To
prevent this, a series of new dies came into use, in September, 1836, by which every news-
paper stamp bore the name of the particular journal on which it was placed. This enabled
the Stamp Office to make an annual return of the number of stamps actually taken out by each
newspaper. After such return had been issued for years, causing perpetual disputes among
rival journals, as to “comparative circulation,” it was counplained of as too inquisitorial, and
has appeared only once during a long period.—M.
462 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
falsehoºd on any subject whatever. Such a man as Stoddart or Mud-
ford, for example—nobody believes they would lie for any thing, far
less for this sort of filth. - º
Odoherty. Certainly not. By the by, now you mention it, I was
thunderstruck to find it laid down distinctly, that the total number of
political journals circulated in the British islands has trebled—yes,
trebled, within the last forty years. :
North. No wonder. The American Revolution—the French Revo-
lution—Bonaparte—Wellington—the stream of events, and the im-
mense increase of readers of every thing else—when you take this into
view, no wonder at the increase about the newspapers.
Odoherty. I suppose nobody ever heard of such editions of even the
best books a hundred years ago, as we now daily heat of
North. No ; not at all. In Pope's time, sir, 500 copies was a great
edition—you will find this taken for granted in all the books of the
time. Even in Dr. Johnson's time, 750 was reckoned a very large
edition of the most popular book, by the most popular author of his
day. Even twenty years back, things were in a totally different con-
dition from what we are now accustomed to. What would any body
...have said to an edition of 10,000 or 12,000 of a new novel ? What
would any body have said to a review selling 12,000 or 14,000 regu-
larly every number, as I believe the Quarterly has done, for several
years back? Sir, this business has progressed in the most astonishing
I’at] O. -
Odoherty. Ay, i'faith, and nobody has more reason to rub his hands
thereupon than yourself. * . i
North. So—well, well, let that pass—now that your cigar is out,
pray have the kindness to unlock the balaam-box here, and let's see
what's to go on ; for the 12th draweth on, and my heart panteth for
Brae-mar.
Odoherty. And that's what I will do, my hearty; and many's the
time we have done more for each other before this night was born.
Here, give me the key; you always keep it at your watch, I think.
North. There it is ; take care of my grandmother's repeater;-'tis
the little queer-looking fellow, with the B. B. B. B. woven in cipher
upon it. -
Odoherty. What, four B's 3 -
Worth. Yes. Bailie–Blackwood's—Balaam—Box. 'Tis his box,
you know-because, according to our friend's verses long ago, out of
every one of these bunches it is highly probable
“Our worthy Publisher purloins a few
About his roasting-mutton shanks to screw 3)
Odoherty. Here's something in old Tºckler's fist--shall we begin
with crerhau'ing that lad 3 •.”
TICKLER ON MACKINTOSH. 463
North. Certainly. Does he mean to stay all the summer in Dublin,
I wonder ? Read him, Morgan. -
3doherty (reads), “Letters of Timothy Tickler, Esq., to Eminent
Literary Characters, Number —to Sir James Mackintosh, Knt.,
late Recorder of Bombay }}
North. What? what? what? Sir Jamie again
Odoherty. Pooh I don't be alarmed—one would have thought you
had seen Parr's wig or Gerald's ghost, or the Bonassus rampant—'tis
only a letter to Sir Jamie, I perceive, about his articles on Brodie's His-
tory, and Croker's edition of the Suffolk Papers, in the last Edinburgh
Review. - - * -
North. Come, that's rather too much, Timotheus. I thought he had
sufficiently squabashed those two concerns in one of his late effusions
to Jeffrey. But read on.
Odoherty Excuse me—'tis a cursed small hand—I see it begins as
usual with a philippic anent things in general—“Burke”—“Pitt”—
“Gibbon”—“Hume.”—“Brodie”—“Charles”—“Colonel Harrison.”
—ay, ay, we may hop over a little of this ground, “Your last Number,
sir,”—here we are more likely to have something—“Flagrant”—“ca-
lumnious”—Pooh pooh what a pother about nothing ! Come,
here's something in double column, and one half in red ink, I swear.
Listen to him here, North—(reads)—“It may be thought that the
trivial punishment I have already inflicted on your critique was as
much as the affair merited. It may be so, very probably. But it so
happens, sir, that you have to do with a queer old gentleman, three-
fourths of whose library is made up of old books, and one-half of whose
time is spent in hunting up and down among them in quest of matters
nearly as insignificant as the party spleen of an Edinburgh Reviewer,
or the historical accuracy of a Sir James Mackintosh.” Come, Timo-
thy gets prosy.
North. Let me hear the double column part of it.
Odoherty. Oh I it is infernally long—I haven't wind for it, really.
North. A specimen, then—corrections of Sir James's corrections as
to matters of fact, I presume 3 . - - -
Odoherty. Exactly—ay, he puts the sentence of blue and yellow on
the first column, and his own in red ink opposite to it. Ha! I see
where he had begun to write with a new pen. I can make him out
here, I believe—here goes, then. -
Thus reciteśh and correcteth Sir J. To which respondeth Timothy Tickler,
Mackintosh, Knt. - Jºsq. -
“Henry Grey, only Duke of Kent, The Duke of Kent died the 5th
died in 1740,” for which read 1741. June, 1740. See London Magazine for
- 1740, p. 301, and Gent. Mag, for 1740,
p. 314.
North. very well, Timothy —Go on.
464
NOCTES AMBROSTANAE.
Odoherty.
Sir Jamie again.
“Her eldest son, (George,) after-
wards second Lord Hervey.” There
was John, FIRST Lord IIervey, after-
wards created Earl of Bristol. Carr,
SEcoSD Lord Hervey, his eldest Son.
John, THIRD Lord Hervey, his second
son, consequently Lady Hervey's son,
George, was the FourTB Lord Hervey.
North. Well hit again, Tim.
Odoherty. At it again, boys.
Sir James / -
“Leonel, seventh Earl, and first
Duke of Dorset, died in 1765.”— For
1765, read 1763
Odoherty. Round fourth !
The Recorder. * -
“Lord Scarborough put a period to
his existence in 1739.”—For 1739,
read 1740.
To which again Timotheus.
º four Lord IIerveys did really
exist, and yet the editor of Lady Suf.
folk's Letters is right, and the critic
egregiously wrong.
John, first Lord Hervey, so created
in 1703, was created Earl of Bristol
in 1714. His eldest son, Carr, was
only a commoner, called Lord IIervey
by courtesy. So was his second son
John for many years; but in 1733,
the latter was created a peer, (see
Coxe,) by the title of Lord Hervey,
and on his death, (old Lord Bristol
being still alive,) his son George be-
came the second peer of the creation
of 1733, and on Lord Bristol's death,
he became also the second peer of the
creation of 1703. So that the critic
is doubly wrong; and without any
excuse; for all these facts may be
gathered from the editor's notes, as
well as from the Peerages.
Southside / / /
The Duke of Dorset died 9th Octo.
ber, 1765. See London Magazine, p.
598, and Gentleman's Magazine, p.
491.
Jongshanks 1 / 1
This is not mere inaccuracy on the
part of the critie; it is ignorance. He
has forgotten that the style was not yet
changed, and Lord Scarborough died
on the 4th February, 1739, old style.
JWorth. A facer —Does he come to time 3
Odoherty. Round fifth. Here they go.
Jem 1
“The Great Lord Mansfield died on
the 20th of March, 1793, in the eighty-
eighth year of his age.”—Lord Mans-
field was born on the 2d March, 1705,
and was therefore in the EIGHTY-NINTH
gear of his age. -
7%7), 1 / /
I have already laughed at the value
and importance of this correction,
ãf it even were one ; but unfortunately
the erudite critic again forgets the
change of the style. March, 1705, old
style, would be March, 1706, new style;
so that Lord Mansfield seems to have
wanted some few days of completing
his 88th year,
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. 465
North. Enough, enough, man ; such errors and such corrections
are in themselves wholly inconsiderable, and not worth the notice of a
pipe-stapple. It was ridiculous enough to see a solemn jackass set
about such amendments; but to find that his grave amendments are,
in fact, flagrant blunders, is as comical as any thing in Mathews's
American judge. But we have other fish to fry. Just put Timothy
into my portfolio, and see what comes to hand next. -
Odoherty. “Remains of Robert Bloomfield.” Ay, poor fellow !
there was one genuine poet, though of the lowly breed.
AVorth. He was so, indeed, Odoherty. I thought that book would
'be found in the box; for I had a letter not long ago mentioning the
thing from his family. They sent me, by the way, most of the proof.
sheets of the book, and a specimen of his handwriting. Should you
like to see it 3
Odoherty. Not I; give it to D'Israeli. He, you recollect, is one,
not of the Bumpologists, but of the Fistologists; he will take it quite
as a compliment. º
North. I dare say they have sent him another letter and specimen
of the same cut already. You must table your coin on this occasion,
Odoherty. Bloomfield, from no fault of his own, has died poor, and
left a worthy and amiable family in rather dependent condition.*
You must take a few copies of the Remains at all events. -
Odoherty. Why, as neither you not I have any young ladies to put
to school, I don't know in what other way we can do any thing for
Bloomfield's daughters. Well, put me down, Editor. - -
North. I will, sir; but there is no school in the case. Miss Hannah
13]oomfield, indeed, wishes to have a situation as a musical teacher in
some respectable family; and as she is evidently, from what appears in
these very volumes, possessed of very considerable musical taste and
skill, I trust the worthy daughter of such a man will not be long in
getting the establishment she wishes. The whole family have been
brought up, I well know, in the most exeimplary manner ; as indeed
what else could any body expect from the paternal solicitude of a man
whose native strength of mind kept him at all times superior to the
manifold temptations with which his lot naturally surrounded him,
and who, in every line he wrote, showed himself the friend of virtue #
Sir, we have had but few real poets from this class of people; and,
alas! fewer still, who, like Bloomfield, adhered steadily to the virtuous
feelings of their lowly youth, when circumstances had introduced him
to the dazzle and bustle of the upper world. I honor the memory of
Robert Bloomfield. -
Odoherty. Yes, he was always one of your favorites. I see they
have printed here your pretty verses on his death—this is right, too—
* Robert Bloomfield, author of “The Farmer's Boy,” a rural poem of great merit, died in
1828, aged fifty-seven. The latter part of his life was clouded with poverty and dejection.—M.
WOL. I.-32
466 NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
and some verses of Montgomery's also, which I now recollect to have
seen somewhere before. - - -
North. In the Sheffield Iris, probably—or Alaric Watts' Leeds In-
telligencer—which, by the way, is a paper of very high merit in a
literary point of view; indeed the best of all the literary Gazettes.”
Odoherty. Literary Gazettes —What a rumpus all that fry have
been keeping up about Miss Landon's poetry—the Improvisatrice, I
IIl G&Ił. s -
North. Why, I always thought you had been one of her greatest
admirers, Odoherty. Was it not you that told me she was so very
handsome –A perfect beauty, I think you said. s
Odoherty. And I said truly. She is one of the sweetest little girls
in the world, and her book is one of the sweetest little books in the
world; but Jerdan's extravagant trumpeting has quite sickened every
body; and our friend Alaric has been doing rather, too much in the
same fashion. This sort of stuff plays the devil with any book.
Sappho and Corinna, forsooth ! Proper humbug -
Worth. I confess you are speaking pretty nearly my own senti-
ments. I ran over the book—and I really could see nothing of the
originality, vigor, and so forth, they all chatter about. Very elegant,
flowing verses they are—but all made up of Moore and Byron.
Odoherty. Nay, nay, when you look over the Improvisatrice again,
I am sure you will retract this. You know very well that I am no
great believer in female genius; but nevertheless, there is a certain
feminine elegance about the voluptuousness of this book, which, to a
certain extent, marks it with an individual character of its own.f
North. I won't allow you to review this book, my dear Standard-
* The Sheffield Iris, and the Leeds Intelligencer, then edited by James Montgomery and
Alaric Watts, were somewhat literary in 1824, when no other provincial newspapers ever con-
tained an original critique upon a new book. It is different now, and there now is nearly as
much talent, comparatively speaking, on the British provincial press, as there is on the lion-
don press. James Montgomery thought so well of his shorter literary articles in the Sheffield
Iris, that he collected them, in two volumes, as “Prose by a Poet.”—M
t Odoherty very much ſlattered L. E. L., when he allowed North to describe her as “very
handsome,” and “a perfect beauty.” She narrowly escaped being a dowdy. Her figure was
petite, her manner natural and impulsive, her voice sweet and low, (“an excellent thing in
women,” if they would only recollect it !) and her whole bearing was that of a child-woman,
(she was twenty-two in 1824, and looked seventeen,) delighted with society, and feeling bound
to pie:use. Graceful in motion—charming in repose, yet by ruo means handsome, Miss
Landon was about the last person on earth whom, meeting in a drawing-room, you would sus-
pect of authorship. Yet she composed poetry rapidly as her own Improvisatrice—writing her
verses, scarcely ever with an emendation, in her small, neat, upright, old-fashioned hand.
Quick, lively, and epigrammatic in conversation as she was, I never saw any woman, save
che, and she is the loveliest, in mind or person, whom I have ever known, who was so soli-
citous to avoid Scandal and mere gossip. “Letty Landon,” as she used to like to be caiſed,
was the safest person in the world to whom a young author might speak of what he had in his
mind to do, for her human sympathies were large, her judgment ſar riper than her years, and
her grasp of mind vigorous and extended. Tell her the plot of a story, or the idea of a poem,
and, at once, she would suggest how one might be better evolved in action, how the other
might be exalted by particular treatment.—M. [On going over this note again, at the last
moment, with the press—which, like time and tide, waits for no man—rattling in my ears, I
am conscious that I have not done full justice to L. E. Landon. Said I that she was not beauti-
ful? C'est vrai—but there is a beauty far beyond and far above mere loveliness of feature.
There is the beauty of Expression, and if ever mortal possessed it, Letitia Landon did. It is
*
JAMES GILRAY. - 4.67
w
bearer, for I perceive you are half in love with the damsel concerned;
and under such circumstances, a cool and dispassionate estimate is
what nobody could be expected to give—least of all you, you red-hot
monster of Munster. -
Odoherty. No abuse, my old Bully-Rock!
North. Nay, 'tis you that must be called Bully-Rock, now—for I
suppose you acknowledge the “Munster Farmer" now to be but an-
other of you aliases. I knew you at the first page, man.* No draw-
ing of straws before so old a cat. -
Odoherty. The book is mine, sir. I need keep no secrets from
TOll.
North. Gad-a-mercy I now for the first time begin to suspect
that you had nothing at all to do with it.
Odoherty. Even as you please, most worshipful. These trifles do
not affect me or my equanimity.
Morth. Impenetrable, imperturbable brazen face —But get on, man.
Odoherty. My eye here's Gilray Redivivus. Here's the first
number of the reprint of his caricatures; you must put on your spec-
tacles, now, Mr. Christopher.
North. Ah! and that I will, my hearty. Well, this was really well
thought on. What a pity that these things should have been sinking
into the great gulf! Ha! haſ the old paper-money concerns once
more | Here's Sherry ipsissimus. “Don’t take the notes, John Bull;
nobody takes notes now-a-days; they won't even take mine !” How
good this view of the fine old sinner's phiz is—and Charlie, too, with
his cockade tricolor Well, these days are over.
Odoherty. What a capital Pittſ—The pen behind the ear, and all !
—And John Bull, too—why, Liston never sported a better grit:-
Turn over—ay, ay, this will do. -
North. “The Broad-bottomites getting into the grand costume !”—
Long live the immortal memory of 1806. Glorious Charlie in what
a pother you are shaving !—Illustrious Lansdownel in what majesty
dost thou strut!—Profound Ego what gravity is in thy self-adoration!
—Oh dear! oh dear!—That face of Lord Henry Petty and that toe
—they are enough to kill a horse !
Odoherty. This grand one of old George, with Bony on his hand,-
how vividly it recalls to my memory the laughter of the years that
were ! Hang it! if I were to live a hundred years, I should never see
any new thing to affect me in the same manner. How intensely fa-
miliar we all were made with the honest, open, well-larded counte-
mournful to think of her as she was when first I saw her, in 1828, and know that, in ten years
from that time, she was lying, far away, in a grave in Africa. In 1S2S, when she was “the
life, grace, and ornament of society,” one would scarcely have been extravagant in anticipat-
ing that one so giſted and so courted would have worn a coronet, and been the mother of a line
of nobles, whose ancestral glories would have been illumined by her wondrous genius.--M.]
* “ Captain Rock Detected, by a Munster Farmer,” was a reply, somewhat heavy and lum-
bering, from the pen of the Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan.—M.
468 - NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
nance of Georgius Tertius! What a solemn, fatherly suavity in his
goggling eyes! How reverend his bob-major how grand his blue
ribbon how ample his paunch! What a sweet in-falling of the chin,
honest old cock \ -
North. Excellent monarch Pater patriae truly, if ever there was
one. Here, again, is a very worthy one ; one of Gilray's very best
things, Odoherty. Behold Nap, en gingerbread baker, thrusting a
new batch of pie-crust kings into his oven. Ye glorious Josephs,
Jeromes, Louises —where are ye all now %—quite chop-fallen —Ba-
văria Wirtemburg | Baden —Ah! Morgan, what queer-times these.
were, my man -
Odoherty. Indeed they were, old royster; and may they that wish
for the like of them find the short cut to Gehenna, say I. We have
no political caricaturist now-a-days, North.*
North. Why, George Cruikshank does many things better; and
yet it is impossible to deny great merit to many of his things about
the time of the Queen's row. Alderman Wood was quite a hero for
the pencil, and her Majesty was such a heroine. Of late he, or who-
ever feeds the shop windows, has fallen off sadly. The whole batch
of the battier concerns was deplorably stupid, and as for the Windsor-
Park sketches, saw ye ever such a leaden, laborious dulness of repeti-
tion ? -
Odoherty. Pooh! they're very well fitted to the time. Party spirit
is very cool at present, and you would not have the party caricatures
to be very pointed when that is the case. No, no, the public are
taken up with other things, North.
North. True, Morgan ; and, moreover, the great circulation lately
of exquisite engravings of scenery among us shows decidedly a new
and more polished sort of taste spreading among the people. Why,
you cannot go into a print-shop now-a-days without seeing a whole
swarm of new works coming out in numbers, any one leaf of which
would have been looked on as a real wonder some dozen or ten years
back. There's Hugh Williams's Greek Engravings, now, have you
seen those ?
Odoherty. To be sure I have ; i'faith they are worthy of the drawings
themselves, and that is compliment enough. Gadſ what a fine thing
we should have thought it, when we were young lads at our classics,
to be able to get such divine views of all the scenes the old ones said
and sung about, for such a mere-trifle of money. The engraving of
the Tombs of Plataea Well, I really had no notion that the effect of
* James Gilray, the best caricaturist England has yet produced—for H. B. gave actual
rather than burlesque portraits—died in 1815.-M.
+ Cruikshank’s sketches of Queen Caroline were admirably done. They represented her em.
bon, point, as a royal lady of fifty might easily be ; but they did not give her bold glance, nor
her imperious frown, nor her jolly face. Their merit consisted in what they did not indi-
cate —M.
GTRECIAN WILLIAMS. 469
that most original and undescribable work of art could have been so
nearly given in black and white, to say nothing of the great reduction
of Scale, * *
North. There are many others of the series not a whit less interest-
ing. One, of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius in AEgina, particu-
larly struck me—and Thebes faith, I believe, that is, after all, the
very chef-d'oeuvre. But, perhaps, you don't know, Odoherty, what is
one of my chiefest delights when I look over this work; and that is
neither more nor less than this, sir, that Williams has had all his en-
gravings done. by native artists, and young, very young ones mostly.
Sir, these things may show themselves by the side of the very best
London can produce. The fortunes of Horsburg and Miller are
made; for, as to James Stewart, he, you know, was up long enough
before this job. His engraving of Allan's last picture is a grand
thing. I never saw an artist who showed greater tact in preserving
the minutiae of his painter's peculiar touches.
Odoherty. Stewart is a fine handy lad, and a very modest one, too.
So good luck to him, and here's a bumper to Williams.”
North. Welshman though he be, he is an honor to Scotia—here
he goes. His Views of Athens will live as long as her memory.
“Shall I unmoved behold the hallow’d scene
Which others rave of, though they know it not :
Though here no more Apollo haunt his grot,
And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave—
Some gentle spirit still pervades the spot,
Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave,
And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave ſ” --
Odoherty, Byron —hum!
Worth. Come, come, none of your sneers. Hugh Williams's prints
are certainly the best illustrations any one can bind up with Byron's
poems. Others give you views, caricatures, (call them as you will,)
* Like Sir William Allan, Williams had lived much in foreign lands, and illustrated foreign
subjects by his pencil. After travelling in Greece and Italy for some years, he fixed his resi-
dence in Edinburgh, in 1818. Lockhart, speaking of his views in Greece, says, “It is there,
. I may be wrong in confessing it, it is there, among the scattered pillars of Thebes or Corinth
—or in ſull view of all the more glorious remains of more glorious Athens—or looking from
the ivied or mouldering arches of Delphi, quite up through the mountain mists to the craggy
summits of Parnassus, and the far-off windings of the Castalian brook—it is there, that the
footsteps of men appear to have stamped a grander sanctity even on the most magnificent
forms of nature. It is there that Williams seems first to have felt, and it is in his transcripts
of these glorious scenes, that I myself have been sensible of feeling the whole fulness and
awfulness of the works of the Creator—
“All this magnificent effect of power,
The earth we tread, the sky which we behold
* By day, and all the pomp which night reveals.’”
A vicw of Atl ens, and another of Castri, were greatly praised by Leckhart, in 1819, who
predicted, what was speedily accomplished, that Williams would take a high place as a land-
&cape pailºter - M., -
470 ~. NOCTES AMBROSLANAC.
of his personages, more or less happy, but this is nothing. Williams
has been, like the poet, inspired by the sky, the mountains, the ruins
of Greece, and the kindred stamp of their inspiration looks you in the
face whichever way you turn among their works. -
Odoherty. I was glad to see the prints were so small, for this was
the purpose I at once thought of turning them to.
North. Upon the same principle I take Thomson of Dudding-
ston's Fast Castle to be the finest and most satisfactory accompani-
nient for the story of Lammermoor—and Nasmyth's Old Prison of
Edinburgh stands ditto, ditto, for the Heart of Mid-Lothian.*
Odoherty. I wish Williams would give us a series of his Italian
things too—and particularly his Sicilian ones—for Agrigentum and
Syracuse are, after all, less known to most people than any other old
places of any thing like the same interesting character. . -
North. People may rail about boyish tastes, and what not, as long
as they have a mind. I confess I like a book all the better for its
being illustrated. Perhaps 'tis my imagination cooling, Ensign; but
there, for example, was basil Hall's book about South America: I
confess I would fain have had a few cuts of his San Martins, O'Hig-
ginses, and the rest of them. -
Odoherty. And I own I should have liked to see what sort of a
figure old Cochrane cuts in his outlandish riggery. He was a Tum
one enough in that long blue tog, and low-browed, broad-brimmed
castor, as we used to see him lounging about town.
North. By sºlue accident I never saw Lord Cochrane in my life,
He is a noble fellow—mad, of course—but that's what he can't help,
Odoherty. Was it madness that dished him
North. Certainly, the only thing that dished him was the denying
of the hoax, in the way he did, in the House of Commons. Had he
stood firm on his feet, and said what was God's truth, that he was a
sailor, and nºt a moral philosopher; and that if he had acted wrong,
his error consisted merely in doing cleverly and successfully what
thousands both of the most holy Saints and the most honorable sin-
ners in the land were trying to do every day; if he had stood up with
a bold face, and spoken plain common sense after this fashion, I should
like to know who would seriously have thought a pin the worse of
him, at least for more than a week or two. Not I, for one. But the
* Alexander Nasmyth, in 1824, was the venerable father of landscape painting in Scotland.
Lockhart said, “There is a delightful sweetness in the old man’s pencil, and assuredly there
is in it as yet no want of vigor.” The best portrait of Robert Burns was painted by Nasmyth.
This fine old man died in 1840, aged eighty-three. His son Peter, who settled in London at
the age of twenty, and had won the honorable title of “The English Hobbima,” died in 1831.
--M. r
t Lord Cochrane, who had eniered the British Navy at an early age, distinguished himself
by his exploits in the war with France, particularly in the Basque Roads, for which he was
created Knight of the Bath, was very popular on his return to London, and was elected
member for Westminster. In February, 1814, he was accused of being concerned in a Stock-
Exchange scheme, intended to raise the funds by spreading simultaneous reports ºf Napoleon'?
LORD COCEIRANE. 471
truth is, that every one thing he ever did in this country after he be-
gan to think himself a politician, was a perfect proof of madness.
Odoherty. Well, 'tis lucky he has got into a walk, where, what you
are pleased to call madness, does better than all the wisdom in the
world would do. Will he ever come home again, think yeº
North. I don't know. Many queer stories are going about. Some
Say he has done things about the English shipping that would land
him inextricably in lawsuits if he showed his nose here. Others,
again, maintain that he has arranged all these concerns of late, and
that it would be nothing strange if he should be seen parading Pall-
Mall within this twelvemonth.* For my part, I know nothing of the
matter. Captain Hall could tell, no doubt.
Odoherty. Ay, ay; but Hall was a great deal too knowing to tell
half what he knew about some of those folks in his book.
North. To be sure he was; and, in particular, I have heard that
his MS. Journal could furnish a very extraordinary bundle of Cochran-
iana, over and above what the book sets forth. Well, we can’t quar-
rei with this reserve. - -
Odoherty. Bless your soul, I quarrel with nothing. I think Hall's
book is a perfect model in its way. Great art in both the whole-
speaking part of it, and the half-speaking.
death. He was indicted for complicity herein, in June, 1814, convicted, sentenced to stand in
the pillory, opposite the Royal Exchange, for an hour, to be imprisoned for twelve months,
and to pay a fine of £1000. All his efforts to obtain a new trial were in vain. On July 5th, a
motion for his expulsion from the House of Commons was carried by a (ministerial) majority.
On the 16th, he was re-elected. The indignity of putting him in the pillory was waived by the
Government. Soon after, he was solemnly turned out of the Knightly Order of the Bath, and
deprived of his rank in the Navy. After having been some time in prison, he escaped, (on
March 15, 1815,) and went down to the House of Commons, to take his seat for Westminster;
but before he could take the oaths, was re-captured by the Marshal of the prison. On the
very day that his sentence expired, Lord Cochrane speeded to the House, and was just in
time to defeat, by his single vote, an intended increase of £6000 a year to the Duke of Cum-
berland, one of his bitterest opponents. The £1000 fine was paid by a penny subscription
among his constituents. IIe left Parliament in 1818, and went abroad on foreign service, first
in South America, and afterwards in Greece. In 1829, he permanently fixed his abode in
London. He succeeded to the Earldom of Dundonald, and William IV. (himself a sailor) had
him restored to the station in the navy which he would have occupied had he remained in the
service. He was also reinstated in his position as Knight of the Bath. In 1814, the King of
Arms had proceeded to Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, removed Lord
Cochrane's banner and other insignia from his stall, kicked them down the chapel steps, and
into the street. A popular writer says: Had he been there in person, the remainder of the
degradation (hacking off his knight's spurs by a butcher with a cleaver) would most probably
have been performed—or attempted. Oddly enough, the kicked-out banner was picked up, in
the street, by one of Cochrane's friends, taken home, and carefully preserved. This was about
forty years ago. Time rolled on—Cochrane eminently distinguished himself in South America
and Greece—he had returned to England—he had become Earl of Dundonald, by the death of
his father—it was felt that he had been harshly dealt with—the political asperities which pro-
secuted and persecuted him had subsided—a liberal king was on the throne—a liberal govern-
ment ruled the country—and tardy justice was done, by restoring Cochrane to the honors from
which he had been degraded. His banner was duly reinstated in its old place in Westminster
Abbey, and it actually was the identical banneret which, two-and-twenty years ago, had been
unceremoniously kicked out. Cochrane's friend who had picked it up, evidently acted on the
old saw which says, “Keep a thing for seven years, and it will be sure to come in useful.” He
kept the document for treble that period, but was rewarded.—In 1854, when a commander-
was required for the British fleet in the Baltic, the Earl of Dundonald (Cochrane) solicited to
be employed, but his seventy-nine years (he was born in 1775) were so many reasons against
it.—M.
* He did return, four years after this date.—M
472 NOOTES AMBROSLANAC.
Worth. The Edinburgh Reviewer of Basil, whether he was Sir
Jamie or not,” devil cares, made a grand attenupt to persuade the
world that the weight of the Captain's authority lay entirely his own
way as to the question of revolutions in South America, and, by im-
plication, elsewhere; but as you have seen the work, I need not tell
you this is just another trick of the old trade.
Odoherty. And what else should it be? He, of course, gave no
opinion about any other revolution question except that on which all
the world has all along been exactly of the same way of thinking.
I mean the total impossibility and absurdity of every scheme for re-
establishing the government of Spain over her great American colo-
In 198. --
North. Exactly so—he speaks decidedly, as he should do, upon this
head, and as to all the details of the different humbug constitutions
that have been knocked up and down like so many nine-pins in that
quarter during the last ten or twelve years, he says, in spite of Sir
Jamie, he says not one word but what is perfectly consistent with the
truth and justice of the views which I have recently been putting
forth as to those concerns. He, in fact, hints continually his total con-
tempt for every thing connected with these new establishments, except
only the individual merits (such he esteems them) of San Martin in
Chili and Iturbide; in Mexico. The wild and cruel ruin which, with
scarcely one exception, the insurgent party has everywhere heaped on
the private and domestic fortunes of those opposed to them, or sus-
pected of being opposed to them in opinion,-the brutal sulky rage
with which every thing venerable for rank, station, refinement, and
virtue, has, in a thousand instances, been sacrificed to the mean and
jealous demon of Liberalism, the outrages on age, elegance, loveli-
ness, the rash, remorseless villany which has trampled all that has
ennobled the soil into the dust of degradation, nay, of absolute misery,
—of all this, sir, Captain Hall, being a Scottish gentleman and a
British officer, could not possibly think a whit differently from all the
others of the same class of men I have ever happened to converse with
on any of the topics in question, nor has he said one syllable that looks
as if he had done so; though I have no sort of doubt the critique in
the Edinburgh Review, and Sir James's puff parliamentary, were both
of them dictated in some measure by a skulking spri of notion that
the brutum vulgus might be bamboozled into the belief that Captain
Ball had really written a Whiggish book touching South America.
* “Sir Jamie” was Sir James Mackintosh, of course. Basil Hall's book was his “Extracts
; º Jgurnal written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, in the years 1820, 1821, and
| Wºº. " " - WR .
t Augustus Iturbide, who was Emperor of Mexico for a short period, (proclaimed May 18th,
1892, and abdicating in March, 1823,) retired to Italy on a large pension, conditional on his
not returning to Mexico. He returned, after a year's absence, to attempt the recovery of
§. was proscribed, betrayed, captured, and sentenced to death. He was shot, July 19th,
S22, aged forty.—M.
BASIL HALL. 473
Odoherty. Does Sir James owe Constable any money?
North. Not knowing, can’t say. -
Odoherty. Well, well. The Captain should certainly have given us
a few prints of his heroes. He had sºme grand affairs in his Loo-choo
book.
North. Ay, and so he had. By the by, have you heard that it
turns out that he was completely taken in by those petticoated prigs?
That his primitive Loo-choo lads are now understood to be, without
exception, the prettiest set of old rascally cunning swindlers that ever
infested the Yellow Sea º
Odoherty. I had not heard of the humbug being ripped up. Well,
I am sorry to hear this, for I really had been much affected with the
simplicity of their manners.” The print of the leave-taking, in parti-
cular, was rather too much for my feelings—them booing and Basil
booing—them doing him, and him Loo-chooing them. 'Twas a fine
picture of humanity on the umbrella system. **.
North. Ay, ay. Well, he has got hold of people whom he could
understand this time, and he has done himself justice. His book, sir,
is, after all, one of the few sprigs of 1824, which won't wither with
the season. I back Captain Hall's South America, and Captain Rock
Detected, against any three octavos, or duodecimos either, of the
‘rowth. - -
É Odoherty. Have you seen a Tour in Germany lately published by
Constable's people? I hear 'tis rather a clever thing.
North. I was reading some parts of it over again this very evening.
I like the book very well upon the whole. Who writes it?
Odoherty. A Mr. Russell, I hear; a young man who has just been
called to the bar here. - - w
North. I hoped it might turn out to be a very young man, for other-
wise there would be something offensive in the style occasionally.
Cursedly spruce and pointed—you understand me.
Odoherty. O ay; but I hear this is a genuine clever fellow, so one
must overlook these little things, and expect better hereafter,
North. Why, as to that, I made no objection to any thing, but a
little occasional false taste in style—a thing which, in an early work
like this, is of no sort of consequence. The stuff of his book is good,
and his feelings are good throughout. We must get Kempferbausen
to bring him here some night—for being a German—Nihil Germanic,
a Se alienum—you understand me? - - ; : . . . "
Odoherty. Yes, yes, of course, the lad has laid his lugs in our friend's
Steinwein long ere this time of day. Well, the Germanic faction is
* When Captain Basil Hall visited Napoleon at St. Helena, on his return from a voyage of
discovery, in which he had visited the Loo-Choo Islands, he mentioned that the people had no
offensive weapons. “Mon Diew " said the Emperor, “how do they fight?” When he after-
wards spoke, in presence of Mr. Vansittart, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, of their having
no money, the financier abruptly asked, “How can they pay the taxes 2"—M.
474 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
getting on; this gentleman and young Carlyle”—he who translated
Meister—are two pretty additions to Kempferhausen's battalion. To
be serious, North, we shall run some risk of inundation. Llave you
seen the last London Magazine, how bitter they are on the poor Wil-
liam Meister ? -
North. Not I, i'faith—I see none of these concerns—not I. What
are they saying 3
Odoherty. Oh! abusing the Germans up-hill and down-dale, buzzing
like fiery myriads of sand flies. - ... } *
Worth. And stinging ? --
Odoherty. Not knowing, can't say. -
North. Well, I should have thought my friend Opium would have
kept them from this particular piece of nonsense—but that's true too,
the whole may be one of his quizzes. He was always fond of a prac-
tical joke, hang him. -
Odoherty. He says old Goethe is an idiot—this is pretty abuse,
surely. -
Nº. Ay, ay, about abuse as well as other things, 'tis a true
saying cnough that most people consider it as “no loss, that a friend
crêts.” } -
Odoherty. You would disapprove, I suppose, of the attack on De
Juincey in the John Bull Magazine ºf
AWorth. Disapprove —I utterly despised it, and so, no doubt, did he.
They say he is no scholar, because he has never published any verbal
criticisms on any Greek authorsſ—what stuff! then, I take it, the best
* In 1824 Thomas Carlyle was a young man, and if not a better, by all means a more intel-
higible writer than he has been for the last fifteen years. At one time, Carlyle could and did
write plain English—how beautiful, in its Saxon simplicity, is his Life of Schiller —-but he has
Germanized and spoiled his style, until it almost requires a glossary to turn it into English.
— e -
+ In Blackwood, for July, 1824, was a poetical epistle, by the renowned “Timothy Tickler,”
to the Editor of the John Bull Magazine, on an article in his first number. This article (not
named by Maga, though sufficiently indicated) professed to be a portion of the veritable Auto-
biography of Byron, which was burnt, and was called “My Wedding Night.” It appeared to
relate, in detail, every thing that occurred in the twenty-four hours immediately succeeding
that in which Byron was married. It had plenty of coarseness, and some to spare ; it went
into particulārs such as hitherto had been given only by Faublas; and it had, notwithstand-
ing, many phrases and some facts which evidently did not belong to a mere fabricator. Some
years aſter, I compared this “Wedding Night" with what I had all assurance of having been
transcribed from the actual MSS. of Byron, and was persnaded that the magazine writer must
have had the actual statement before him, or have had a perusal of it. The writer in Black-
•cood declared his conviction that it really was Byron's own writing, and said—
“But that you, sir, a wit, and a scholar like you,
Should not blush to produce what he blushed not to do—
Take your compliment, youngster—this doubles (almost)
The sorrow that rose when his honor was lost.”
Why the John Butt, Magazine should have been patted on the back by Maga, can only be
accounted for by the belief that Maginn was chief writer in it—as he was, at the same time, in
JBlackwood. Murray is said to have declared that “My Wedding Night” could only have
been supplied by Maginn. The Johm, Bull Magazine was dropped after the sixth or seventh
number.—M. *
In De Quincey's Literary Reminiscences (Boston edition, Vol. II.) is a chapter of 44 pages,
called “Libellous Attack by a London Journal,” which is a specimen of word-spinning and
BGatence-making, “full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.” De Quincey had been
DR. PARR. - 475
scholars in the world are such creatures as Dr. Parr—rubbish that I
honestly confess, I never used to think any sensible man would conde
scend to class much higher than a Petralogist or a-—
Odoherty. I’ll defy you to fill up that sentence—go on. -
North. Parr indeed! Persuade me that that goggling ass knows
any thing about the true spirit of Athenian antiquity That egre-
gious consumer of shag, a fit person to analyze the Soul of Sappho —
that turnip-headed buffoon in a cassock, able to follow the wit of Aris-
tophanes —no, no, sir—no tricks upon travellers. What has he done
What has he done º That is the question.
Odoherty. Why, all the world knows what he has done—he has
drunk a great deal of bad beer, smoked a great deal of bad tobacco,
uttered a great deal of bad jokes, and published, thank Heaven not
a great deal of dull prose, out-caricaturing the pomposity of Dr. John-
son's first and worst style, accompanied with some score or two of
notes in English, and Wotulae in Latin, of which it is entirely impos-
sible for any human creature to decide which is the most contempt-
ible—their strutting boldness of language, their blown-up inanity of
thought, or the vile self-satisfied grin of their abominable paedogical
republicanism—a disgusting old fellow, sir! -
North. Old / Is that an epithet of contempt, Mr. Ensign?
Odoherty. Beg pardon—a disgusting fellow
North. Thou hast said it. An excellent clergyman in his parish,
an excellent schoolmaster in his school, but in his character of a wit
and an author, one of the most genuine feather-beds of humbug that
ever filled up a corner in the world—all which, however, is no matter
of ours—wherefore pass we on. I would not have thought it worth
while to name his name, even to you, had it not been that I lately re-
marked sundry attempts to bolster up his justly battered reputation,
not in the writings of any of his own filthy party, for that would have
been quite right, but in one of D'Israeli's recent works—which of
them I at this moment forget—so help me, my memory, Morgan, even
my memory begins to
Odoherty. Stuff—stuff—stuff!! What's the use of what they call
a good memory ?
Worth. You will perhaps think morè of that, young gentleman,
when your hairs, like mine
dished up in the John Bull Magazine as one of the “ Humbugs of the Age,” and the article
had been republished in a newspaper in the provincial locality where his family were then
residing, he being in London, honorably using his pen for their and his own subsistence. The
chapter treats of nearly every topic except that which gave it a title—of Romish casuistry—
of Wordsworth’s imagery—of Paley's Moral Philosophy—of duelling—of the pain of being
libelled—of courts of honor—of pugilistic contests—of the Duke of Wellington—of other mat-
ters. But it never mentioned what the “libellous attack” was, nor did he once name the jour-
nal which made it. All we learn is that he was attacked in Some publication, of which he
bought a copy in Smithfield. This is so thoroughly De Quinceyish, (like Mrs. Nickleby bring- .
ing in persons and things quite independent of the matter on the tapis,) that of course I can.
Liot complain of his thus writing “an infinite deal of nothing.”—M.
476 NOCTES AMIBROSLANAE.
Odoherty. Pooh pooh! I've worn falsities these five years. But
what signifies your grand memory ! . Things really of importance to
any man's concerns, are by that man, remelubered—other things are
of no consequence. I, for my part, find it is always much less trou-
ble to fill up the details of any piece of business from the creation of
fancy, than by cudgelling Cne's brains for the minutiae of fact—in fact,
sir, I despise fact. - - *
North. Aha! my lad, very pretty talking all this But, as Cole.
ridge says in his Friend, we always think the least about what we
feel the most. In the heroic ages, they had not so many words as
we have now for expressing the different shades and shapes of per-
sonal beauty or personal valor; there was less talk about chivalry
among the Coeur-de-Lions than among a pack of dandy hussars;–and
from what lips does one hear so much about honor as a puppy
Whig's 7–But I'm weary of talking to you, Ensign. Here, draw
another cork. I desired our friend, the Ambrosian, to have him
touched with the ice—just touched. Ay, that's your sort. What a
satisfactory thing this is now ! . s
Odoherty. Sam, I, suppose”—ay, I thought so from the twist of
your lips. . . . -
North. Now, take your pen in your hand like a good diligent lad,
and touch me off a neat handy little article on this same Tour in
Germany.
Odoherty. Me! Bless you, I have not read one word of it.
North. Never heed—begin with a sounding paragraph about
things in general; at the close of each paragraph you shall have a
bumper. Yea, stick we to the old bargain. -
Odoherty. Pretty little pebbles of paragraphs we shall be having;
well, here goes! But to save time and trouble, tell me, since you
have read the book, what you really think of it—honestly, now, Kit.
North. Well, well—fill my glass again, boy. 'Tis an excellent little
book, I assure you, Sir Morgan. The author appears to have spent
some time at Jena, and after making himself well acquainted with the
language, to have travelled considerably over the north of Germany,
and a little in the south also. He has given, in what will probably
be the most amusing part of his book to common readers, a very
graphic account indeed of the mode of life prevalent among that ap-
parently queerest of all queer orders of beings, the German students.
He has entered into full and, ea facie, accurate details of their extra-
vagant, enthusiastic, absurd, overbearing, hobbletehoy existence, their
pride, their folly, their clubs, their duels, their whiskers, their tobacco-
pipes, their schnaps, their shirt-collars, and their enormous jack-boots.
All other bodies of students that I have seen or heard of, would ap-
* Mr. Samuel Anderson, then a wine-merchant in Edinburgh, afterwards, by favor of Lord
Brougham, Registrar of the Court of Chancery in London.-M.
PRUSSIA IN 1820–2. 477
pear to be but milk-and-water shadows of their academical absurdity
—and yet, strange to say, it appears to be by no means clear, that a
German university is not at this moment the place where the most
extensive and the most accurate learning may be acquired at the
cheapest rate. Sir, this affair seems to be made up of one bundle of
anomalies. You must, on reflection, read the whole of the chapters
he has devoted to its consideration, ere you review them.
Odoherty. If their way of thinking be either more queer or more
laudable than what we had to do with at old Trin. Coll. Dub., I shall
consider myself as a rump and dozen in my victim's debt.
North. As to that, not knowing, can’t say. But the really impor-
tant part of the book is its politics, and it was this that made me wish
you should do something for it in, Maga. Sir, we have been much
abused by the people who have written and spoken about Germany
for the last five or six years. * . .
Odoherty. As how % - . . . .
.North. Why, for example, we have been deaved with the hoarse
cry, that the King of Prussia has behaved in all manner of beastly
ways to his people. We have been told that he has promised to do
every thing for them, and that he has done nothing : and this sort of
thing has been repeated so often by all the regiment of bawlers, from
Brougham the Bold downwards, that honest people have really been
dinned into some sort of belief, that the thing must be so. But here
we have the facts—Sir Morgan Odoherty, here we have the plain facts
of the case ; and I assure you, I think the author of this book would
have deserved no slight commendation had his work consisted merely
of this one excellent exposé. He has shown, sir, in the most com-
plete and satisfactory manner, that in so far as it has been possible for
the government of Prussia to increase the political privileges of the
people of Prussia, the thing actually has been done.* . The king and
his ministers have reformed to a very great extent—but they have
reformed, like men of sense, wisdom and experience—not after the
fashion of your Bolivars, your Riegos, your Robespierres, your Pepes,
your Thistlewoods. Here is the rub.
Odoherty. A real defence of the Prussian government must be of
high importance at present. Whereabouts is this subject taken up 3
North. Give me the book—ay, here it is. I shall be happy to hear
it once again; so read aloud—begin where you see the mark of my
pencil. º -
Odoherty. Well, if it must be so—“The Prussian government is
usually decried” - - -
ess”
* This was Frederick-William III., father of the present King. The convulsions which
Shook the Prussian throne to its foundations, in 1848, may in some small degree be traced to
his refusal to grant those constitutional privileges which had long been promised to his people,
and which they were well fitted to exercise.—M. gº -
*
478 * NOCTES AMBROSLANAE.
Worth. That's the passage I mean.
Odoherty. And a pretty long one it, seems to be. .
North. No matter; I assure you, you will find Mr. Russell's prose
much more entertaining than my prosing. Get On.
Odoherty (reads).”
“The Prussian government is usually decried amongst us, as one of the most
intolerant and illiberal of Germany, attentive only to secure the implicit and un-
thinking obedience of its subjects, and therefore encouraging every thing which
may retain them in ignorance and degradation. Every Briton, from what he
has heard, must enter Prussia with this feeling; and he must blush for his
hastiness, when he runs over the long line of bold reforms, and liberal amelio-
rations, which were introduced into the whole frame of society and public
relations in Prussia, from the time when the late Chancellor Prince Hardenberg
was replaced, in 1810, at the head of the government. They began, in fact,
with the battle of Jena; that defeat was, in one sense, the Salvation of Prussia.
The degradation and helplessness into which it plunged the monarchy, while
they roused all thinking men to see that there must be something wrong in
existing relations, brought likewise the necessity of stupendous efforts to make
the resources of the diminished kingdom meet both its own expenditure, and
the contributions levied on it by the conqueror. A minister was wanted; for
domineering France would not allow Hardenberg, the head of the Anti-Gallican
party, and listened to only when it was too late to retain his office, and he
retired to Riga. Premez Monsieur Stein, said Napoleon to the king, c'est wn
homine d'esprit ; and Stein was made minister. In spirit, he was a minister
entirely suited to the times; but he wanted caution, and forgot that in politics,
even in changing for the better, some consideration must be paid to what for
centuries has been bad and universal. He was not merely bold, he was fear-
less; but he was thoroughly despotic in his character; having a good object
once in his eye, he rushed on to it, regardless of the mischief which he might
be doing in his haste, and tearing up and throwing down all that stood in his
way, with a vehemence which even the utility of his purpose did not always
justify.
“Stein was too honest a man long to retain the favor of France. An inter-
cepted letter informed the cabinet of St. Cloud, that he was governing for
Prussian, not for French purposes; and the king was requested to dismiss le
nommé Stein. He retired to Prague, and amused himself with reading lectures
on history to his daughters. His retirement was followed by a sort of inter-
regnum of ministers, who could contrive nothing except the cession of Silesia
to France, instead of paying the contributions. From necessity, Hardenberg
was recalled; and whoever will take the trouble of going over the principal
acts of his administration will acknowledge, not only that he was the ablest
minister Prussia has ever possessed, but likewise that few statesmen, in the
unostentatious path of internal improvement, have effected in so brief an inter-
val, so many weighty and beneficial changes—interrupted as he was by a war
of unexampled importance, which he began with caution, prosecuted with
energy, and terminated in triumph. He received Prussia stripped of half its
extent, its honors blighted, its finances ruined, its resources at once exhausted
-by foreign contributions, and depressed by ancient relations among the different
classes of society, which custom had consecrated, and selfishness was vehement
to defend. He has left it to his king, enlarged in extent, and restored to its
* See Tour in Germany, in 1820, 1821, 1822, (Edinburgh, Constable, 2 vols. 12mo,,) volume
Socond, p. 110, €t Seg.—C. N.
PRUSSIA UNIDER IIARDENIBERG. 479
fame; with a well-ordered system of finance, not more defective or extravagant
, r.
than the struggle for the redemption of the kingdom rendered necessary; and,
above all, he has left it freed from those restraints which bound up the capaci-
ties of its industry, and were the sources at once of personal degradation and
national poverty. Nor Ought it to be forgotten, that, while Hardenberg had
often to contend, in the course of these reforms, now with the jealousies of
town corporations, and now with the united influence and prejudices of the
aristocracy, he stood in the difficult station of a foreigner in the kingdom
which he governed, unsupported by family descent or hereditary influence.
His power rested on the personal confidence of the king in his talents aud
honesty, and the confidence which all of the people who ever thought on such
matters reposed in the general spirit of his policy. •
“It was on agriculture that Prussia had chiefly to rely, and the relations
between the peasantry who labored the soil and the proprietors, chiefly of the
mobility, who owned it, were of a most depressing nature. The most venturous
of all Hardenberg's measures was that by which he entirely new-modelled the
system, and did nothing less than create a new order of independent landed
proprietors. . The Erbunterthänigkeit, or hereditary subjection of the peasantry
to the proprietors of the estates on which they were born, had been already
abolished by Stein: next were removed the absurd restrictions which had so
long operated, with accuñulating force, to diminish the productiveness of laud,
by fettering the proprietor not merely in the disposal, but even in the mode ºf
cultivating his estate. Then came forth, in 1810, a royal edict, effecting, by a
single stroke of the pen, a greater and more decisive change than has resulted
from any modern legislative act, and one which a more popular form of goverº-
ment would scarcely have ventured. It enacted, that all the peasantry of the
kingdom should in future be free, hereditary proprietors of the lands which
hitherto they had held only as hereditary tenants, on condition that they gave
up to the landlord a fixed proportion of them. The peasantry formed two
classes. The first consisted of those who enjoyed what may be termed a hered-
itary lease, that is, who held lands to which the landlord was bound, on the
death of the tenant in possession, to admit his successor, or, at least; some near
relation. The right of the landlord was thus greatly inferior to that of un-
limited property; he had not his choice of a tenant; the lease was likely to
remain in the same family as long as the estate in his own; and, in general, he
had not the power of increasing the rent, which had been originally fixed,
centuries, perhaps, before, whether it consisted in produce or services. These
peasants, on giving up one-third of their farms to the landlord, became un-
limited proprietors of the remainder. The second class consisted of peasants
whose title endured only for life, or a fixed term of years. In this case, the
landlord was not bound to continue the lease, on its termination, to the former
tenant, or any of his descendants; but still he was far from being unlimited
proprietor; he was bound to replace the former tenant with a person of the
same rank; he was prohibited to take the lands into his own possession, or
cultivate them with his own capital.” . His right, however, was clearly more
absolute than in the former case, and it is difficult to see what claim the tenant .
could set up beyond the endurance of his lease. That such restrictions rendered
* This regulation has sometimes been ascribed to anxiety to keep up the numbers of the
peasantry to fill the armies; a more probable explanation is to be found in the exemption of
the nobility, that is, generally speaking, the landholders, from taxation. They established
this exemption in favor of the property which they retained in their own hands, by abandop-
ing to taxation the lands which they had given out to the peasantry Bunde)"nhöfe. It thus be-
culne the interest of the Crown to prevent any diminution of the Bauernhöfe, the only taxable
ſand in the country. To abolish this restriction, was one of Stein's first measures, in 1808:
for he was determined to make all land taxable, without exception.—R.
*
480 NOCTES AMBROSLAN.E.
the estate less valuable to the proprietor, may have been a very good reason
for abolishing them entirely, but seems to be no reason at all for taking a por-
tion of the lands from him who * every right to them, to give it to him
who had no right whatever, but thât of possession under his temporary lease.
But this class of peasants, too, (and they are supposed to have been by far the
more numerous,) on giving up one-half of their farms, became absolute pro-
prietors of the remainder. The half thus taken from the landlords appears
just to have been a price exacted from them for the more valuable enjoyment
of the other;-as if the government had said to them, give up to our disposal
a certain portion of your estates, and we shall so sweep away those old restric-
tions which render them unproductive to you, that what remains.will speedily
be as valuable as the whole was before. . . -
“It cannot be denied, therefore, that this famous edict, especially in the
latter of the two cases, was a very stern interference with the rights of private
property; nor is it wonderful that those against whom it was directed should
have sternly opposed it ; but the minister was sterner still. He found the
finances ruined, and the treasury attacked by demands, which required that
the treasury should be filled ; he saw the imperious necessity of rendering
agriculture more productive; and though it may be doubted, whether the
same end might not have been gained by new-modelling the relations between
the parties, as landlord and tenant, instead of stripping the former to create a
new race of proprietors, there is no doubt at all as to the success of the mea-
sure, in increasing the productiveness of the soil. Even those of the aristoc-
racy, who have waged war most bitterly against Eſardenberg's reforms, allow
that, in regard to agriculture, this law has produced incredible good. ‘It
must be confessed,’ says one of them, ‘that, in ten years, it has carried us for-
ward a whole century;’—the best of all experimental proofs how injurious the
old relations between the proprietors and the laborers of the soil must have
been to the prosperity of the country. - -
“The direct operation of this measure necessarily was to make a great deal
of property change hands; but this effect was farther increased by its indireet
operation. The law appeared at a moment when the greater part of the es-
tates of the nobility were burdened with debts, and the proprietors were now
deprived of their reñtals. They indeed had land thrown back upon their
hands; but this only multiplied their embarrassments. In the hands of their
boors, the soil had been productive to them; now that it was in their own,
they had neither skill nor capital to carry on its profitable cultivation, and
new loans only added to the interest which already threatened to consume its
probable fruits. The consequence of all this was, that besides the portion of
land secured in free property to the peasantry, much of the remainder came
into the market, and the purchasers were generally persons who had acquired
wealth by trade or manufactures.” The sale of the royal domains, to supply
* It will scarcely be believed that, up to 1807, a person not noble could only by accident
find a piece of land, whatever number of estates might be in the market, which he would be
allowed to purchase. By far the greater portion of the landed property consisted of estates-
noble ; and if the proprietor brought his estate into the market, only a nobleman could pur-
chase it. The merchant, the banker, the artist, the manufacturer, every citizen, in short, who
had acquired wealth by industry and skill, lay under an absolute prohibition against in west-
ing it in land, unless he previously purchased a patent of nobility, or stumbled on one of
those ſew spots which, in former days, had escaped the hands of a noble proprietor, small in
number, and seldom in the market. Even I'rederick the Great lent his aid to perpetuate this
preposterous system, in the idea that he would best compel the investment of capital in trade
and manufactures, by making it impossible to dispose of it, when realized, in agricultural pur-
suits, a plan which led to the depression of agriculture, the staple of the kingdon, as cer.
tainly as it was directed in vain to cherish artificially a manufacturing activity, on which the
, country is much less dependent. This could not possibly last ; the noble proprietors were
regularly becoming poorer, and the same course of events which compelled so many of theun
PRUSSIAN DIVISION OF PROPERTY. 48]
the necessities of the state, operated powerfully in the same way. These 30-
mains always formed a most important item in the revenue of a German
prince, and one which was totally independent of any control, even that of
the imperfectly constituted estates. In Prussia, they were estimated to yield.
annually nearly half a million sterling, even in the hands of farmers, and,
under the changes which have so rapidly augmented the value of the soil all
over the kingdom, they would soon have become much more profitable. But,
while compelled to tax severely the property of his subjects, the king refused
to spare his own; and, in 1811, an edict was issued, authorizing the sale of the
royal domains at twenty-five years' purchase of the estimated rental. These,
too, passed into the hands of the purchasers not connected with the aristoe-
racy; for the aristocracy, so far from being able to purchase the estates of
others, were selling their own estates to pay their debts. The party opposed
to Hardenberg has not ceased to lament that the Crown should thus have been
shorn of its native and independent glories; ‘for it ought to be powerful,” say
they, ‘by its own revenues and possessions.' Our principles of government
teach us a different doctrine. . . . -
“Beneficial as the economical effects of this division of property may have
been, its political results are no less important. . lt has iº a new class of
citizens, and these the most valuable of all citizens; every trace, not merely of
subjection, but of restraint, has been removed from the industrious, but poor
and degraded peasants, and they have at once been converted into independ-
ent landed proprietors, resembling much the petits proprietaires created by
the French Revolution. In Pomerania, for example, the estates of the nobility
were calculated to contain 260 square miles; those of free proprietors, not .
noble, only five miles. Of the former, about 100 were Bauernhofe, in the
hands of the peasantry; and, by the operation of the law, 60 of these would
still remain the property of the boors who cultivated them. Thus there is now
twelve times as much landed property, in this province, belonging to persons
who are not noble, as there was before the appearance of this edict. The race
of boors is not extinct; for the provisions of the law are not imperative, if
both parties prefer remaining in their old relation; but this is a preference
which, on the part of the peasant at least, is not to be expected. Care has
been taken that no new relations of the same kind shall be formed. A pro-
º might settle his agricultural servants upon his grounds, giving them
and, instead of wages, and binding them to hereditary service : this would
just have been the seed of a new race of boors to toil under the old personal
services. Probably the thing had been attempted; for, in 1811, an edict ap-
peared, which, while it allows the proprietor to pay his servants in whole or
in part with the use of land, limits the duration of such a contract to twelve
years. It prohibits him absolutely from giving these families land heritably,
on condition of service; if a single acre is to be given in property, it must
either be a proper sale, or a fixed rent must be stipulated in money or produce.
Hardenberg was resolved that his measure should be complete. .
“When to the peasants who have thus become landholders, is added the
numerous class of citizens, not noble, who have come into the possession of
landed property by the sales of the royal domains, and the necessities of so
many of the higher orders, it is not difficult to foresee the political conse-
quences of such a body of citizens gradually rising in wealth and respectabil.
to sell, disabled them generally from buying; destitute of capital to cultivate their own estates,
it was not aulong them that the purchasers of the royal domains were to be looked for. In
1807, Stein swept away the whole mass of absurd restrictions, and every man was made capa-
ble of holding every kind of property.—R. - . . . . ->
WOL. I.-33
482 *~, NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
ity, and dignified by that feeling of self-esteem which usually acet mpanies
the independent possession of property. Unless their progress be impeded by
extraneous circumstances, they must rise to political influence, because they
will gradually become fitting depositaries of it. It would scarcely be too
much to say, that the Prussian government must have contemplated such a
change; for its administration, during the last fourteen years, has been direct-
ed to produce a state of society in which pure despotism cannot long exist
but by force; it has been throwing its subjects into those relations which, by
the very course of nature, give the people political influence by making them
fit to exercise it. Is there any thing in political history that should make us
wish to see them in possession of it sooner ? Is it not better that liberty
should rise spontaneously from a soil prepared for its reception, and in which
its seeds have gradually been maturing in the natural progress of society,
than violently to plant it on stony and thorny ground, where no congenial
qualities give strength to its roots, and beauty to its blossoms, where it does
not throw wide its perennial shadow, under which the people may find hap-
piness and refuge, but springs up, like the gourd of Jonah, in the night of
popular tumult, and unnatural and extravagant innovation, to perish in the
morning beneath the heat of reckless faction, or the consuming fire of foreign
interference # - -
“This great, and somewhat violent measure, of creating in the state a new
order of citizens possessing independent property, was preceded and followed
by a crowd of other reforms, all tending to the same end, to let loose the ener-
gies of all classes of the people, and bring them into a more comfortable social
relation to each other. While the peasantry were not only set free, but con
verted into landholders, the aristocracy were sternly deprived of that exemp-
tion from taxation which, more than any thing else, renders them odious in
every country where it has been allowed to remain. They struggled hard to
keep their estates beyond the reach of the land tax, but the king and Harden-
berg were inflexible : “We hope,’ says the royal edict, ‘that those to whom
this méasure will apply will reflect, that, in future, they will be free from the
reproach of escaping public burdens at the expense of their fellow-subjects.
They will likewise reflect, that the tax to be laid upon them will not equal the
expense to which they would be put, if called on to perform the military ser-
vices which originally burdened their estates.” . The whole financial system
acquired an uniformity and equality of distribution, which simplified it to all,
and diminished the expense of collection, while it increased the revenue.
Above all, that anomalous system, under which every province had its own
budget, and its peculiar taxes, was destroyed, and Hardenberg, after much
opposition, carried through one uniform and universal system for the whole
monarchy. This enabled him to get rid of another monstrous evil. Under
the miserable system of financial separation, every province and every town
was surrounded with custom-houses, taxing and watching the productions of
its neighbors, as if they came from foreign countries, and discouraging all in.
ternal communication, The whole was swept away. At the same time, the
national expenditure in its various departments, the ways and means, the state
of the public debt, and the funds for meeting it, were given forth with a pub.
licity which produced confidence in Prussia, and alarm, as setting a bai ex-
ample, in some less prudent cabinets. Those amongst ourselves who clamor
most loudly against the misconduct of the Prussian government, will allow,
that the secularization and sale of the church lands was a liberal and patriotic
measure; those who more wisely think, that an arbitrary attack on any spe-
cies of property endangers the security of all property, will lament that the
public necessities should have rendered it advisable. The servitudes of thirl-
THE GEWERBSTEUER. 483
age,” of brewing beer, and distilling spirituous liquors, existed in their most
oppressive form, discouraging agriculture, and fostering the ruinous spirit of
monopoly. They were abolished with so unsparing a hand, that, though in-
demnification was not absolutely refused, the forms and modes of proof ºf loss
sustained to found a claim to it were of such a nature, as to render it difficult
to be procured, and trifling when made good. This was too unsparing. S
“In the towns.there was much less to be done; it was only mecessary to
release their arts and manufactures from old restraints, and rouse their citizens
to an interest in the public weal. Hardenberg attempted the first by a mea-
sure on which more popular governments have not yet been bold enough to
venture, however strongly it has been recommended by political economists;
he struck down at one blow all guildries and corporations,—not those larger
forms, which include all the citizens of a town, and constitute a borough, but
those subordinate forms which regard particular classes and professions. But,
whether it was from views of finance, or that he found himself compelled, by
opposing interests, to yield something to the old principle, that the public is
totally unqualified to judge who serves them well and who serves them badly,
but must have some person to make the discovery for them, the chancellor
seems to have lost his way in this measure. He left every man at liberty to
follow every profession, free from the fetters of an incorporated body; but he
converted the government into one huge, universal corporation, and allowed
no man to pursue any profession without annually procuring and paying for
the permission of the state. The Gewerbsteuer, introduced in 1810, is a yearly
tax on every man who follows a profession, on account of that profession; it is
like our ale and pedlar licenses, but it is universal. So far, it is only finaucial;
but the license by no means follows as a matter of course, and here reappears
the incorporation spirit; every member of those professions, which are held to
concern more nearly the public weal, must produce a certificate of the provin-
cial government, that he is duly qualified to exercise it. Doctors and chimney-
Sweeps, midwives and ship-builders, notaries-public and mill-wrights, book-
Sellers and makers of water-pipes, with a host of other equally homogeneous
professionalists, must be guaranteed by that department of the government
within whose sphere their occupation is most naturally included, as perfectly
fit to execute their professions. The system is cumbersome, but it wants, at
least, the exclusive esprit de corps of corporations.
“The other and more important object, that of rousing the citizens to an
active concern in the affairs of their own community, had already been accom-
plished by Stein in his Stadteordnung, or constitution for the cities, which was
completed and promulgated in 1808. He did not go the length of annual par-
liaments and universal suffrage, for the magistracy is elected only every third
year; but the elective franchise is so widely distributed among all resident
householders, of a certain income or rental, that none are excluded whom it
would be proper to admit. Nay, complaints are sometimes heard from persons
of the upper ranks, that it compels them to give up paying any attention to
civic affairs, because it places too direct and overwhelming an influence in the
hands of the lower orders. There can be no doubt, however, of the good which
it has done, were there nothing else than the publicity which it has bestowed
on the management and proceedings of public and charitable institutions. The
first merchant of Breslau, the second city of the monarchy, told me it was
impossible to conceive what a change it had effected for the better, and what
interest every citizen now took in the public affairs of the corporation, in hos.
* Let those who accuse the Prussian government of disregarding the improvement of its
subjects reſlect, that it was only in 1799, that the British Parliament thought of contriving
means to rescue the agriculture of Scotland from this servitude.—R.
484 NOCTES AMBROSIAN E.
pitals and schools, in roads, and bridges, and pavements, and water-pipeg.
‘Nay,’ added he, ‘by our gº we have even compelled the Catholie
charities to print accounts of their funds and proceedings; for, without doing
so, they ...ii not have stood against us in public confidence.’ This is the
true view of the matter; nor is there any danger that the democratic principle
will be extravagant in the subordinate communities, while the despotic prin-
ciple is so strong in the general government of the country. -
“Such has been the general spirit of the administration of Prussia, since the .
battle of Jena; and it would be gross injustice to her government to deny, that
in all this it has acted with an honest and effective view to the public welfare,
and has betrayed any thing but a selfish or prejudiced attachment to old and
mischievous relations; that was no part of the character of either Stein or
Hardenberg. ... The government is in its forms a despotic one; it wields a cen-
sorship; it is armed with a strict and stern police; and, in one sense, the prop-
erty of the subject is at its disposal, in so far as the portion of his goods which
he shall contribute to the public service depends only on the pleasure of the
government; but let not our just hatred of despotic forms make us blind to
substantial good. Under these forms, the government, not more from policy
than inclination, has been guilty of no oppressions which might place it in
dangerous opposition to public feeling or opinion; while it has crowded its
administration with a rapid succession of ameliorations, which gave new life .
to all the weightiest interests of the state, and brought all classes of society
into a more natural array, and which only ignorance or prejudice can deny to
have been equally beneficial to the people, and honorable 9 the ºxecutive I
greatly doubt, whether there be any example of a populafºgovéinment doing
so much real good in so short a time, and with so much continued effect. When
a minister roots out abuses which impede individual prosperity, gives free
course to the arts and industry of the country, throws open to the degraded
the paths of comfort and respectability, and brings down the artificial privi-
leges of the high to that elevation which nature demands in every stable forum
of political society; while he thus prepares a people for a popular government,
while, at the same time, by this very preparation, he creates the Šafest and
most unfailing means of obtaining it, he stands much higher as a statesman
and philosopher, than the minister who rests satisfied with the easy praise, and
the more than doubtful experiment, of giving popular forms to a people which
knows neither how to value nor exercise them. The statesmen of this age,
more than of any other, ought to have learned the folly of casting the political
pearl before swine. . . . - • - - e
“This is no defence of despotism; it is a statement of the good which the
Trussian government has done, and an elucidation of the general spirit of
improvement in which it has acted; but it furnishes no reason for retaining
the despotic forms under which this good has been wrought out, so soon as the
public wishes require, and the public mind is, in some measure, capable of
using more liberal and manly instruments. On the other hand, it is most
unfair (and yet, in relation to Prussia, nothing is more common) to forget what
a monarch has done for his subjects, in our hatred of the fact that he has done
it without their assistance, and to set down his government as a mere ignorant,
selfish, and debasing tyranny. The despotism of Prussia stands as far above
that of Naples, or Austria, or Spain, as our own constitution stands above the
mutilated Charter of France. The people are personally attached to their
king; and, in regard to his government, they feel and recognise the real good
which has been done infinitely more strongly than the want of the unknown
good which is yet to be attained, and which alone can secure the continuance
of all the rest. They have not enjoyed.the political experience and education
#
PRUSSIAN POLITICS. 485
which would. teach them the value of this security, and even the better in-
formed classes tremble at the thought of exacting it by popular clamor, because
they see it must speedily come of itself. From the Elbe to the Oder, I found
nothing to make me believe in the existence of that general discontent and
ripeness for revolt which have been broadly asserted, more than once, to exist
in Prussia; and it would be wonderful to find a people to whom all political
thinking is new, who knew nothing of political theories, and suffer no personal
oppressions, ready to raise the shout of insurrection. -
“To this it is commonly added, that the general discontent is only forcibly
kept down by the large standing army. The more I understood the constitu-
tion of the Prussian army, the more difficult I found it to admit this constantly-
repeated assertion. Not only is every male of a certain age, a regularly trained
soldier, the most difficult of all populations to be crushed by force, when they
are once warmed by a popular cause, but by far the greater part of this sup-
posed despotic instrument consists of men taken, and tº: only for a time, from
the body of citizens against whom they are to be employed. ' There is always,
indeed, a very large army on foot, and the foreign relations of Prussia render
the maintenance of a large force indispensable; but it is, in fact, a militia.
‘We have no standing army at all, properly speaking,” said an officer of the
Guards to me; ‘what may be called our standing army is, in reality, nothing
but a school, in which all citizens, without exception, between twenty and
thirty-two years of age, are trained to be soldiers. Three years are reckoned
sufficient for this purpose. A third of our army is annually changed. Those
who have served their three years are sent home, form what is called the War
Reserve, and, in case of war, are first called out. Their place is supplied by
a new draught from the young men who have not yet been out ; and so it goes
on.” Surely a military force so constituted is not that to which a despot can
well trust for enchaining a struggling people; if popular feeling were against
him, these men would bring it along with them to his very standard. I can-
not help thinking, that, if it were once come to this between the people and
government of Prussia, it would not be in his own bayonets, but in those of
Russia and Austria, that Frederick William would have to seek a trustworthy
all v.
Y It will never do to judge of the general feeling of a country from the mad
tenets of academical youths, (who are despised by none more heartily than by
the people themselves,) or from the still less pardonable excesses of hot-headed
teachers. When I was in Berlin, a plot, headed by a schoolmaster, was de-
tected in Stargard, in Pomerania; the object was, to proclaim the Spanish Con-
stitution, and assassinate the ministers and other persons of weight who might
naturally be supposed to be hostile to the innovation. This no more proves
the Prussian people to be ripe for revolt, than it proves them to be ready to
be murderers.
“In judging of the political feelings of a country, a Briton is apt to be de-
ceived by his own political habits still more than by partial observation. The
political exercises and education which we enjoy, are riches which we may
well wish to see in the possession of others; but they lead us into a thousand
fallacies, when they raake us conclude, from what our feelings would be under
any given institutions, that another people, whose very prejudices go with its
government, must be just as ready to present a claim of right, bring the king
to trial, or declare the throne to be vacant. Prussia is by no means the only
country of Germany where the people know nothing of that love of political
thinking and information which pervade ourselves. But Prussia is in the true
course to arrive at it; the most useful classes of her society are gradually rising
in wealth, respectability, and importance; and, ere long, her government, in
486 NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.
the natural course of things, must admit popular elements. If foreign influ-
enee, and above all, that 6f Russia, whose leaden weight is said to hang too
heavily already on the cabinet of Berlin, do not interfere, I shall be deceived if
the change be either demanded with outrageous clamor from below, or refused
with unwise and selfish obstinacy from above. No people of the continent
better deserve political liberty than the Germans; for none will wait for it
more patiently, receive it more thankfully, or use it with greater moderation.”
North. Thank ye, Odoherty—that's a good boy.
Odoherty. May I take the book home with me? I must certainly
read the rest of it. -
North. By all means. I assure you you will find the writing through-
out clever, the facts interesting, and the tone excellent. Ring, Morgan;
I must have my chair.
* * * * * * * .
END OF WOL. L.
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