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In July^ will he Published^ in Five Volumes^ Price $5. 

THE NOCTES AMBROSIANJl; 

With Portraits of Wilson, Lockhart, Maginn, Hogg, and fac-similes. 
EDITED, WITH MEMOIRS, NOTES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS, 

BY DR. SHELTON MACKENZIE, 

Editor of Shbil's " Sketchss of ihk Irish Bar." 



The Noctes were commenced in 1822, and closed in 1835. Even in England, the lapse 
of years has obscured many circumstances which were well known thirty years ago. 

Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, already favorably known as editor of Shell's ''Sketches of 
the Irish Bar," has undertaken the editorship of The Noctes Ambrosian^, for which a 
familiar acquaintance, during the last twenty-five years, with the persons, events, and 
places therein noticed may be assumed to qualify him.. He has been on terms of intimacy 
with most of the eminent political and literary characters treated of in the " Noctes," 
and his annotation of the text will include personal recollections of them. 

Besides this. Dr. Mackenzie has written for this edition a "History of the Rise and Pro- 
gress of Blackwood's Magazine," with original memoirs of the principal accredited authors 
of the "Noctes," via: — Professor Wilson, The Ettrick Shepherd, J. G. Lockhart, and 
Dr. Maginn. 

He will also give the celebrated " Chaldee Mannscript," published in 1817, instantly 
suppressed, and so scarce that the only copy which the editor has ever seen is that from 
which he makes the present reprint. There will also be given the three articles, entitled 
" Christopher in the Tent,'^ (in August and September, 1819), never before printed, in 
any shape, in this country. The interlocutors in " The Tent," include the greater number 
of those afterwards introduced in the " Noctes." 

The " Metricum Symphosium Ambrosianum," — an addendum to No. III. of " Ths 
Noctes," (and which notices every living author of note, in the year 1822), will be in- 
corporated in this edition. This has never before been reprinted here. 



Nearly Ready^ in Two Volumes. 

THE ODOHERTY PAPERS, 

forming the first portion of the miscellaneous writings of the late 

DR. MAGINN. 

WITH AN ORIGINAL MEMOIR AND COPIOUS NOTES, BT 

DR. SHELTON MACKENZIE. 



For more than a quarter of a century, the most remarkable magazine writer of his 
time, was the late William Maginn, LL.D., well-known as the Sir Morgan Odoherty of 
Blackwood^s Magazine^ and as the principal contributor, for many years, to Fraser''s 
and other periodicals. The combined learning, wit, eloquence, eccentricity, and humor 
of Maginn, had obtained for him, long before his dea.th, (in 1843), the title of Thb 
Modern Rabelais. His magazine articles possess extraordinary merit. He had the 
art of putting a vast quantity of animal spirits upon paper, but his graver articles— which 
contain sound and serious principles of criticism — are earnest and well-reasoned. 

The collection now in hand will contain his Facetiae (in a variety of languages). Trans- 
lations, Travesties, and Original Poetry, also his prose Tales, which are eminently beauti- 
ful , the best of his critical articles, (including his celebrated Shakspeare Papers), and 
his Homeric Ballads. The periodicals in which he wrote have been ransacked, from 
" Blackwood" to '• Punch," and the result will be a series of great interest. 

Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, who has undertaken the editorship of these writings of his 
distinguished countryman, will spare neither labor nor attention in the work. The 
first volume will contain an original Memoir of Dr. Maginn, written by Dr. Mackenzie, 
and a characteristic Portrait, with fac-simile. 

Published by J, S. REDFIELD, 
110 cfe 112 Nassau-street, New York. 



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THE BEITISH QUAETEELIES 

AND 

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. 



LEONARD SCOTT & CO., New York, continue to Re-pnblisli the follow- 
ing British Periodicals, viz., 

1. THE LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW (Conservative> 

2. THE EDINBURGH REVIEW (Whig). 

3. THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW (Free Church). 

4. THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW (Liberal). 

6. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE (Tort). 

The present critical state of European affairs renders these publications unusually interest- 
ing. They occupy a middle ground between the hastily written news-items, crude specula- 
tions, and flying rumors of the daily Journal, and the ponderous Tome of the future histo- 
rian, written after the living interest and excitement of the great political events of the 
time shall have passed away. It is to these Periodicals that readers must look for the only 
really intelligible and reliable history of current events, and as such, in addition to their 
well-established literary, scientific, and theological character, we urge them upon the consi- 
deration of the reading public. 

Arrangements are now made for the receipt of early sheets from the British Publishers, 
by which we shall be able to place all our Reprints in the hands of subscribers, about as soon 
as they can be furnished with the foreign copies. Although this involves a very large outlay 
on our part, we shall continue to furnish the Periodicals at the same low rates as heretofore, 
viz. :— ^ 

Per annum. 

For any one of the four Reviews $3 00 

For any two of the four Reviews 5 00 

For any three of the four Reviews , 7 00 

For all four of the Reviews 8 00 

For Blackwood's Magazine 3 00 

For Blackwood and three Reviews 9 00 

For Blackwood and the four Reviews 10 00 

Payments to be made in all cases in advance. Money current in the State where issued 
will be received at par. 

CLUBBINa. 

A discount of twenty-five per cent, from the above prices will be allowed to Clubs ordering 
four or more copies of any one or more of the above works. Thus: Four copies of Black- 
wood, or of one Review, will be sent to one address for $9 ; four copies of the four Reviews 
and Blackwood for *30 ; and so on. 

POSTAOE. 

In all the principal Cities and Towns, these works will be delivered, through Agents, freb 

OF POSTAGE. When sent by mail, the Postage to any part of the United States will be but 

TWBNTY-FOUR CENTS a year for " Blackwood," and but twelve cents a year for each of the 

Reviews. 

Remittances and communications should always be addressed, post-paid, to the Publishers, 

LEONARD SCOTT & CO., 

54 Gold Street, Nmo York. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 

" These republications bring to us the very cream of literature. They contain a mass of 
information, gathered with great labor and sifted by some of the most learned and brilhant 
pens of the fige."— Memphis Tennessee Appeal 

"'Blackwood's Magazine.' In classic literature, history, travels, antiquities, biography, 
poetry, criticism, fiction, philosophy, reviews, &c., it stands, and ever has stood, without a 
jfskra.\\e\."— Philadelphia Banner. 

" We have received the American reprint of this sterling old Magazine— the best, take it 
all in all, which is known in our language. It contains more of the solid and instructive, 
mingled with the amusing and agreeable, than is seen in any other periodical of the day.' — 
Portland (Maine) Advertiser. , „ 

*' We always look forward with impatience for the appearance of old Ehonj."—Gazetteert 
"Woodstock G W, 

" Let every one* who wishes to partake of, and encourage the very best literature, sub- 
scribe for Blackwood without delay."— 6^a7< ((7. W.) Reporter. 



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NOCTES AMBROSIANJE 



BY THE LATE 

JOHN WILSON 

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, EDITOR 

OP Blackwood's magazine, author of "the isle of palms," etc. 



WM. MAGINN, LL.D. J. G. LOCKHART, JAJVIES HOGG, &c. 



WITH 

MEMOIRS AND NOTES 
By R. SHELTON MACKENZIE, D. C. L. 

EDITOR OF SHEIL's "SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR" 



Vol. I 

AUGUST, 1819— AUG. 1824 




REDFIELD 

110 AND 112 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 

1854. 

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, 

By J. S. REDFIELD, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Southern 

District of New York. 



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EDITOR'S PEEFACE. 



Additional interest is given, by the recent death of Professor Wilson, 
to the present work. A complete edition of the Noctes Ambrosian^ (with 
notes and illustrations, necessary to a true understanding of the allusions with 
which the work is crowded, and the personal satire it contains) cannot be 
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. 

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 
fac-simile 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 yeai-s antecedent to the fii-st 
of The Noctes, (which commenced in March, 1822, and closed in February, 
1835,) there appeared a series of articles entitled " Christopher 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 



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IT EDITOR 8 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 
and 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 hand. 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. 

MORAL. 

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 
such " ruin," with the exemplary patience of martyrs. 



R. S. M. 



112 Nassau Street, New-York, July 25, 1854 



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HISTORY 

OF 

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. 

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 Hfe, 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 regarded 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 
large stock, 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- 



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VI HISTOKY 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 apphed himself to 
the disposal of general literature and the business of a popular publisher. In 
April, 1817, he brought out No. 1 of Blackwood'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 
Edinburgh 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 France, 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 
event has proved) wiser opinions. They determined to oppose the Edinburgh 
Review — whose circulation was 9,000 a number at this time, with the influ- 
ence 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 Giffbrd 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. AYhen 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, 



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Vll 

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." 

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 only 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 deformed 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 Henry Mackenzie and others speedily came into 
it, as contributors, was not what the times required — nor Mr. Blackwood. He 



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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 hst 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 nature 
and largely improved by education. There was Robert Pierce Gillies, (after- 
wards the Kempferhausen 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. 

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 sneer at the idea. His own ac- 
count, published in each of his Jive 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, nay 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 



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HISTORY OF Blackwood's magazine. ix 

was to give a " sly history of the transaction, [Pringle's quarrel ^nth 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, astonislunent, wrath and 
hatred which greeted the seventh number of Blackwood, containing the 
Chaldee Manuscript. There was a wild outcry, all through Edinburgh, before 
the Mao'azine had been one hour published. Not alone 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 tictually issued only two hundred numbers of the Magazine. Every other 
copy that went out, was miiius 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 SLJeu 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 personalities. 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 orig- 
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. YII., 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, 
Bome weeks before I had determined to obtain ownership of the valuable series. — M, 



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X HISTORY 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. 

Soon after the publication of the Chaldee Manuscript, Wilson, Locklmrt, 
GiUies and Hogg entered into very intimate relations with Blackwood. This 
hst 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, llie 
following year witnessed the adhesion of Dr. Maginn, afterwards known, in 
Blackwood, as Morgan Odoherty. John Gait, 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 personce 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. Peler 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 neit Blackwood there was a 
further and fuller review. The result was that Lockhart was induced to com- 
plete " Peter's Letters," which Blackwood pubhshed, (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. 

Among the early contributors, in prose or verse, were "Sir Thomas Dick 



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HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD S MAGAZINE. XI 

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 ; Gait, 
the Scottish novelist ; the late William Gosnell, of Cork, author of " Daniel 
O'Rourke ;" J. J. Callanan, and J. D. Murphy, also natives 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 ;" Richard B. Peake, 
the dramatist, 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 fevv 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 Curiosities 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 



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Xll 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 
Ballautyne, (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 tliree years before 
the actual commencement of the Noctes Ambrosianag, 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 Tent, 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 claun 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 Teut," my reply is the very suflfi- 
cient one that, up to this time, the name had not been invented. The conductor 
of Blackwood had Idtherto been represented as a sort of "stat nominis 



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HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD S MAGAZINE. Xll] 

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 IS^orth, 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 w^onderful 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, wiU bring th-e 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 
onlj^ 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 E2 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 ^N'octes, immortal North 
was born in December, 1755, which would make him 64, in The Tent ; 67, 
when the Noctes commenced ; and 80, when they were concluded. Of course, 
then, in June, 1849, when the Dies Boreales were commenced, North must 
have been 94, and must have reached the ripe age of 97, when the last was 
penned, in September, 1852.* 

The first of the Noctes Ambrosianae 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, 

* Vide the article in Blachwood, for May, 1864, which gives this as the date of Wilson's last 
contribution . — M. 



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XIV 

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. lY., (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. YI. It was written by 
Maginn, and runs as follows : 

XPH A'EN SYMnOSm KYAIKi2N nEPINI220MENAi2N 
HAEA Ki2TIAA0NTA KAGHMENON OINOnOTAZEIN. 

Phoc. ap. Ath. 

\^This is a distich hy wise old PhocylideSy 

An ancient icho wrote crabbed Greek in no silly days ; 

Meaning, " 'Tis right for good winebibbtng people" 

Not to let the jug pace rouxd the board like a cripple ; 

But gaily to chat while discussing their tipple." 

An excellent rule of the hearty old cock 'tis — 

And a very fit motto to put to our I^octes.'\ 

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- 
nition and appreciation. Nor is this wonderful, when it is considered that for 
one reader of Blackivood'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 Ihe water, no such reasons for delay existed, and the repub- 



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HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD S MAGAZINE. XV 

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 omission, 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 
pecuhar mode of personifying things (which he largely did, by the abundant 
use of capital letters in nouns) was altered, and wherever a word commenced 
Tvith 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 w^ords commence with a particular de- 
scription* of letter, (as AVilson 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. Gait 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 Gait himself. There, Allan Cunningham gave " prose by a poet," 
in the adventures of Mark Macrobin, the Cameronian. There, De Quincey 



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Xvf HISTORY OF BLACKWOOd's MAGAZINE. 

poured out his subtlety, which, were it less diffuse, would have been more 
valuable. There, Coleridge, a greatly superior Vnind, occasionally laid his 
thoughts before the public. And there, a star among them, Mrs. Hemans 
occasionally occupied a page or two with some 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 Canning — 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 resisting 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 Noctes. 

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 nautical 
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'^lasgow doctor, was allowed to make his eccentric but often dull 
appearance as "The Modern Pythagorean." Ifigoldsby (our genial fi-iend 
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 ^schylus. There was William Hay, not translating, but actually 
transfusing the Greek Anthology into English poetry. There, Walter Savage 
Landor spoke out, as familiar with the illustrious of past centuries, in his 



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XVll 

" 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 ekgant 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 w^as 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 
dearer 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 researchfiil Life of Richard the Lion- 
hearted, in Murray's Family Library. He became a liberal contributor, in 
prose 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 place in the Magazine. Under him, old contributors 
became more industrious ; — what Blackwood is there now, without an article 

* The lawyers, in Edinburgh, between the actual counsellors, who plead, and the mere attor- 
neys, are Writers to the Signet. — M. 



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HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD 8 MAGAZINE. 



from Alison, the historian ? Aytoun's own force has been fiirther 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 wljich 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. 



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 : 

TRANSLATIOi^ 

FROM AX 

ANCIENT CHALDEE MANUSCRIPT. 

[Tlie 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, ^^o. 
63, 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. 

AND 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 to- 
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. 



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THE CHALDEE MANUSCEIPT. 



XIX 



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 iiis name; and his 
name was as it had been tlie 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 beastsf came from the land 
of the borders of the South ; and 
when I saw them I wondered with 
great admiration. 

5 The one beast w^as like unto a lamb, 
arid 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 
they touched not the ground as they 
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 ma}' 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, I will teach the 
people of thy land to till and to sow; 
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 1 



discern betwixt right and wrong, the 
good and the evil, and in all things that 
relate to learning, and knowledge, and 
understanding. 

11 And they proffered unto him a 
Book;:}: and they said unto him. Take 
thou this, and give us a piece of money, 
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- 
ens. 

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 1 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, and the man was 
astonied and waxed wroth, and he said 
unto them, What is that you have done 
unto me, and how shall 1 answer those 
to whom I am engae;ed ? And they said, 
What is that to us? see thou to that. 

15 And the man wist not what for to 
do: and he called together the friends 
of his youth, and all those whose heart 
Av as 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 Kow in those days, there lived 
also a man who was crafty§ in counsel, 
and cunning in all manner of working: 



* William Blackwood, {Edony,) whose then place of business was at IT Prince's street. 
In 1830 he removed to 45 George street, where Maga continues to be published.-^M. 

t Pringle and Cleghorn, the original editors of Blackwood's Magazine, were "the two 
beasts." Both were deformed in person. They had gone over to Constable, the publisher 
of the Edinburgh Rexieic, 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. 

X Blackwood's Magazine was " the Book." — M. 

§ Archibald Constable, the celebrated Edinburgh publisher, had obtained the sobriquet yf 



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lY And I beheld the man, and he 
was comely and well-favonred, and he 
had a notable horn in his forehead 
wherewith he ruled the nations. 

18 And I saw the horn,* 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. 

1 9 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. 

20 And he said unto himself, Why 
stand I idle here, and why do I not 
bestir myself? Lo! 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. 

21 And lie hated the Book, and the 
two beasts that had put words into the 
Book, for he judged according 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 ebony, 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 him 
under our feet ; and we will break him 
to pieces, and grind him to powder, 
and cast him into the brook Kedron. 



25 And I will make of you a great 
name ; and I will place you next to 
the horn that is in my forehead, f 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 
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 
3'ield up the Book, and burn it with 
fire, and give its ashes to the winds of 
heaven. 

32 But certain that were there pres- 
ent said unto him, Why art thou dis- 
maj^ed? and why is thy countenance 
fallen? Go to now ; gird up thy loins 
like a man, and call imto thee thy 
friends, and the men of thy house- 
hold, and thou shalt behold and see 
that they that are for thee are more 



" 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 
niclinames upon others. Murray, the London publisher, he called The Emperor of the West; 
he dubbed himself The Czar of 3Iuscovy ; facetious John Ballantyne was The Dey of All- 
jeers ; and Longman & Co., of London, were The Dwan, in his nomenclature. One of Long- 
man'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. 

t Constable spared no cost to make his Edinburgh Magazine superior to Blackwood's, but 
did not succeed. — M. 



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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, he 
arose and went away; and all the 
young men arose up, and humbled 
themselves before 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 
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 m}^ land, and none knoweth whence 
his 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. 

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 man II which had come out of 
Joppa, where the ships are, one that 

* 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. 

t 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 Maga. — M. 

X Sir Walter Scott, "the great Magician of the North," whose residence, Abbotsford, was 
situated in a border county, by the river Tweed. — M. 

? At this time, the authorship of the Waverley Novels was unacknowledged. — M. 

II The late Professor Jameson, (died 1854,) of Edinburgh University.-— M. 



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. 

36 Woe unto all them that take 
part with the man w^ho is crafty in 
counsel, and with the two beasts! 

37 For I will arise and increase my 
strength, and come upon them like the 
locust of the desert, to abolish and 
overwhelm, and to destroj^, and to 
pass over. 

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 IS^ew 
City, which looketh toward the north ; 
and the wise men came. 

39 And lo! there stood before him 
an aged man, whose hair was as white 
as snow, and in whose hand there was 
a mirror, w^herein passed to and fro 
the images of the ancient days.f 

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 j^oung. 

41 And all the young men that were 



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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 creeping 
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 thy 
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 hand 
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 bear- 
ing a bundle of letters, touching the 
aftairs of men, in his right hand.f 



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 
framed 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 wife, 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 
defileth the holy places. 

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, they were too many, 
neither could the man know what was 
the meaning of their counsel, for they 
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. 



N' 



CHAPTER XL 

OW, behold, as soon as they were 
gone, he sat down in his inner 



* John Hope, afterwards one of the Lords of Session, (or Supreme Judges of Scotland,) 
whose father, Charles Hope, was then Lord President of the Court of Session.— M. 

t The Postmaster-General of Scotland. The coachmen, guards, and letter-carriers then 
wore an uniform, of which a scarlet coat was the most remarkable portion.— M. 



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chamber, which looketh toward the 
street of Oman, and the road of Ga- 
briel, as thou goest up into the land of 
Ambrose,* 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 upon 
his head ;f and there was a rod in his 
hand. 

8 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 comfoi-t 
thee, and destroy the power of thy ad- 
versary, and will devour the two beasts. 

7 So he gave unto the man in plain 
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 came. 

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 
greyliound, and his eyes like the 
lightning 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 boar from the 
forest of Lebanon, and he roused up his 
spirit, and I saw him whetting his 
dreadful tusks for the battle, if 

14 And the grifiin 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- 
sert, whose cry is as the sound of an 
unknown tongue, which flieth over the 
ruins of the ancient cities, and hath his 
dwelling among the tombs of the wise 
men. 

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 
worms. 

17 And the hysena which escheweth 
the light, and cometh forth at the even- 
ing 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. 



* Oman kept a hotel in Edinburgh. Ambrose's Tavern was situated at the back of Princes 
Street, in a place called Gabriel's Road, from a murder committed there by a tutor named 
Gabriel, 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, 

t This man, thus mysteriously veiled, was the unknown Editor of Blackxcood. The person- 
ality of Christopher North was not invented until September, 1819. — M. 

X Wilson was the leopard. Robert Sym (afterwards Timothy Tickler of " The Noctes ") 
was the hyaena. Lockhart was the scorpion. Hogg, of course, was " the great wild boar from 
the forest." Gillies lived at " the white cottage in the mountains."— M. 



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19 ^ And when they were all g:a- 
tliered together, the man which was 
clothed in plain apparel looked about, 
and his heart was right merry when he 
saw the mighty creature* 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. 



CHAPTER III. 

AND while these things were yet 
doing, 1 heard a great rushing, and 
the sound as of a mighty wind : and I 
looked over the valley into the old 
cit}., 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. 

8 And he said unto himself. What 
is this? Behold mine adversary is very 
might}'-, neither can I go forth to fight 
him : for whom have I save myself 
only, and ray 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 
iuto my farm, and carry away all the 
full sheaves which are ready. 

6 And the beast which was like 
unto a lambf answered and said, Lo ! 
my legs are weary, and the Egyptians 
which were wont for to carry me are 
clean gone ; and wherewithal 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 
horn which is empty, and a horse 
which hath no feet. If ye go not forth 
to fight with mine adversary, deliver 
me up the meat which I have given 
unto you, and the penny which ye 
have of me, that I may hire others 
who will fight with the man whose 
name is as ebony. 

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 bear took 
courage ; and he opened his mouth and 
said, 

11 man, thou hast fed me here- 
tofore, and whatever entereth into thy 
lips is thine. Why now should we fall 
out about this thing ? 

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- 
self. ^ 

15 But the spirit was a wicked 
spirit and a cruel : so he answered and 



* 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. 
t Cleghorn was the bear, and Pringle the lamb.— M. 
X Francis JeflFrey was Constable's " familiar spirit." — M. 



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said, Lo, have I not put great might 
into the horn wliich 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.) 

18 And w^hile 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 
King, and to deliver some malefactors 
which he loved out of their hand. 

20 ^ 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, whicli 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. 

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 wiiieh 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 ? Go to, man, seek thou 
them which are thy feUows. 

25 And they vanislied from his sight: 
and he heard the voice of their laugh- 
ter, both he and his two beasts. 

26 ^ 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 labour is great. 
For, lo, I have to feed all the people 
of my land, and none knoweth whence 
his food Cometh ; but each man opeu- 
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 favour be shown imto 
him which is most valiant. 

32 Yet be thou silent: peradven- 
ture w411 1 help thee some little. 

83 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 
have given this magician much money, 
yet see now, he hath utterly deserted 
me.* Verily, my fine gold hath per- 
ished. 



' Scott and Constable long had intimate relations, as author and publisher ; but, taking 
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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 wlien he 
looked in, behold yet another beast; 
and tliey were all gabbling together. 

86 Now the other beast was a beast 
which he lov^ed 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 unprofitjible, 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 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 
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 thio;hs, 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 be 
seeth them in the battle, he will not 
stand, but surely turn black 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 ! heu ! 

46 Now the man was sick at heart 
when he perceived that he was there 
with the four beasts,* 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, race of beasts, 
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. 

BUT while he was yet trembling, lo, 
there came in one which was his 

offence 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 
relations with Scott, and they were continued, until the Panic of 1825 caused Constable's bank- 
ruptcy and Scott's ruin. — M. 
* I am unable to say who were the two other " beasts " here Introduced.— M. 



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THE CHALDEE MANUSCRIPT, 



XXV 11 



familiar friend from his youth upwards, 
who keepeth the books of the scribes, 
and is hired to expound things which 
he knoweth not, and coUecteth toge- 
ther 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. 

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- 
bers. 

5 Now when the man heard this, 
he 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 ? be of good cheer ; behold 
I have an old breastplate which I will 
put on, and go forth with thee unto 
the battle. 

V 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 ;* 

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, 
even as his father's name had gone 
abroad : 

11 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. 

lY Now behold the four beasts were 
in 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, the brother of James, 
which is a man of low stature, and 
givetli 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 ; 



♦ This " lean man " was Peter Hill, a bookseller in Edinburgh. — M. 



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XXVlll 



HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD 8 MAGAZINE. 



24 And one David, which dwelleth 
at the corner as thoii 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.* 

25 And Andrew the chief physician, 
and Andrew his son,f 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, which weareth a green mantle, 
which inhabiteth the dwelling of the 
nobles, and delighteth in the tongue 
of the strange ma». 

27 And Peter, who raileth at his 
master. 

28 And in the fourth band I saw the 
face of Samuel, if 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 xYnd John thebrother of Francis,§ 
and the man which offered Consola- 
tion to the man which is crafty. 

35 Also seven young men, w^hereof 
no man could tell by what name they 
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 w^liich 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 beagle, and all the mighty crea- 
tures which are within the gates of the 
man in plain apparel. 

39 Verily, the man which is crafty 
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; and my spirit failed within 
me, and I was sore afraid, and I turned 
to escape away. 

41 And he that was like unto the mes- 
senger 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. 



* Who was meant by Samuel, John, James, and George, I cannot say — the allusions are so 
entirely personal and local. David was Mr. Brydges, a cloth merchant in the Old Town, who 
was a very good judge of pictures, and had made a fine collection. — M. 

t 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." — M. 

X This was Samuel Anderson, high among the Freemasons of Scotland. He was a wine- 
merchant, but, in Brougham's Chancellorship, received the lucrative appointment of Registrar 
of the English Court of Chancery. He figures in " The Nootes," as one of North's guests.— M. 

f John Jeffrey, younger brother of the critic. — M. 

fl 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. 



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etirtstojitiej: in ttie Ktnt. 



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 naost 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. J 

Immediately after the publication of our last number, an unusual 
stir and bustle was observable among the members of our conclave. 
At our m.onthly 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 'J'ent. It may be necessary to add, in 
explanation of a particular day and month heing singled out, that by the British game laws, 
grouse shooting does not commence until the l'2th August, partridge shooting on ist Septem- 
ber, and pheasant shooting on tiie 1st October, in each year. — AI. 

t 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 183o), 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 female, had invariably been early risers — M. 

J Young's Tavern, in High-street, Edinburgh. The locale was by no means a pleasant one, 
but most of the young wits of the city, including the Society called the Dilettanti, 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, Peter Robertson, now a 
Scottish Judge, and many more, then in early manhood, who have since attained eminence. 
Young's was such a small, smoky, dingy place, that it was commonly called ''The Coffin- 
Hole." Lockhart denounced it, in " Peters' lieiters," 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 
impure baptism from the neighboring windows." What is called the National Monument 
stands on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, and is an unfortunate attempt to imitate the Parthenon of 
Athens It is unfinished. The part erected consists of thirteen columns, on the west side, each 
of which cost £1,000. They were put up between 1824 and 1830, and are not deficient in pic- 
turesque grace. The object of the monument was to commemorate those Scotchmen who bad 
fallen in battle during the war with Napoleon. — M. 
VOL. I. 1 



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2 CHRISTOPHER m THE TENT. [Aug, 

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 astonished ! 1 ! 

About midnight it was decided, that a letter should be written by 
the editor to Lord rife,f 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 

For 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 number," and of all sizes — the main inside one, like the 
mouth of a sack, and cunningly 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 Jvian, 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 thereon. — M. 

t James Duff, Earl of Fife, was a wealthy man in 1819, with vast landed estates, in the Scot- 
tish counties of Banff, Moray, and Aberdeen. His principal residence (for he had several, in- 
cluding two castles) was Duff House, near the town of Banff, only part of which is built, on a 
plan supplied by Inigo Jones. Lord Fife served with distinction in thg 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 handsora.e 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 £4,000, which they allow him. The 
trustees have done several harsh things in his name, 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 formerly belonged to the Earl'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. Snare, 
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 famou.s for its salmon, which runs into the 
sea by the city of Aberdeen) is near Mar Lodge, on Lord Fife's property. — M. 

t Dr. Morris was the pseudo- writer of '' Peter's Letters to hia Kinsfolk" (Lockhart's Satire on 
the Whigs of Edinburgh and Glasgow), and Mr. Jarvie (a pretended grandson of Bailie Nicol 
Jarvie, of "Rob Roy") had written some sarcastic letters to Maga, as if from Glasgow. — M. 

II Blackwood's shop, where Maga was then published. — M. 



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1819.] TICKLER — HOGG ODOHERTY. 3 

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-j- — 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 could 
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. J 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 noticed very 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. 

fThe Scotsman, then edited by J. R. McCuUoch (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 newspaper, which was assumed to be the organ of the whig party 
in Edinburgh. It was hea.vy, but clever, at that time, and much ridiculed in Maga. — M. 

I Ensign and Adjutant Morgan Odoherty was the well-known Dr. William Maginn, who 
contributed largely to Blackwood, from 1818 to 183U, and from that time to his death, in 1842, 
was the leading contributor to Eraser's Magazine. He was introduced to the Tent by antici- 
pation, as he did not visit Scotland until June, 1821. Maginn was one of the most versatile 
and fertile writers of modern times. — M. 

II Bniemar is a village in Aberdeen-shire, not far from Loch-na-gar. the mountain celebrated 
by Byron, in his earliest and his latest poems — Hours of Idleness and Don 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, from this height, may be seen 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 difficult and tedious ; but so gradual is the slope from the summit to Braemar that 
a pony can easily ride it. In this manner Q,ueen Victoria, whose seat of Balmoral is adja- 
cent, reached the top of Loch-na-gar, in 1853. — M. 



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4: CHEISTOPHEE IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

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 Pannanich Wells, 
from which we contrived to pad the hoof to Braemar, attended by 
our old bitch, than which a better never 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 difl^culty 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 1" 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 syijiptoms yet of 
Kempferhausen, f Muliion, and Bailie Jarvie, who were to travel to- 

* Dr. Morris's shandrydan was a hrgh two-wheeled gig, drawn by a single horse, and with a 
seat for two persons. — M. 

t Kernpferhausen was the name assumed by a contributor who wrote letters from the Lakes, 
descriptive of Words w^orth and Southey. Robert Pearce Gillies, whose poem of Childe Alarique 
obtained more attention than sale, in 1813, was the author of Iiora3 Gerraanicae and Horse Dani- 



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1819.] THE ABRIVAX. 5 

gether in a jaunting car of the Bailie's, which had been left on his 
hands bj an Irish gentleman from Belfast, a dealer in linens, 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 wi] I they 
budge frae the first change-house they speer at in the Highlands." 

However, here were we assembled in great force — Editor, \7astle, 
Morris, Tickler, Ettrick Shepherd, and Odoherty. As we pei ceived 
that only the first of these gentlemen had dined, we kept our.;humb 
on that circumstance, and joined the dinner-party as if nothing had 
happened, being indeed, in spite of a weakish constitution ani con- 
firmed rheumatism, a sure card on such occasions. A gall )n of 
hodge-podge — the turkey-cock roasted — five or six dozen of po iched 
eggs — and some chops of rather a problematical character (though 
we shrewdly suspect them to have been pork, in direct oppositi >n to 
Odoherty, who swore they were bull-beef) assuaged the fame^, or 
rather rabies edendi — and by eight o'clock we were ready to s'art 
for the Linn of Dee,f 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 ; and, as the nags 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 

cae in Maga, which first made England and America acquainted with the dramatic writers of 
Germany and Scandinavia. He was a great son net- 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 
Quarterly Review (commenced in 1827), wrote Recollections of Sir Walter Scott in Erasers 
Magazine, 1835-'36, and published his own Memoirs of a Literary Veteran in IbSl. — M. 

* Plotty is mulled, or rather bm-nt port wine, delectable (as a night-cap) in the cold nights 
of winter. Claret, so treated, is not a bad substitute, but a double dose of it is requisite.— M. 

t The Linn 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 sun, 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. 



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6 CHBISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

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,f whom the Mighty Minstrel had kindly sent to enliven 
our festivities, made precisely the devil's dozen. 

" Hand 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 
cask 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 sainingj ourselves, so we'll e'en pit round the jug, 
and pour out a drappoch|| 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, coining 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. Mackay, above mentioned, 
was a real personage, and mightily elevated of course, by this notice in Blackwood. In 
" Peter'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 name was John Bruce, and attired in full Highland costume, he used to play 
on the pipes, stalking up and down in front of the house, when Scott gave a set dinner, coming 
in at the close, to receive a quaigh (or Celtic wooden drinking vessel) of Glenlivet. from Scott's 
hand. Saluting the company, 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 continued until after twilight had set in. — M. 

i Blessing ourselves, — Dr. Jamieson. 

II As drajjpie means a little drop, it is probable that the Shepherd's drappoch has a like 
signification. — M. 



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1819.] 



• SNORING I 



Trial on the l\th at 40 yards^ distance, all shootififf with JVb. 4, at an expanded 

volume of the Trarisactions of the Royal Society. 



Wastle, 

Tickler, 

Morris, 

Odoherty, , 

Ettrick Shepherd, . 
Editor, 



Wadding. 


Shot. 




Oz. 


Hat. 


H 


Card. 


If 


Unknown. 


H 


Hat. 


If 


Wool 


4 


MSS. Article. 


2 



IS put in. 


Leaves pierced. 


'TS 


40 


65 


80 


65 


32 


SO 


25 








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 Kempferhauseii 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 accustomed 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 reveille — there was heard the 
equable, but not monotonous, and most gentlemanly snore of Wastle 

* Macvey Napier, who edited the Encyclopedia Britannica, and succeeded Jeffrey as conductor 
of the Edinburg-h 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 Blaclcwood writers greatly ridiculed. He was a very decided 
Wljig^ — whicli may account for these Tory sneers. Macvey latterly occupied the house 39 
North Castle-streetj Edinburgh, in "wkich Scott lived, from 1798 to July, 182G, and died in 
i8-17-— M- 



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8 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

— Dr. Morris snored in such a manner as he did mock himself, and 
ever and anon 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 nasal 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'Oiiore 
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 inoon 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 lest breakfast cool" — for in ten minutes each man had 

* " Who e'er has the luck to see Donnybrook Fair, 
An Irishman all in his glory is there. 

With his sprig of shillelah and shamrock so green."— M. 



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1819.] RETEOSPECTION. 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 
favorite 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 Jnvercauld, 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 g^ed on the sea of mountains, 
emerging from the soft mists in which they had been shrouded during 
the night. 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 clifi" above the Linn of Dee, we recol- 
lected our own strength, which we once thought nothing could have 
tamed ; and which 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. 1811, (when the confirmed madness of 
George lii., was indisputable), until January. 1^20, when he became King, by tiuccession .— .M . 

t in Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, we, the Editor are spoken of as an obscure man. a mart vt 
to rheumatism, and one who only draws plans which oihers execute. Tiiat. we are noi so 
luminous a body as Dr. Morris, we admit — and that we are a martyr to rheumatism, is uiil\ rtu- 
nately true, in spite of the weii-lvnown skill of our townsman, Dr. Balfour — but we beg leave 
to contradict the illustrious Physician of Aberystwiih on the last charge. We both plan and 
execute — and flatter ourselves that there is a something in our articles that betrays the hand 

1^ 



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10 CHRISTOPHER IK THE TENT. [Aug. 

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 snug 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 1" 

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 seen 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 name 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 Oalton 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 Dumfrieshire, 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. 

t 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 
mortdi^cuU to shoot them in that situation ! Wo despise all such sophistry.— C. N. 



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1819.] HOGG AND THE SALMON. II 

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 Leading- 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 !" 

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 fifty f — 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 tnull 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 acairn-gorm, or Scotch topaz. — M. 

t At this time, the Editor of Blackwood had neither assumed the name of Christopher 
NoRTH» nor quite decided what his aire should be. A man of 50, in 1818, would have been born 
in 1769. Subsequently, the year 1754 was given as the actual date, which would have made 
Kit North 65, at the time he and his colleagues were at Braemar. Throughout the " Noctes," 
he is represented as in venerable old age, and m.ust have been 81 when they closed, in 1835. — M. 



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12 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

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 !" The sun, 
however, had dissolved the miountain-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 nail at 
the " Branxy,"* and gulping down the aqua vitse 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.f 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"J 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 

* Branxy 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. It is quite superior to any- 
other, both in flavor and nutr^^ent. It is a perquisite of the shepherds ; and in this instance 
we had it warranted sound 6y the head of Lord Fife's pastoral establishment. The best we 
ever ate was at Dugald Campbell's, Esq. of Achlian, Argyllshire.— C. N. 

t Richard Jones, commonly called '' Gentleman Jones," was a great favorite at the Edin- 
burgh theatre, as comedian, and finally settled in London, where he died afew years ago, after 
having realized a large fortune as a teacher of elocution. — M. 

JTo 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, then and there. Both plunged a stocking-covered leg into 
a tub of boiling water. The ''Bolton fellow" appeared entirely unaffected by the increased 
temperature: the other instantaneously withdrew his ;>m, 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 flesh and bone. This was a thorough iroi— 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."— M. 

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1819.] TICKLEK — HOGG ODOHERTY. 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 u* 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 Eitchie 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."t 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 marque, 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 ?" " 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.J 
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. 
Editor, 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 Hephssstion."|| Plere 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. 

t Buller, of Brazennose College, Oxford, was John Hughes, (who really belonged to Oriel,) 
and author of an Itinerary of the Rhone. He was a great friend of Ainsworth, the novelist, 
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, 

t When a student at Oxford wins the highest honors, at the degree-examination, in classics 
and science, he is called '• a double first"— a.s conqueror in both. The late Sir Robert Peel was 
so distinguished. The Rev. Henry Hart Milman here mentioned, was a Brazennose man, and 
is now Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, 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. 

Ij The Rev. Dr. Thomas Gaisford, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, since 1831, was appointed 
Regius Professor of Greek in 1811, — M. 



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14 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

to look around us, and saw the faces of the Shepherd, MulJion, 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' chin, 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 V 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, " Fse 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."! " 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 Buchan, in Aberdeenshire, are among the wonders of Scotland, They are 
near Slaine's Castle, the residence of the Earl of Errol, and are remarkable for the noise and 
force 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. 

t 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 Loudon banker. — M. 



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1819.] THE GAME-BAGS. 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 upnhe 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 w^hich 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. 

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 w^s 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 



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16 CHRISTOPHER IK THE TENT. [Aug. 

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 Sew^ard 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-hom 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 !" " 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 

12 3 4 

aken. We mustered very strong — Editor, Wastle, Morris, Tickler, 

5 6^78 9 lu 

Odoherty, Shepherd, Jarvie, Mullion, Kempferhausen, Seward of 

11 • 12 13 14 

Christchurch, Buller of Brazennose, Tims, Price, John of Sky, Lord 

17 18 19 ^ 20 

Eife's three gillies, Walter Ritchie, John Mackay, Katterfelto, 

21 22 26 

Buller's valet, the Cockney's Londoner, four Highlanders from the 

27 28 

Spittal of Glenshee, Peter's man John, Wastle's man Thomas. 

It was altogether a most animating scene ; and it 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 w^ere 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 



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1819.] ANTE-PEANDIAL. 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 
blendied 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 tarns 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- 
ner 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 

* Croupier, — vice-chairman. Probably derived from two men riding on a horse, in which 
case one must sit on the croup, or loins of the animal, i. e. occupy a secondary or infirm position. 



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18 CHKISTOPHEE IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

Odoherty and Buller of Brazennose. A principle of the most 
beautiful adaptation and fitness of parts seemed 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 f 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 Unk'nown. 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 
portly frame was shrouded in a light-drab surtout, and his sturdy 
limbs 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 fulness 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 Eusileers, exclaimed, " You didna ask me to 
your tent, ye deevil, but here I am, in spite of your teeth. I heard 
o' you at Gordon Castle,t 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 odontist (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. 



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1819.] THE SQUABASH.- 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, ^lely 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," <fec. 

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 f 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 squahashP'' 

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. 
A'nidst the savage growl were heard the loud curses of Celt and 
Sasonach, maddening the fray which they sought to assuage. " Demme 
if the Highland curs be not murdering my Juno," exclaimed Mr. 
Seward of Cliristchurch, " I would not lose her for the Indies — she 
was bred by Jack Burton !" We had our own suspicion that Mr. Con- 
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. Jarnieson. 



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20 CHEISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

prime mover. Mr. Price declared himself at ease about the issue 
of this conflict, as he had purchased his dog Randal from Bill Gib- 
bons,* and a better never entered 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!" Mean- 
while almost a score of dogs were fiercely at work among the heather 
— nor 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 Larreyt 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 oflf 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 nature. His. defence of 
jFlash was not equally successfiil — and indeed it terminated with be- 

* A London pugilist of some notoriety, — M. t Napoleon's favorite surgeon. — M. 



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1819.] PRANDIAL. 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 repaynaent 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 bur 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 wxll-known 
national modesty. 

On returning to the tent, we found that Kempferhausen and Duller 
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. How 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 of 
good cold rum-punch.* 

* Rum punch, made of one part of rum to five of cold sherbet, is the peculiar drink of Glas- 
gow. — M. 



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22 OHEISTOPHEE IN THE TEKT. [Aug. 

We had not been so improvident as to let the baggage-wagon leave 
Edinburgh 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 askmg 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 

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 Dee ! 
Hail to their shaded pure transparency ! 
Hail to the royal oak and mountain-pine, 
With whose reflected pride those waters shine I 

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. 



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1819.] " SONG TO A SALMON." 28 

3. 
Can he whose eje 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 ! 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. 

6. 
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 taste 
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 poet 
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 rece^i 
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 whpm Byron wrote — 

" Shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl 
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall ?" 
At the annual dinner of the Literary Fund, in London, 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. In the 
"Rejected Addresses." written by Horace and James Smith; there is an excellent parody on 
one of these compositions. — M. 



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24: CHEISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

II. 
That wond'rous region "was thy o-wn, 
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 knewest more than Captain Ross, 
Or yet than Captain Sabine * 

III. 
Yea, Fish ! 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.f 

IV. 

And now, my Beauty ! bold and well 

Thy pilgrim-course hath been — 

For thou, like Wordsworth's Peter Bell, 

Hast gazed on Aberdeen ! 

And all those sweetest banks between, 

By Invercauld's broad tree. 

The world of beauty hast thou seen 

That sleeps upon the Dee. 

Y. 
There oft in silence clear and bright 
Thou layest 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. 

VI. 
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 ! 

* Captains Ross and Sabine, engaged at this time in trying to discover the northwest pas- 
sage. — M. 

f Barrow and Croker were then officials in the Admiralty at London. GifFord 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. 



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lgl9.] tickler's soNa. 535 

VII. 

The river roaring down the rock, 

The fiei'ce and foaming linn, 

Essayed to stay thee with the shoek, 

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 ! 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. 

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 swdfet upon bonny Loch-Fyne be your weather. 
As is mine on the banks of the Dee 1 
And light be your steps o'er Kilberry's braw heather, 
As on Fife's mine own footsteps can be ! 

8. 

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 1 
Well I picture the scores that have bled 

Long — oh ! long ere this hour, round the laird's lonely shelling, 
That murderous lair, Caddenhead ! 
VOL .1. 2 



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26 CHKISTOPHEK IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

6. 
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 ! 

Mr. Seward said he had never sung a single stave in his life, and 
called on Duller 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. 

THE COLISEUM. 

Ye circling walls, whose melancholy bound. 

In lonely echoes, whisper all around 1 

Ye towers antique, whose shapeless shadows tell 

Of Roman glory the forlorn farewell I 

Dark o'er the sod with heroes' dust commix'd 

Ye frown in monumental silence fix'd ! 

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 I 

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 <fec. 

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. John Dow himself. f 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. 

t "Dow — *« the" --'' ^•"' "vanv years after, the best short-hand "writer in Edinbvrg-h. — M. 



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1819.] PUNCH, THE 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 I 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 ! 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, 
There 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 ! 

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 ! 

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, atid 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 uni- 
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 diff*erent countries, education, and pursuits ; and who shall 



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28 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

pretend to know all the infinite varieties of principle and opinion 
that must have been collected within that narrow circumference ? 
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, by Mr. Seward. 

Mr. John Hamilton, by Mr. Tickler. 

Collector M'Nair, by Mr. Jarvie. 

Mr. Coke of Norfolk, .* by Mr. Buller. 

Mr, Wordsworth, by Mr. Kempferhausen. 

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, 
truly prism atical. 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, m 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 in one sitting ! Maginn, in Blackwood for May, 1820, gave a '* Luctus 
for the death of Sir Dan. Donelly," in which learning ar^ wit were largely employed and well 
blended.— M. 



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1819.] THE FINISH. 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 !" 

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 air 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 nocturnal 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. 



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30 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Aug. 

Edinburgh, 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 night- 
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 John 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 Groijse i' the morning." 



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efirtstojitiej: t« tfie rent. 



No. IL— 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 ;f 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 number. — M. 

t This was in the olden days of m.ail 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 JNIanchester railway was 
opened, with, great state. — M. 



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32 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TEKT. [Sept. 

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. 

YoT three days — and we may almost add nights, there was no 
occasion to say to us " ssepe 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 EbonyJ to witness the opera- 
tions. What motion of many twinkling hands among compositors ! 
What display of brawny arms among pressmen ! What a stir of 
printer 's-d evils ! " The Editor's MS. is growing worse and worse 
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, II 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 the opening Cantos of Don Juan, Emigration to the Cape of Good-Hope, the 
Pyramid of Caphrenes. (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 
Editor is — I do not see how that secret can ever be divulged, as things now stand — but my friend 
Wastle tells me that he is an obscure man, almost 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 name ; and his name was as it had been the color 
of Ebony, and his number was the number of a maiden, when the days of the year of her 
virginity have expired."— C/iaZc/ee Manuscript, Chap. I., v. 3. In this Oriental prolixity was 
mention made of Mr. Blackwood. No. 17 Princes-street. Edinburgh. — M. 

II 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 Macvey 
Napier's dissertation on Lord Bacon. — M. 

§ The Yellow Dwarf was a violent weekly journal, published in London by an ultra-E.adical, 
named "Wooler. At the same time. The Examiner was conducted by Leigh Hunt. — M. 



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1819.] CAEMEN DIABOLICUM. 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 l^th and 

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 tlie ordnance salutes with a roar ; 
But before the hausers slip to give sea-room to the ship. 

To propitiate the winds, tliere 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. 



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 prepaiing for his launch, 

Then he phinges his hand in the Biu. 
" 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. Tn 1820. it was transferred to 
Janaes Ballantyne'.< Office, where it remained for more than thirty years. — M. 

t Pope says, of a fashionable preacher. 

"And never mentions Hell Tore ears polite." 
This, we think, is excellent advice, both to the Clf-rgy and the Laity, even in 'ess 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 satfiioned^lsqh^t ^ 
the authority of Milton.— C. N. Hosted by VjiJiJ V IV^ 



34 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

Well,/>ut 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 
can wholly cure. For home had now no charms for us — that lofty 
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 met 
the honest woman as she was coming home from market with a cou- 
ple of herrings in a kail-blade, ^nd 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 and 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.f 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 natural 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.] 

t 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 never found to have 
an antipathy to a marriage with men very much their juniors in age. The fortitude and resig- 



nation with which an old maid of forty submits to a matriraonfal alliapjce with alb^c^k)TiQ 1^ 



or widower of twenty-five, are very exemplary. — M. 



1819,] GRIZZY TURKBULL's ELOPEMENT. 36 

land about this matter, — and that the public, censorious on people far my supe- 
riors in all things, will not spare poor Grizzj TurnbuU — but my heart knoweth 
its own purity, — and the idle gossip of an idle world w^ill soon die away. 

" And now, my ever dear master, let me confide to you a secret which I have 
treasured up in nay heart these last twenty years — years, alas ! of misery and of 
happiness, never again to return. Since the first night i slept beneath your 
ROOF I HAVE LovEi>, MADLY LOVED YOU ! yes, the confcssion 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 ! ! 
my sweet master (surely that word may be allowed to me in our parting hour), 
for twenty years, come the Martinmas term, have I doted upon thee ! yes 1 I have 
watched the progress of thy rheumatism with feelings which even thine own 
matchless pen w^ould fail to analyze ! Lord Byron himself could not paint the 
conflict of passions that turmoiled ^vithin my bosom, when, under the guidance of 
that angel of a man, Dr. Balfour, I rubbed that dear rheumatic leg on the sofa I 
O ! our little tea-drinkings 1 but in the sweet words of Campbell, 

* Be hushed, my dark spirit, for wisdom condemns. 

When the faint and the feeble deplore, 
Be firm as a rock of the ocean, that stems 

A thousand wild waves on the shore ! 
Through the scowl of mischance, and the smile of disdain, 

Let thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate, 

Yea, EVEN THE NAME I HAVE WORSHIPPED IN VAIN, 

Shall awake not a throb of remembrance again ; 
To bear is to conquer our fate ! 1 ! ' 

" 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 asswred, 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 ! and with such feelings as a new- 
born infant might avow, I subscribe myself, yours as fit only, 

"Grace Perkins. 
*' 14ttk 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 ; aiMistte)J<fcgffli©Q4C 



36 CHEISTOPHER IK THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 1 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,f 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, 
(fee, 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 name for a very fast-going stage-coach.— M. 

Xln a. previous numher of Maga, a sonnet by Mr. Gillies had celebrated the charms of Miss 

Forman, who kept a tobacconist's shop in Prince's-street, Edinburgh.— M. j 

Hosted by VjOOQ IC 



1819.] JOHN BALLANTYNE. 37 

LINES TO MISS FANNY FORMAN, ON BIDDING HER FAREWELL. 
By the Veiled Editor of Blackwood's 3£agazine. 
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. 

IT. 

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. 
Y^'es, 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 ?* 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 Ballantyne 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, 
in 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 succe.ss of 
Waverley, he published a wretched novel, " The Widow's Lodgings." The publishing business 
did not succeed, and the firm was dissolved. John Ballantyne 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, " 1 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 fun and merriment; such a thoroughly light-hearted droll, all over quaint- 
ness and humorous mimicry; and moreover, such a keen and skilful devotee to all manner of 
field-sports, froin 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 the late Charles Mathews's ' ^^ -' " ^ -^ ^ ^ 
original, which the great imitator f 



oil. Anu again, ».ji iiis siyie oi sLoiy-ieiiing ii jss suiiiuikhl 
3ws's 'Old Scotch Lady,' was but an imperfect cop;| of the T 

: first heard in my presence from his lips."-HSi^^ed by VjOOQ l^ 



38 CHRISTOPHER m THE TENT. [Sept. 

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." "By 
all means, you delight us," said we. "Well," cried he, "what 
signifies bothering, come along, I'll just call at Trinity f 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 1 We have heard a thou- 
sand story-tellers, but we do not rem,ember 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 House-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, " His horses were all called after heroes in Scott's poems or novels ; and at 
this time he usually rode up to his auction on a tall milk-white hunter, yclept Old Mortality, 
attended by a leash or two of greyhounds, — Die Vernon, Jenny Dennison, (fee, by name. — M. 

t In John Ballantyne's latter days, he was fitting- up a mansion near Kelso, which he called 
Walton Hall, but in 1819, he inhabited Harmony Hall, by Trinity, near the Frith of Forth. 
"Here,'' says Lockhart, " 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 
Roman Kemble often play the Greek from sunset to dawn. Nor did the popular cantatrice or 
danseuse of the time disdain to freshen her roses, after a laborious week, amidst these Paphian 
bowers of Harm.ony Hall.~M. 



1819.] THEODOEE HOOK. 39 

elements of the character, whose index that most original physiOg- 
rt6my 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 
puiTs f)f 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 Hogan-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 readers ; 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 Rigdian Funnidos, while to his brother James, who was pompous 
and solemn, he gave the familiar title oi Aldiboronte-phoscopkornio .—M. 

t 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 ^^eries 
were published, rank among his best works — but others were popular also, such ps Jack Brai^, 
Gilbert Gurney (in which he sketched somo of his own adventures), literally filled with 
fun. He was editor of the John Bull, a London newspaper, commenced in order to aid the 
Tory party, by keen and humorous attacks upon Queen Caroline, (wife of George IV.) in 
182U-121. In that journal appeared the celebrated Letters of Mrs. Ramsbottom, in which, follow- 
ing the example of Sraollet'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 h.a,d 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 oijeux 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 dethroned him.— Joseph Giilon was a W. S. (writer of the Signet), 
and I believe, eventually became one of the door-keepers in the House of Lords. ^".^J'S'^^IJ^T'^QqI P 



40 CHRISTOPHER EST THE TENT. [Sept. 

left us !) at the time when the Northern Whigs were everywhere 
exerting their lungs in the first of those systematic blasts which ha?e 
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 ? Do 
you think the man will rise, Joseph V " Aye," quoth Joseph, " I'll be 
bound he will — at a general rising P 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 V 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 {fiuis dubitaverit ?) 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. f 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 
laithful eye of imagination. Kind, jovial, elegant Due de la Cirela- 
3ouche, friend of our youth — friend and patron ! — alas ! where be 
now thy petits soupers ! Beautiful, radiant, luxurious Madame la 
Biche IJ 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 
Si une dame est eruelle 

Et ne laisse rien d'espoir — 
Son adieu a la belle — 
'Est par corde ou razoir, <fec. &q. 



" By the way. Monsieur Jean," said we, " did you take any lessons 

.Joseph Miller's Jokes. — M. 
[lase. or take consignments of 
•street, Edinburgh. — M. 



* This is one of the most venerable and notorious of the late Mr. Joseph Miller's Jokes. — M. 

t John Ballantyne frequently visited the Continent to purchase, or take consignments of 
articles of vjrfM, &c., for his very celebrated auctions in Hanover-street, Edinburgh. — M. 

t These titles appear suspicious. Cere-la-bouche might be interpreted w^ 
Biche reminds us of— a dog's sister. — M. 



1819.] THE SWORD EXERCISE. 41 

in fencing when you were in Paris ?" To be sure," said he, " T 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 Eeekie." 
" 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 Eolands, the 
Angelos, and most of the amateurs in the three kingdoms — but 
Heaven forbid we should ever venture a. second trial with this 
Italian !" " An Italian is he V 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 
judge ; he is allowed to be the first homme-d'epee 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. f 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. He 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."J " 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." 

* Francalanza and Roland were eminent fencing-masters, in Edinburgh, in 1819. — M. 

t Augereau, one of Napoleon's marshals, created Duke of Castiglione, for his bravery at the 
battles of Castiglione and Areola, 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 anything to do with him, a double traitor. 
Augereau. was one of the best swordsmen in the Grand Army. — M. 

} John Schetky had been a stafF-surgeon, under Wellington, in the Peninsular War, and had 
attained some eminence, as an amateur, before the peace of 1815 ended his professional career. 
Settling at Edinburgh he earnestly applied himself to 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 ?]. in every thing that regards 
the grand and mysterious eloquence of the cloud and sky." Schetky was one of the Dilettanti 
Society, of which Wilson was president, which may account for the friendly notice of him as 
above.— M. 



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42 CHEISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept 

" 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 w^ere particularly happy in that 
exquisite genuine old High Dutch one, — 

Persantribat elericus 

Durch einem griinem waldt 
Videbat ibi stantem, stantem, stantem, 

Ein Magdelein wohlgestallt 
Salva sis puellula 

Godt gruss dich Magdelein fein, (fee, cfec. 

" 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 dow^n by Lord Gray ;f 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 bassj — 
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- 
lani ?|| 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 
taste, but really did little more than eat good dinners, and spend social evenings at Young's 
Tavern.— M. 

f A Scottish peer, and not to be confounded with the Elnglish Earl Grey, Prime Minister, 
183()-'34.— M. 

X What Bottesini is in 1854 (the best double-bass in the world), Dominico Dragonetti was in 
ISiO, and for more than twenty years after, — M. 

II Angelica Catalani, who made her debut at Rome in 1802 ; her immediate and immense 
success 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- 
don in 1806. She remained eight years in England, singing at the Italian Opera, and in the 
provinces. After the Restoration she went to Paris, became manager of the Opera BufFa there, 
lost her money, returned to England in 18-22, 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 
husband, a French officer, named Valaberque, used to say, " Doo or dreepoupets and mine lady 
— voila the opera." She died of cholera, in 1849, at Paris. — M. 



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1819.] ESTTKRIOR OF THE 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 // suo gusto e perfetto.'' " 

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. Eor 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 
Xent 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 
fall 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, w^hom 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 



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44: CHEISTOPHEE IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

of the 10th Hussars. " My dear Tims, jou 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 apj 
peared, mounted upon his white pony — in every respect the same 
vision that so delighted us sonie weeks ago. 

" But, ohon ! 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 Doctor 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. SCOTT. 
By the Ettrick Shepherd. 
Tune — " Grammachree." 
1. 
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 ''Bulier of Brazennose," had his Itinerary of the 
Rhone kindly and favorably noticed by Scott, in the Introduction 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. 



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1819.1 l'envot. 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. 



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 roe I 



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 fu' 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. 



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 ! near him may we be, 
For meikle can we do without, but not his canty e'e. 



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 I with a hearty three times three I 

During the recitation of these noble verses, Dr. Scott occasionally 
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 : — 



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46 CHEISTOPHEE IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

DR. SCOTt's farewell TO BRAEMAR. 

Air — " Lochaber." 

1. 
Farewell, then, ye mountains in mystery piled, 

Where the birth-place and home of the tempest is found ; 
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 ! 
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 cheer ! 
Oh ! 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 ! 

One sweet-flowing measure — one more — only one ! 
Life's gay moments are few : then why needlessly lose 'em ? 

You'll have plenty of time for regrets when I'm gone. 
In duluess 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 honester — 
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 — 

Nw' GOV epyov kg-', ezseidr) 
Ttjv g-o^iTjv elTirj^eg, ijvzjep 
^tX^g e| apxvc — tua2,cv 
'Avavea^eiv aavrov aiei. 



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1819.] THE ROLL-CALL. 47 

Kai (SXezseLV avdiq to Selvov. 
KtSe znapalripov akDau, 
KaL fSaAyc n fiaWaKov, 
AvBcg alpeudat g' avayKJj 
Ej-t tsoAiv ra g-pcj/LLara. 

We did not, however, come to the Tent to indulge unavailing 
sorrow ; so w^e issued two regimental orders, one for our breakfast 
and dinner conjoined, w^ithout 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 
dejeuner a 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 cToeil was most imposing. 
Wastle took his seat 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 called 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 
Dr. Morris, attired in a coat with a collar of 'rich fur. — M. 



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48 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 w^orld to the 
Frontispiece, 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 Kempferhausen 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, Mullign, 
and Buller of Brazennose, 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 w^ould 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 unco lang ane — and luik," quoth 
he, "gin Hector be not shaking himself frae side to side, and yawning 

and nuzzling as if he had been listening to ane of Mr. R of 

Y — 7-'sf very weariesomest action-sermons. The lad will not be the 
w^orse 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 
given. — M. 

t Of this excellent gentleman we embrace this opportunity of recording an interesting anec- 
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 forenoon 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 natural, considering Hogg's well-known love for appearing 
at the weekly sales at that gentleman's repository. The Shepherd, we suppose, now unde- 
ceived him. — C. N. 



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1819.] 



EBmBUKGH REVIEW. 49 



by all means," quoth Jarvie ; — '* indeed, if he were 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 
fang'^ anither bowl." — '* You may make the next one yourself, 
Bailie," 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 nailer 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 
tetigisti non ornasti; and even here w^e have no doubt, materiam su- 
per ahit opusF — 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 band in his waistcoat pocket, 
and stretching forth the dexter with its MSS. to within a few inches 
of our self, 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 E'dinburgh 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. j- 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 fan$; a well signifies to pour into it sufficient liquid to set the pump at 
work again. — C. N. 
t Napoleon. He did not die until May, 1821.— M. 

VOL. I. 3 



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50 CKRISTOFHEE IK THE TEKT. [gepfc. 

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, a 
bleu et a jaune? Je croyois que cette Turlupinade Id etoit tomb^e 
tout-a-fait il-y-a long temps.'''' — Then turning over the leaves, he came 
upon something about himself, — "Peste!" cried he, '•'• Ce petit Jeffre 
pourquoi fait-il toujours de telles sottises sur mon sujet? Je hais ce 
Nain envieux — II n'entend rien sur les grandes choses ni sur les 
grands hommes, et voila 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 ? 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'ecrire a votre ami M. le Conducteur, qu'il m^envoye ce journal 
aussi regulierement qu'l soit possible. Pour V Edinburgh Review — 
ma foi ! — lis sont culbutes — renverses — ecrases, — abimes — Au diable 
avec ces vieux fripons Id! lis ont perdu la tete /" 

After such a narration as this, we could not do less than propose a 
bumper to the good health of General BonaparteJ — a toast which 
was accepted in high glee by the whole of this assemblage ; even the 
Ettrick 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. 
t The present surgeon to Sir Hudson Lowe. — C. N. 

tWe 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 Miscella.ny. — C. N. 



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1819.] KANT AND COLERIBaE. 61 

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 Oortesia 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 skying 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 FA VET 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 
excellent. The practice of pugilism was evidently a mystery which 
his fine speculative understanding could not penetrate, and though 
few men have more enthusiasm than our good friend Phillip, he could 
not go along with the profound disquisition and impassioned feeling 
of the Adjutant on such a theme. He contented himself, however, 
with a short quotation out of Emmanuel Kant,f 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 Nailer. — M. 

t Mr. Coleridge has somewhere expressed himself to this effect — 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 man ; and further, that with respect to any discovery, he would have 
more credit for it who should make it a posteriori^ (accidentally perhaps, or by benefit of a fine 
apparatus) — than he who should demonstrate its necessity a 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 England 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 Saturn). The difference between the discov- 
eries is this ; Herschel's was made empirically, or a posteriori, by means of a fine telescope ; 
Kant's scientifically, or a priori, as a deduction from certain laws which he had established in 
his Celestial System (HimmePs System). We have unfortunately not brought with us to 
Braemar the volume which contains Kant's HimmeVs System ; but we will state from memory 
the course of reasoning which led Kant to this prediction. What is a comet ? It is a planet 
whose orbit is exceedingly eccentric. Are then the planets not eccentric ? Yes, but much less 
so. How much less ? Some in one degree — some in another : their eccentricity varies Ac- 
cording to what laws ; or does it vary according to any law ? In general according to this law : 
the eccentricity has a tendency to increase, as the distance from the sun 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 tendency 
of the planetary motions to become cometary (which tendency, by the way, is itself a neces- 
sary consequence from Kant's system, and no accident), Kant suspected, that as nature does 
not ordinarily proceed per saltum. the system of planets must pass gradatim into the system 
of comets — and not 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 Saturn — whose 
orbit will be much more eccentric than that of Saturn, and will thus supply a link to connect 
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, and according to the samo law : so that 



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52 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 hase^ cowardly^ and savage.^^"^ 
The man who could utter such a sentiment is unworthy of his pota- 
toes. " His sowZ," said the Adjutant, with much animation, " has not 
the true Irish accents-it wants the brogue of his country. I agree 
with my friend, Lord Norbury,t 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 thai a?i Irishman will jight^l 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. :|: 

the last planet and first comet will stand pretty much in the same relation to each other as any 

planet 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 no Astronomy in our Tent later than that of David Gregory, the Savilian Professor, 
(Astron. Phys. et Geomet. Elementa: Genevae, 1726.) we cannot assign it precisely; but 
according to oilr recollection, it was made in 1781 ; and certainly not earlier than 1780. Kant 
then discovered the planet Uranus a 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 a 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 distance 
from the sun) ; these exceptions, however, confirm the system of Kant — being explained out 
of the sam.e law which accounts for the defect in bulk of these two planets. It might have 
been supposed 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 revolventibus " (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. — G. 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- 
nals, on whom he was pronouncing sentence of death. He was Chief Justice of the Com.mon 
Pleas in Ireland, from IrfUO to \S27, and died in 1831. — In "Shell's Sketches of the Irish Bar" 
his career, character, and appearance are very fully described. — M. 

* An allusion to the great* fight between Sir Dan and Oliver. — C. N. [Daniel Donelly, an 



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1819.1 THE SHILELAh! 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-Hurst 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 .^' and if Roderic Milesius 
M'Gillicuddy replies, ' / am the hoy to snaze in your face^^ is my 
cousin a coward because the Tipperary shilelahs come twinkling 
about his nob 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 hacked by a moh of friends^ as the county says, has not 
O'Doiinahue his friends too ? and where then 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 !' 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 soflly 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, volun- 
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 inflammation, 
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 endearment, and 
much of the same tender feeling is naturally transferred to the shilelah that inflicted it. 
" God bless your honor," said the same gentle creature to us, while casting a look of aflfection- 
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, and 
they should serve to moderate that indignation with which moralists are wont to speak of the 
'â– 'â– brutality^'' of Irish quarrels. In the account of the battle between Randal, and Martin the 
baker, we observed with pleasure, an im.itation 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 free." A fine 
sylvan image ! — C. N. Pearce Eagan, at this period, editor of the sporting paper called BeWs 
Life in London, and author of several works on pugilism and its history. — M. 



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54: CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

either by Mr. Gregson, Mr. Egan, or Mr. Thomas Campbell. This 
handsome offer was received with thunders of applause, and nothing 
could be grander than the trio. We remarked, that during the ode 
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 4:th of September IS19, 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 ^oisy 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 1 



Vide Campbell's "Ye Gentlemen of England." — M. 

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1819."! CARMEN DIABOLICUM. 65 

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 hundred — 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 D.onelly" — 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 
private turn-ups have been numerous, and he has still been the winner, without a scratch. 
He is the only man in England a match for RandaL Will the sporting Colonel back the 
Nonpareil for :£200 ?— C N. 



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66 CHRTSTOPHEE IK THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 w^ere 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 dun 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, w^as a bill for 
£25 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 
w^ay 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 w^as our intention ; and he will 
send us six barrels of the best Bunaw^e salmon, a hogshead of Jamai- 
ca, 500 lbs. of double Gloucester, a choice assortment of best West- 
phalias, and a ton 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. f My gentleman came to himself w^hen he found 
me serious ; and I saw his reindeers boxed before I left the Gallow- 



* Architects of male attire, in Edinburgh.— M. 
t ifor/img'.— execution, sale under the law. — M. 



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1819.] THE KIEK 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 
Giffen ; 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 aiiis. 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 usl — 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 — 
namely, black breeches, and D. D. boots, black silk waistcoat, pep- 

* Between the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, about within sixteen -miles of the latter 
place (travelling by the mail-road, before railways were constructed), the country rises up very 
high. On the summit of the most dreary ridge stands what is called the Kirk of Shotts (whence 
the ndi;e 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, weH-wooded, and 
well-watered valley of the Clyde, the road leads into Glasgow, at once, from its commerce and 
manufactures, the Liverpool and Manchestsr of the West.— IM. 

t ijlackwood".^ Magazine may be said to have fairly laughed Constable's rival IMagazine out 
of existence. Neither publisher, editor, nor contributors could stand the sarcasms perpetually 
levelled at each and ail, from the memorable time when the Chaldee Manuscript attacked 
them personally. — M. # i 

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58 CHRISTOPHER IK THE TENT. [Sept. 

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-stiJl, 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 chin 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 as 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 Ham." 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 

» S.ee Dr. Jamiesppi once more- There is really no doing without the Doctor's Dictionary ; 
jbut let po rnanj q'o. apy accpunt whatever, buy the Abridgment.— C. N. 



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1819.] THE 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 nags 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 obstinacy ; 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 then betray his uneasiness by the most 
dismal gestures. Beside him rode that thickset, vulgar-looking person, 
somewhat like a Methodist preacher, a good deal marked with the small- 
pox, and well known among the town council by the name of the 
Scotsman's FlunkyI (there is no need to enrich ye with his name) 
who told him " to renaember his infirmity, and not to allow his pas- 
sion so to get the better of him as to bring on one of his fits." 1 
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, w^ho accompanied the procession, 
was heard to exclaim, " Pure fallow, is this him that wishes to mend 
the constitution ? I'm sure nae burrugh's half sae rotten as his aiii 
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'CuUoch, afterwards Professor of Political Economy in London University, and 
now Comptroller of the Government Stationery Office, in London, was editor of the Scotsman 
newspaper, in 1819, and the constant object of Maga's contempt. He contributed largely to 
the Edinburgh Review. Although his salary is £1200 a year, a Whig government was so 
lavish as to give also him a pension of £300, and, having solicited it, he was so greedy as tc 
accept it. — M. 

t The most opprobrious name, in Scotland, for a body-menial. — C. N. 



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60 CHRISTOPHER m THE TENT. [Sept. 

slavering about ? 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 v/i' 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 damman 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. Searchf 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 spavined of late, has degraded 
from his wonted diligence, though still it would appear a hack — 

" And he now carries who e'er- while hut drew." 

Dr Search occupied the seat nearest the mane — and the Dominie 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 anon 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. J The 
Doctor 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 Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, in 1819, was John Wilson,— the 
Christopher North of the Noctes.— M. 

t For farther particulars of this learned Theban, see a pamphlet lately published by him, in 
reply to the aspersions of Dr. Morris on the University of Edinburgh. By-the-by, Ritson the 
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. N. 

t Colonel Sir George Q^uintin 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. 



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1819.] "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 
Dominie 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 w^orsted, but most of them tape. 
The Editor had obviously distributed to each young naan 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, 



" We are Seven poor Contributors, 
From garret just set free," <fec.. 



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 -anfortunate Seven Yonng Men, were -unnamed contributors to Constable's nval 
Magazine, and commemorated as such, in the Chaldee Manuscript. — M. 



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62 CHEISTOPHEE IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

" But still the child would have 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 iDcen 
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, wh<», 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 
â– was in Lanarkshire, in which the Kirk o' Shotts is also situated. When Queen Caroline 
came to England, a fev.^ months after this, Lady Anne Hamilton (the Puke's sister), was her 
principal — indeed her only companion of rank. The family were then very liberal in politics, 
which would account for Jeffrey and his brother having sufficient intim.acy as to visit at 
Hamilton Palace.— M. 

t The Scotsman's fits are certainly of the nature of epilepsy, a disease thus defined : " a con- 
vulsive motion of the whole body, or some of its parts, with a loss of sensed — C. N. 



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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.f 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. 

t Jn 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. 



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64 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

The pole creaked ominously, and there was a continued starting of 
wooden pegs — but we sat down nevertheless to a sort of lunch, con- 
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 

adinburgh, " The whole edifice is in ruins !" The Scotsman was 

v^ard growling like a bear with a sore head — and the Dominie cried 

loud, " The pole, the pole," though certainly the last man in the 

7orld likely to reach it. By-and-by the Flunky rose up with a load 

;>f canvas on his Jback, like a week's sheeting of the Infirmary ; and 

this gave the Contributors an opportunity of escaping from their 

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 ca ye this 1 The 

Scots Magazeen % She's na worth a single doit. The bits o' rapes 

that should baud her up,* are a' rotten — ae plufF o' wun '11 coup her. 

We maunnaexpec' her to staun by hersel' — faith, hoist her upas 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. 

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1819-] 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 once, 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, v^ry 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 oflT, 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 ^Eschylus 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 aflected, and of the Tent, was long and tedious. 
The Contributors were beginning to bite their nails for want of 



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66 CHRISTOPHER m THE TENT. [Sept 

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 oome to 
the Kirk of Shotta. 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, H. M.* 

Excise Office, August 2Sth. 



11. 

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 Nmnber. 
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. 



IIL 

Sir, — It won't pay. Yours, "W. H.f 

P. S.— Reynolds is off. 

Chapter Coffee- Hcmse, London, August 24:th. 



lY. 



Dear Sir, — Gude faith, I maun mind the shop, ma man. Yours, however. 
The Corner. D. B., Junior.^ 

* H. M. -was intended foi^Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling, Man of the 
World, Julia de Roubign6, &c. Mr. Pitt made him Comptroller of the Taxes in Scotland, 
4vhich he held until his death in 1831, at the advanced age of 85. — M. 

t W. H. indicated William Hazlett, against whom — as a friend of Leigh Hunt's, a con- 
tributor to the Examiner 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, founded 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 much, that for years before his death, (which took place in 1852), he had not written for any 
periodical. 

X D. B., Junior, was a certain David Bridges, who had a clothier's shop in the High-street, 
Edinburgh, 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 Dilettanti, 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. 



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1819.] THE SHOOTma MATCH. 67 



Mr. Editor. — 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 Contributbr, 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 laBt 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 3 shilling subscribers. Performed 
by me, Willison Gl^iss. 

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 I that e'er green Mona'sf skeely childe, 
Should draw the breath impure of paynim dungeon vilde I'* 

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 noticed, kept a small inn, the familiar name of -which in Scot- 
land is •' a public." He compounded better punch than poetry — the latter being doggerel. — M. 

t This quotation from Spenser is very well in Hugh Mullion, for the family of Dr. Morris 
came, originally, from Anglesea. — C. N. 

I The sobriquet of authorship under which " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk" 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. 



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68 



CHRISTOPHER IK THE TENT. 



[Sept. 



Trial on the 26th, at 20 yards' didance, all shooting with No. 4 {except the Scots- 
man, who used rusty rtails, bits of glass, orndbroken types), at the expanded three 
Volumes of Dr. Peter Morris, of Fensharpe Hall, Aberystwiih. 



Editor 

1. Trial, found not io be charged 

2. Huug fire 

3. Flashed in the pan 

4. Went off accidentally 

6. Missed 

German Doctor. 

Flunky 

Scotsman, gun recalled 

Dr. Search 

Dominie, blunderbuss burst.. . 



Seven Young Men, pop-gun.. 



Wadding. 

Old Sermon. 



Gardener's grass. 
Foul linen. 

Ditto. 

Foolscap. 

Title-page of the 

1st edit, of Cona. 

None. 



Shot. 
Oz. 



2i 
5 

5 

lb. pease. 



Grainsj Leaves 
put in. I pierced. 



Ditto. Ditto. 

Ditto. Ditto. 

Ditto. Ditto. 

1 I Ditto. 

Ditto.^ Ditto. 

130 I 



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 Letters.—M. 



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1819.] THE PILGRIMAaE 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 Kunciman 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 night 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 pardon 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 Bnller 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 



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70 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 snuzzling of mouth and nostril 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 Duller, 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, oh I how dififerent." 

" Pray, Mordy," said Dr. Morris, " have you in good faith a bro- 
ther called Hugh, or is this letter all a quiz f *' 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 V Hogg chuckled to hear his friend Morris roasted ; 
" for," quoth he, " Pate is aye playing ofl* his tricks on me and my 
fiznomie ; and though I'm as good-natured a chield as maist folks, 
•deil tak me gin 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' my sell, and no for nane 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 nature 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 



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1819.] SCRIBBLES 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 ? Is Pro- 
fessor Leslie a fictitious character ? 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. Bnller himself 
seems to be undergoing a sort of naetempsychosis, 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 canines 
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 int<j 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 Peck- water is the name of one of the 
quadrangles (or, as he terms them, quads) of Christ-Church, Oxford. — C. N. 



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72 CHEISTOPHER m THE TENT. fSept 

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 half-way 
house between meaning and absurdity. The name (pronounce it) 
sounds like the passing buzz of a drone. 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 Csesar, aut Tims !" 

And then you tell me of Mister Price. I admire 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 !" — " What 
Price V — 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 



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i81'9.] THE EIKGl. 76 

of the real thing, of which gloves are but the representatives.* Cy 
Davis has retrieved his fame. He 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 Cy. 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 
pleasantly 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 — hecase he should hate him so asily ! P'' 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 tanked 
o' Scottish savages f 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 

* A promising plant of the Bristol Garden. He was beat by Turner, and it was thought by 
some, that he fought shy of the Welshman's left-hand — but t'other 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 ? — C.N. [Cy., or Cyril Davies, was a professional prize-fighter. So was 
Shelton, and so was Donelly, commonly called " Sir Daniel," on his own report that, after ke 
fought and beat Oliver, in July, 1819, he was invited to meet the Prince Regent, atBrightoi 
where he received the honor of Knighthood I — M.] 
VOL. I. 4 



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74: CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 Latin, 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 weel 
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 Wallace and Bruce 

'P . 

* 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. Lord Heber, Guenlos, 
Wilson, and Milman, are about the only true poets who have obtained this prize within the 
last half century. — M. 

t This was the Rev. Dr. Frodsham Hodgson, then Principal of Brazenose College, Ox- 
ford.— M. 



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1819.] BERZELIUS PENDRAGOK. 75 

on the Batiks 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 Miscellany. 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 commission 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 Hemans, 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 gentlem.an, 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 one 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 ne'er hadst left that sphere ; 
Or could we keep the souls we love, 

We ne'er had lost thee here, Mary I 
Though many a gifted ra^ind we meet, 

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, 
of Shenstone's, " Heu ! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam. tui meminesse !" — M. 



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76 CHEISTOPHEE IN THE TENT. [Sept 

land in 1818, and took up his abode with Ben Waters.* No man ever 
so looked the Contributor as the Kev. 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- 
ists 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),f 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- 

* Ben 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 Dilettanti 
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 Commercial 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 nose at every thing which was not from " liUn'un." Blackwood 
seized the tit-bits of each book, and made a ''righte merry and delichtful" article from them, 
concluding with a suggestion, that the Travelling Spinster and ttie Literary Bagman should 
marry. The article excited much amusement at the time, (by the way, it sold olF two editions 
of the books ! and is often referred to in Blackwood. — M. 



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1819.] AT Ambrose's. T7 

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 history 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 fraternity, 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 anomaly 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 Ambrose'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 
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.] 

t 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, efforts 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 The Doctor, pai 
excellence. Perhaps they give us this title as a quiz, but we take it as a compliment.— B. P. 



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78 CHEISTOPHEB IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 then, 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 it 
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 
Nouveautes," a perfect " Theatre de Varietes," — 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 nations ;" 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 1 Alas ! no, 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 
rhyme — which is bad enough ; and Lauerwinkle all reason — which is 
worse. Nay, we shall candidly confess — (for candor is our foible) — 

• 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 Blackwood or Kit North. 
In " Peter's Letters," the pseudo-Dr. Morris affected to be an enthusiastic disciple of Phj©» 
iiolo|fy, a science of recent discovery, in 1819. — M. 



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1819.] THE TWELVE C^SAKS. 79 

that if toe 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 C^sars, 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 ! W hy, 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, flannel 
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 suflfer 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 Letters there is a description of a day passed with. Jeffrey, at Craig-crook, (his 
country-seat near Edinburgh), 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. 



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80 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TEJSTT. [Sept 

remainder of it, to indulge him with more than our usual and stipu- 
lated proportion of dullness. 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 
Editor 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, then, — (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 foreigners visiting this coun- 

* The reader will probably have anticipated, even if we had not informed him, that when- 
ever it is needful for any written communication to pass between lis and our coadjutors, they 
invariably place 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. 



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1819.] ROYAL PALACES. 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 w^ay 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 
inspection of the royal inhabitants themselves— who not only patron. 
ized, but really took a personal interest in the progress of tne work â–  
and it may be not uninteresting to know, that the vignette, repre.- 

4* 



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82 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept 

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 Eoyal 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 no 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 TIL, born 1770, and married to the 
Langrave of Hesse Homberg, 1818. She was very accomplished, and drew and etched, as well 
as if she had been an artist. — M. 

t Carlton-House, long the favorite residence of George IV., was pulled down in 1827, and 
the pillars which formed the entrance colonnade, now are to be seen in the front facade of the 
jfational Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London. — M. 



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1819.] THE ARTICLES. 83 

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 powder 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 nap. 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 nigh 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 1802, made him Treasurer 
of the Navy, and in 1806, he was President of the Board of Control, but went out the next 
year, when the Granville ministry resigned. He was one of the leaders of the Opposition 
until 1827, when he was made Master of the Mint, under Canning, 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.— M. 



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84 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 w^ho 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, then ' for 
England, hot'" 

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 w\arrant 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. 



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1819.1 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 Toar 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 ?" 

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 V 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 V 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 
say in' 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 pretensions have been challenged by genealogists and antiquarians.— M. 



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86 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

' Fare thee well, and if for ever, 
Still for ever, fare thee well.' 

Faith, Doctor, ye great poets, the Scotts and the Byrons, and sic 
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 V " 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 woe. 
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 bath 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, London, for half a century, was m 
high feather in 1819. He was noted for eccentricities, illustrating the most solemn truths by 
observations which savored m.ore of the ludicrous than the pathetic, — more of the grotesque 
than the serious. He was uncle to Lord Hill, Commander-in-chief of the British army from 
1828 to 1842. The Rev. Rowland Hill was eighty-eight, at his death, in 1838.— M. 



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1819.] " THE PHANTOMS OF LOVe/' 87 

4. 

Oh 1 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. 

6. 
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 — 
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 ? 
Oh, no ! 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 Pliantoms of Woe ! 



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 I 

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, namely, 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 
man, 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 



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88 CHBISTOPHEK IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

roun's she lang, in a green Joseph, and a tappen o' feathers on her 
pow." 

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-tenens 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 bod}^, 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 Mack ay 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 !"J 
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. 

t Richmond, the black, was a pugilist in those days. — M. 

i Wherever the belief in fairies exists, there also is the belief, that green is their favorite 
color. In some of the country districts of Scotland and Ireland, it is considered unlucky (or 
uncannie) to have even a green lash to your riding- whip. — M. 



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1819.] ODOHERTY 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 Highlands." 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 Thane — 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 ^a^uxoX'Toi." Her 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 
swate 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.f 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 reach 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 BettyJ (so she 
called him), 

" Ah ! who can tell how hard it is to climb 
The steep where love's proud temple shines afar 1" 

* Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke, once the mistress 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 
patronage for money, which showed him guilty of great carelessness, at least. On this he 
resigned the com.mand of the army, which he subsequently resumed. — M. 

t To understand this it must be explained, 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 M'Whirter, who kept the " Goat in Armor" tavern, 
in that city of brotherly-love.— M. 

t Dr. James Beattie, author of several philosophical works, and the poem called The Min- 
strel. He died in 1803.— M. 



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90 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

"Never mind the money — my dearest Morgan — Och ! 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 hew.p^ and in what house of correc- 
tion !" "Och — you vile sadducee." — "I suspect," said 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 (Hibernice 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 "wido-w, for it distinctly averred 
that Odoherty had married her, and made her, in her anger at his desertion, perpetrate sundry 
wrathful verses to him, which end thus : — 

" When you've drunk my gin, and robbed my till, and stolen all my pelf, ye 
Sail away, and think no more on your wife at Philadelphy." 
But this belongs rather to the Life of Odoherty, in Dr. Maginn's Works, than to THE Tent, 
and the sayings and doings therein. — M 



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1819.] 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 nimbly upon the 
table as Sir Francis Burdett or Mr. John Hobhouse* could have 
done, the American Deriiosthenes (who seemed still to have pebbles 
in his mouth, though far inland), thus opened it,f and spake a 

LECTURE ON WHIGGISM. 

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. 
Let an object, for instance, be presented in a 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 ! 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. Hothouse 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 7nouth," is incorrect, for without a plate it would be 
impossible to show the manner in which Dr. Magnus opened his mouth. — C. N. 



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92 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 lago. 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 
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 thau 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 



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1819.] THE TEA-PABTY. 93 

lecture on politics is procured, without the ingenious essayist haviug 
been at all aware of the ultimate meaning of his production.* " As 
the lecture was but short, will you have another 1" 

" 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 
large 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 small 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 t^a) 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 nasty 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 nev§r 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. 
nuity of the alteration will be seen. 

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94 CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

" Come, come," said we, " 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 ' m- 
come^^* I was advised by Dr. Ninian Hill of Glasgow, to carry her 
to the country for a cha,nge of air ^ as he called it, or as I have been 
informed, it is termed by Dr. Gregory, mutatio cceli. 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. 
Mclver'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- 
ler, 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. 



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1819.] LEDDRIE GREEN. 95 

Brazennose 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 excellent new Song, 

Writtenhy'RAiLLi^ Jar vie, 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 Leddrie 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. 

8. 
At Tunbridge ye who sip the springs, 

Or at the Sussex Pad' are seen ; 
Ah ! if you heard the rill that rings, 

Perennial close to Leddrie Green, 

4. 
And ye at Harrowgate impure. 

Who shudder o'er your drafts unclean, 
'Twould be a shorter ride, I'm sure, 

And sweeter far, to Leddrie Green. 

6. 
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. 



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96 CHEISTOPHEE IN THE TENT. [Sept 

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 Leddrie 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 w^ith the following song, 
his eyes all the while turned towards Mrs. Magnus Oglethorpe, 
whose twinklers emanated still but eloquent responses not to be 
misunderstood. 

inconstancy; A song to MRS. m'whirter. 
By Mr. Odoherty. 
1. 
"Ye fleeces of gold amidst crimson enroU'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 !" 
It was thus the fair maid I had loved would have staid 

The last gleamings of passion in me ; 
But the orb's fiery glow in the soft wave below 
Had been cooled — and the thing could not be. 
2. 
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. 



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1819,] MRS. OGLETHORPE. ^7 

8. 
If a ricli-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 yoai don*t 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-strickeu slave for a moment may rave, 

But ere long, oh 1 how distant he'll be ? 

6. 
Why — 'tis only in name, you, e'en you, are the same 

With the SHE that inspired my devotion, 
Every 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 1 why then complain that so short was your reign ? 

Must all I^ature 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 /ay 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 then, 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. 

VOL. I. 5 



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98 CKRISTOPHER IN THE TEKT. [Sept. 

CHAUNT. BY MRS. mVhIRTER. 

Tune. — TJie Powldoodies of Burran* 

1. 

I WONDER what th^ mischief was in me when a bit of my music I proffered ye ! 

How could any woman sing a good song when she's just parting with Morgan 

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,f 
So I can only hum a few words to the old chaunt of the Powldoodies of Burrau.j: 

Chorus. — Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, 

The green, green Powldoodies of Burran, 

The green Powldoodies, the clean Powldoodies, 

The gaping Powldoodies of Burran I 

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, (fee. <fec. 

3. 

By the same rule, says my dear Mr. Bushe, one night when I was sitting beside 

Mausey, 
" Molly, love," 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 1 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, 
And then comes her beau on pretence of a watch-ribbon, or the like I purtest. 

Oh ! the Powldoodies of Burran, <fec. <fec. 

* The Powldoodies of Burran are oysters, of -which more will be said and sung in future 
Numbers of this Work.— C. N. 

t Bushe, afterwards Chief Justice of Ireland ; Plunket, Lord Chancellor ; Grattan, who 
truly said of Irish independence, " I sat by its cradl©^ I followed its hearse ;" 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. 

i Malahide, near Dublin, supplies the oysters, called the Powldoodies of Burran.— M. 

II 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. 



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1819.] " THE POWLDOODIES OF BUERAN." 99 

5. 
But as for me, I could not withstand him, 'tis the beautiful dear Ensign I mean, 
When he came into the Shining Daisy* with his milkwhite smallclothes so clean, 
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 calf e'er an Irish lass had the good luck to see. 

Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, <fec. <fec. 

6. 
His 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, &e. &Q. 

1. 
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 ! the Powldoodies of Burran, ^c. <fec 

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, <fec. <fec. 

9. 
Says I to myself, I'U 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 a very 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 1 the Powldoodies of Burran, <fec. &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 sign of Mrs. M'Whirter's chop-house at Philadelphia. Sir 
Daniel Donelly hoisted the same sign over his booth the other day at Donnybrook Fair. — C. N. 



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100 CHEISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 ! the Powldoodies of Burran, <fec. tfec. 

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. 
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, 
1 liked best to dine on fried tripes, and wash it down with a little hot brandy and 

water. Oh I the Powldoodies of Burran, &c. <fee. 

12. 
If I had the least bit of genius for poems, I could make some very nice songs 
On the cruelties of some people's sweethearts, and some people's sufferings and 

wrongs ; 
For 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 1 the Powldoodies of Burran, &e. &g 

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 ! the Powldoodies of Burran, <fec. <fec. 

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 I 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- 



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1819.] THE SHAINDEYDAK. 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 excellent 
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 
most 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 
night, 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, 
snug, 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 nimble 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? 

" 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 ofl* 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 respecting 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 holding two persons. — M. 



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102 CHBISTOPHER IN THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 letter frae Lord Fife, as braid's a 
bannock. Black Hamish, that procht it, says there's an awfu' 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. 



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Sfir llafiit 2lafi of tfte KtnU 



Havin& been thus kindly prepared by the letter of our friend the 
Thane, we ordered a reveille 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 
eyes. 

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 front, 
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 japanned 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 



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104: CHEISTOPHKR EST THE TENT, [Sept 

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 ccmversation, 
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 !" 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 ^so 
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 Gianetti, and exposes to the gaze of her admirers nothing 
but a pair of red ears projecting fi:om 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.- 
morphoses 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 
one." who is nearly 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, London, 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 one 
barrier. His own assertion was, " Had my friends continued in power one fortnight longer, 
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 
sketched the characters of Burke, Lord North, and Fox) to a new edition of the third book of 
Bellendenus. This has been considered the most successful modern imitation of the style of 



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1819.] 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 ?" " Mr. Editor," returned the Doctor, 
bowing apstfxwrarw^ (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 K%eLvpTdT7]v aWepLov otKcaag vsoKiv, 
OvK. olg 6' 6g7)v Tifi'^v vjap' dvOpurnoig (pepet, 
'0(T8f r* epag-ug rfjad' rrjg x^^P^C ^X^i-C' 

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, in 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 and 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 ain 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 Johnson," 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. 

5* 



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106 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 noo — 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 nae 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 th^ 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 — ©swv to -ztfavra xarop&av. It is of no use to indulge in these 
regrets, now the unfortunate occurrence has happened ; it cannot be 
undone — x Xpovo^ o •cs'avTwv 'aarrip. 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, lxr\SsT^ 
zioLziTOLivs -cJoptfjov — It is done — it is done — let us dig the grave." 
" Most willingly," cried BuUer 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, a'za'o'za'Turov 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 
S'za'iTaqjja, 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 
leave that to them that has met wi' nae loss — puir Hector !" so 
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 -ztfo^ov xaTa'uiS'^a^, 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 manner of editing a work, or smothering the 
text beneath an enormous quantity of Latin notes. This travesty, by the way, shows great 
ability in the manner in which the Latin language is familiarly treated. — M. 



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1819.] 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 Chald^i Canem, 

FatO PR^PROPERO (bum (fxb'rccl ro^OV OVX S':(S')(Sl'^ dominus) abreptum, 
Carmina E«ri«ra(p»a. 



'Gf oiy ajLL(l>Le7:ov Ta(^ov *EKTopog — 

Horn. H. (5. 804. 

quantum mutatus ah illo 

Hectore^ qui, dtc. Virg. ^n. ii. 275. 

I. 

*E/CTopoff eifiL Kovtg, rov drj Kare'Ke^vev, a^Orj 
'OTT/la 2,al3o)v 6 Nofievg^ axpeX & iirjd' cr* e7]v' 

OvSe TL fioL xpc^i-f^/^V^^j avovTaroQ\ o)v ye, NcTTijpov 
Ba/ccjv ov yap eyo) cTTjdeaiv a/j,(^' e^opovv. 

II. 

G ^eLv\ ayytikov Ka/ied-(ai*)-oviOif,|| hn Ty6e 
Ksifiaif Tov KTBLvev TCTjKTovofievg^ avoiiQg, 



NOT^. 
I. 

Cum mos dudum apud omnes hujuscemodi in rebus versatos invaluerit, poematiis 
— sive suis, sive aliorum — notas versibus plus nimio longiores attexendi, mihi 
quoque eorum exemplis obsecuto aliquantillum in commentando excurrere visum 
est. Versus nempe ipsi, utpote minoris pretii, ceu paxilli tantum deinceps sunt 
reputandi, quibus annotationes (livoris nonnunquam, ssepius eruditionis ostentandaB 
gratia) omni scibili refertse appendantur. 

* Find. 01. ii. 160. Accuratius scilicet Pastor ille, et cantare et respondere 
paratuSj 

— Tcva pallet 
E/c fiaTiddKag avre <ppe — 
vog evK^eag oig-ovg 
letg. 

Sclopporum quippe glande et pulveve nitrato (ut cum lexicographis loquar) 
oneratorum imperitus sinistram libri, ad quern coUineabatur, paginam ne vel 
unico plumbi grano penetravit. Videsis non semel laudand. Blackw. Magaz. 
xxix. 600. Dextra ejusdem libri pagina ne ab ullo jaculantium laederetur, in 
causa fuit Neperi Disseriatio, de qu^ infra copiosius. De Nepero ipso, quicquid 
contra oblatrent cynici, sermone proverbiali tuto est pronuncianduin, " he has saved 
his Bacon." 

f Hsec appellatio quam prob5 cani Scotico conveniat, documento sit Swiftii S. 
T. P. et S. P. D. apud Hibernos perjucunda ilia de Vocabulis Veterum Disquisitio ; 
in qu^ Hectoris conjugem Andromachen Caledonii cujusdam nobilis, Andrew 
Mackay, certo certius fiHam fuisse contendit. Quidni ergo et viri nomen ejusdem 
quoque patriae sit ? Gaudent quippe Scotigenae Trojanorum nominibus. Vixit 
haua ita pridem Hector Monro : vivit hodie, ut ex Actis Diurnis conjicere licet, 
Leopoldi Prinoipis Illustrissimi hospes, .^neas Mackintosh ; synonymique plures 



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108 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

avidpQTL in Scotia reperiri possuut. Pace vero tanti viri dixerim, noDnihil me in 
etymo, hacked mid tore, ubi copula and vTrepcrvlTiaSug redundet, solitae ejus subti- 
litatis desiderare. Melius forsan, quia ad linguae Scoticae genium accommodatius, 
" Ileck ! tore /" lacerum quippe herois corpus contemplantis cujusdain exclaniatio, 
rationem nominis redderet. Exemplis item (ut hoc obiter moueam) a Swiftio 
allatis, plurima quivis cito addiderit : e. g. Charon, qu. carry-on ; Cerberus, 
"/S^V, bear (i.e. endure) w»," ^nea sic monstrum illud TpLnapTjvov inter transeuiidum 
blandius compellante, <fec. <fec. 

2i;i;e/c(5o;^i/cwf quoque, cum Hectora ssepius Maeonides vocaverit TroL/LLeva lacjv^, 
pastoris canis praeclaro illo nomine ornari posset. 

X Neperi de Bacone rcj avsraTG) dissertationem cum ipse, quae mea est infelici- 
tas! non perlegerim, valde dubito utrum non vnlneratum (vulcauiis quippe armis 
contectum) an non penetratum interpretari debeam. Lucem foi-san voci affundet 
quod de eo Christophorus Noster, in Blackw. Mag. ib., posteris prodidit ; sucJi im- 
penetrable stuff it proved to be. Quicquid vero de eo sit statuendum, mali pro- 
pulsatorem Baconera non adfuisse jure miretur aliquis, cum inter ejus Pastorisque 
Ettricensis nomen (Hogg) necessitudo arctior intercedet ; quod tamen clarissimum 
illud philosophiae decus perneg^sse, Hoggio quodam per coUum mox suspendendo 
ad miserationem movendam strenu^ affirmante, eel. Josephus Millerus lepida sane 
(ut saepe) narratiunculi scriptis consignavit: "-4 Hog, till it is hung, is not 
Bacon." 

Verbosiorem esse de qud agitur dissertationem, nee tuto vigilare cupientibus 
sub noctem in manus sumendam queruntur multi; quod profecto vel nominis ejus 
praenominisque syllabae primae fatali quadam conspiratione praenotare videntur, 
cum MAC a jLLGKog Dor. pro jlitjkoc derivetur, et nap Anglice somnuin sonet, 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, II. 
r. 417, &c., designaverit, quercui ilium vnai ^nzTjg narpog Atog cadenti assimilans, 

vemaculdque plane (quod nulli non suboluerit) figura addens, Sslvti 6e -d^eeiov 

yivETat odjLijj. 

II. 
II Olim legebatur, 

*i2 ^eiv', ayfeilov AaKedaifiovioig, bri f7}de 
Keijued-a, roig kelvqv tz eL-^ofievoi vojUifxoig. 
Hoc, quoad ductum literarum caeteraque in conjecturis criticis observari sueta, 
quam prope quod in textu dedimus Epigramma contingit ! 

En artem, qua ad doloris acriiis urgentis vim plen^ exprimendam tmesi factd, 
atque plorantis syllaba AI in medio vocabulo inserta, poeta tantum non in fletum 
.secum legentes abripiat ! Decantatum istud de Matilda Pottinger poema,in quo, 
nullo ad affectum respectu habito, oiioioreTievTS (Anglic^ Rhyme) efficiendi causa 
verba quaedam intercisa sunt ; e. g. 

Thou wast the daughter of my Tu- 
tor, Law Professor at the U- 
niversity, <fec. (Rovers.) 

quanto hoc nostrum exsuperat ! Yehementioris scilicet est luctus voculam quam 
sententiam discindere; ideoque, me judice, AI istud patheticum omnibus veterum 
Tragicorum ejulatibus, e, e, e, oToroTOtf oroToroLy &c. narrationis cursum impedi- 
entibus merito est anteponendum. 

Primse vocum partes, Aa/ce et KaXe facillim^ inter se permutari posse quis non 
videt ? neu mihi vitio verterit quisquam (Buchanano Junioque auctoribus fretus, 
quorum hie KaTiridovcg rj xapi'£0(^ct, iHe Nympha Caledonias, &c. scriptum reliquit) 
me non per tj secundam syllabam in Kaledovioig extulisse. NuUus enim dubitat 



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1819.] NOTES ON hector's EPITAPH. 109 

quin id metri nejcessitati, eodem quo in a-^avarog casterisque ejusdem farinsB ver- 
bis modo prima syllaba producitur, acceptum referri debeat. Id si non satis 
placeat, legat, per me licet, ayfeiXov av Ka?i7}^ovLOLg, Veoeresque omnes in voeula 
ilia simplice AI delitescentes uno quasi ictu Caligula alter sustulerit. 

§ Vocem TTTjKTovojuevQ non alias occurrere si quis objeceit, is velim secura repu- 
tet, quot veterum libri in quibus forsan erat reperieuda omnino perieriut ; nee 
fistula canentem pastorem verbo ad sensum aptiori describi potuisse. HrjKnda 
quippe musicorum instrumentum pecten esse vel tyronibus notum est. 

Cum vero pastoribus septentrionalibus eves non solum paseere sed etiara ton- 
dere moris sit, legant fortassis alii (vulgatse lectioni, ut mihi quidem videtur, uimis 
arete insistentes) 7reLK0vo/j,evg. 

Haec dum avroax^dia^ovrog more effunderem disticbon, quoddam mihi in men- 
tem venit, pace tua, lector, leviter emendandum : 

MijSev ajiapTEiv eg-i Qeov, Kai iravra Karopd-ovv 
Et* (iiOTTj. fzotpav 6' ovtl (pvyeiv eizopev. 

HsBc ita correxeris : 

'^rjde Maparrov ean deovrcov Tvavra Karopd-ovv 
EfcSareov. Moipav / ovri ^vysLv sizopev. 

Quis hie poetam de rebus nuperrimd in India gestis vaticinantem non depre- 
henderit ? nomen ipsum habes Marchionis illius, quem ducem Scotia nostra pau- 
cos abhinc annos suspexit, equitatus jam nunc Mahrattici hac iliac discurrentis 
victorem Britannia omnis suaque ipsius lerne demiratur. 

Aliud item, ne diutius te teneam, poetae e longinquo quid esset futurum pros- 
picientis exemplum accipe ; Drydeui uempe versus biuos, in quibus homunculos 
vulgo dictos Spa- Fields Reformers, ductoremque eorum famosum, quasi nomina- 
tim designate 

Better to hunt in fields for health unhought, 
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 

ubi r<^ corruption opponitur vox health, eodem plan^ sensu €[uo salus populi su- 
preraa lex esse dicitur ; to unhought venum exposita suffragia tangit ; the doctor 
procerem quemdam, ut ita dicam, with cunning (Qu ? Canning) finger indigitat ; 
TO draught denique (sono quidem atque Metaphora juxta 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 zsavv offerat.* 

Neque si etymis nonnunquam primo viso tantum non ridendis usus esse videar, 
suecensebunt mihi qui Bryantii rov fiaKupLTov, aliorumque 6 sectatoribus ejus 
tomos pervolverint ; qualia sunt, e. g., quas 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 himahout to pass through London on his way, prepared, we suppose, in illustration of this 
expression, like another Xerxes with his myriads — rrjvde T7JV TToTiLV drjpaaaL (-^schyl. Pers. 
238), not, however, it may be feared, with the view of rendering it Baac?ieL iTJijKOOg, (Ibid.) 
The word OrjpaGai, besides its obvious allusion, furnishes one of those deep and hidden senses 
which escape the vulgar eye. We may take its meaning from Herodotus aayavEVHGL T8g 
avBpcjTSHg Ihtov tov rpowov. avrjp avdpog atpa/uevog rrig X^^P^C (could there be a more 
distinct enunciation of what took place on the advent of the Great Known at Manchester?) 
dia zsaarjg Tr)g vt]C8 dieTidaaL eKdrjpevovreg rag avdpo)7rovg (vi. 31.) But we are becom- 
ing quite a Baller.-C. N. ^^^^^^ ^^ GOOgk 



110 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

Idem valere adagia, ein tqv Svaxcp^crc kgc (STiaSepoc^ eTttxecpovvrov dicta, 

1. Ai| TTjv fiaxatpaVf 

2. KopCJVTJ TOV (TKopmov, 
8. Avayvpov Kcvecv, 

4. Ignes suppositi cineri dqlosOy 

5. Te^pri izvp virod^a/iTrofievov) et 

6. Aeovra vvGaetv, 

apud Parcemiographum quemdam olim legisse me memini. Hoc ita esse, vide, 
.lector, quomodo ipse paucis leviter immutatis, via (ni multum fallor) baud ante 
tritd probatum iverim. 

1. Lege itaque, leni in asperum verso, 'A^tt ttjv juaxatpav (hay sc. j. p.) et habes 
Duperum, de in Com. Lancastr. tumultum luce ipsa clarius descriptum. Mmis 
forsan esset verbum premere, si in to Maxaipav Mane. Iron delitescere me suspi- 
cari affirmarem ; semi-grsecisset licet lingua anglicana, et vox eTrixetpovvrtJV sic 
tandem propria sua significatione gavisura esse videatur — Militum quippe Man- 
cuniensium enses, qui quam fuerint Svcrxepsig Kai ^"kaSepoi omnibus fere, k qua- 
eunque demum parte stent, in ore versatur. 

2. ILopuvTj TOV GKopKiov quid sibi velit, jure quis dubitare possit. Addito p 
solum omnis statini difficultas e medio tollitur. Kopuvrjp {Batty, the Coroner) rov 
GKopTXiov, quern noxium quoddam animal esse (Qu ? Angl, a Harmer) quis non 
videt? 

3. Avayvpov klvclv, quod in Aristophane occurrit, vix ipse, senigmatum hujusmodi 
apud recentiores -^dipus, Erasmus expediverit ; cum anagyrum genium quoddam 
fuisse harioletur, qui propter violatum ejus sacellum vicinos omnes fundi tus ever- 
tit ! apage : non placet. Ego Travrjyvpcv lego, sc. to disperse a Manchester mob-— 
utrum €v KELfievov (i. e. well-disposed) anon, penes alios judicium est futurum. 

4. Vice Cineri substituas "fineri," pro Finerty (hoc enim, quod aiunt nostrates, 
Jits to a T;) et planum fit omne, in quo anteaob tenebras circumfusas offendebatur. 

5. TeippT] interpfeteris, pene ad literam. The Free. 

6. Denique Aeovra vvaaetv quid proprie sit, non satis liquet : nisi per aphare- 
sin pro ^aTzoleovra fuerit dictum, quem inter prospera quidem pupugisse non 
temere quivis ausus esset. Hujus ceram qua, dum fortuna fuit, inimici damnaban- 
tur, ver6 notavit Ovidius ; utpote quam 

de longcB collectain jlore cicutce 

Melle sub infami Corsica misit apis* 
Nonne jaua vides. ut hsec omnia inter se concinant ? 

SED MANUM QUOD AIUKT DE TABULA. 

****** 

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 Doctor, 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 
Ns^Tjpo^ was repeated in any of its cases. At the end he withdrew 

* Anne hie ad Apin, Deum, sc. JBgyptiorum, ciualem se Dux iste GalloMim impie professus 
est, aUuditur T-S. P. Hosted by VjOOQIC 



1819.] TIMS SHOOTS DE. PABR's WIG. Ill 

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 in till the Magazine — Lord safe ye ! 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 liiysel, 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 coming hame aw by his lain, and what's 
that he has gotten on the end o' his gun V 

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 !" cried the Shepherd (who, by-the-way, had all along 
treated Tims and Price with unsufferable indelicacy). " 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 f " God knows what it is," said the 
Londoner, " 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' I 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 

* Dr. Christison, one of the Professors in the Faculty of Medicine in Edinburgh Univer- 
sity. — M. 



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112 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

harbored no resentment, and all was soon peace and harmony. 
" This beats old Routh's quite to nothing, Buller," said Seward — 
" Egad, Seward," cries BuUer, " 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 f — " 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, xaxov 
sv xsi/jLsvov Mr. Seward." — " Yes, yes," cried BuUer, " /xtj xivsi — /xii 
xjvsj." 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. 

Fifteen 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 iisya ^au/xa 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.f "Ma A/a," cries the Pre- 
bendary, " the old reproach, 'uioXu6pvXKr\Tov illud ; the Boiwno^ vg has 
been nobly wiped away by this unlearned Theban. To speak with 
the immortal Casaubon, " Talia quis non amisisse vellet, per te deni- 
que, vir egregi recuperaturus." This weighty matter having beeu 

* So Burke, Lord North, and Charles James Fox -were designated, in Parr's Preface to Bellen- 
denus, 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 160'2. He wrote a work called Cicero Princeps, which was published in 
16(J8, and afterwards included in his Bellendenus de Static, which Parr partly edited in 
1787.— M. 

t Parr'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 Varvicensis. — M. 

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1819.] BEEAKFAST. 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 Eoyal 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 o ziappog^ 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 Mack ay 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 rinnan baddies, 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, 
'^jentamdum mehercule ipsi Montano^ ipsi Cripso invidendumJ'^ 
" What say you, you dog '? 

' Such food is fit for disembodied spirits.' 

Good eating is not confined, as of old, intra centesimum lapidem /" 
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 amount, 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, 
ijy Mr. Godwin, in which the divine was treated with less ceremony than he conceived him- 
self entitled to. — M. 



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114 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 
Leopold* 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-boon" went by, 

" Wafting up his own naountains 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 ^Eneas shone. 

The feelings of Seward found quite a different form of expression. 
A fine animal by Diana — " demme. Duller, 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 honors. " 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 declining 
the visit, but " a domiciliary search for cold meat, through the whole city of Selkirk, produced 
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- 
Eathy for Leopold in his bereavement. The marriage of the late Duke of Kent with Prince 
eopold's sister (of which Queen Victoria is the sole surviving issue) would probably not have 
taken place (in isiS), if there had not been the previous family connexion created, by the 
Princess Charlotte's union with Leopold.— M. 



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1819.] PRmcE 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 th*e 
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 
diadem of scarf and plume — another seen indistinctly lying as in 
ambush among the high bloom of the lifeather — 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. 



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116 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept 

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 welkin 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 Huntlyf 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 Thane, 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. J 

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 PRiNrcE 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, I remarking 
that the highest of all rank was that conferred by genius, took the 

* Odoherty. — M. t No-w Duchess of Gordon, residing at Huntly Lodge, Aberdeenshire. — M. 

t The Earl of Fife's Shooting Lodge. It is close to Balmoral, the Scottish residence of Queen 
Victoria. — M. 

II Afterwards Duke of Gordon. On his death, in 1837, without legitimate male issue, the 
Dukedom and most of the estates went to his next-of-kin, the present Duke of Richmond, and the 
Earl 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 ninety-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 Bias, who daily rose an old man, 
and was made vp, 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 
' -. - " .,. ^ •-.■. ' ^ have been amusing, 

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age of 87, 1 saw him dance a polka, and his affectation of juvenility would have been amusing, 
if, by contrast, it were not almost painful. — M. 



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1819.] KIT KORTH^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 

Health 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,! 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. 

t 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 
affray 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 done, 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 m.eetings, 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, not 
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. 



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118 THE LAST DAT OF THE TENT. [Sepfc. 

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 listen to the audacious brutality of their treason and 
their blasphemy. 

" Ours, gentlemen, is not the only country wherein ages of happi- 
ness 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 w^ell 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, — Summce audacice — eg ens — -/actios us : 

* 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 mind 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 nothing. 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 Fran- 
cis Burdett closed his liberal career by joining the Tory party. Hobhouse, who came into 
Parliament from Westminster as an extreme radical, settled down into a placeman, and is now 
a peer. — ^M. 



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1819.] HENEY HUNT. 119 

quern ad perturhandam Rempuhlicam 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 Oaia- 
line — the total absence of which, however, and of all that it implies, 
lends ev-en a more odious air of abomination to the rough and unvar- 
nished 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 ©f 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- 
ness 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 1S30-'31, was such a m^ere 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- 
mons. He was a man of considerable landed property, inherited from his ancestors, when he 
entered public life, but ''the broad acres" 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 
corn (or an untaxed substitute for coffee, and called "Hunt's Breakfast Powder,) and then as 
a manufacturer of Blacking. William Peel brother-in-law to Sir Robert, was in Parlia.ment 
when Hunt sat there. The Peel family, although possessing immense 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 honorable 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 wiioever 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 
gentleman." Hunt sat down, applauded on all sides, and William Peel did not again provoke 
him.— M. 



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120 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 Leopold. 

L 

Look, oh ! look from the BoTver — '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. 

IL 

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. 

IIL 
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 shoiit, 
That proclaimed to our mountains the Saxon was nigh. 

* Tn August, 1822, Scotland \ras visited by George IV., who had gone to Ireland and Hano- 
ver in the preceding autumn. — M. 



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1819.] HOGa'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 Eiin 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 a^s 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 way 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, <bc. 

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, 

Shining so lonely. ^-^ I 

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122 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 Ajina pities you to-night, 
"What a weary way you've been 
Since yon first balmy kiss yestreen, 
Shining so lonely I 

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. 
PaiT. 

5. The Right Hon. Robert Peel, the Member for Oxford — by Mr. Seward. 

6. Charley Bushe, the most admirable Judge, the most eloquen1^ speaker — and 
the most delightful companion in Ireland — by Mr. Odoherty. 

7. Mr. Davison, of Oriel, the star of Isis — by Mr. BuUer. 

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 Da vies* — three 
times three — to which (need we add ?) the whole of the company gladly assented. 

Dr. Parr was the first to hint his wish for another song — and 
called loudly upon BuUer of Brazennose, who, after a little hesita- 
tion, took courage, aftd told the Uoctor 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* OTHEE night, as I passed by old Anthony-wood, 
I saw Father Green m 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 Blackivood.—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. 



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1819.] THE friae's faeewell. 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 ! &q. 

2. 

" Oh, Oxford 1 I leave thee — and can it be true ? 
I accept of a living ? I bid thee adieu ? 
Thou scene of my rapture, in life's early morn. 
Ere one pile of soft laYnbskin my back did adorn — 
When sorrows came rarely, and pleasures came thick, 
And my utmost distress was a long-standing tick. 
With a heigh ho ! <fec. 

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 ho ! <fec. 

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 ! (fee. 

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 ho I <fec. 

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 ho I <fec. 

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 



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124: THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 to 
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 uni- 
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 DhuP 
Hail to the maiden that graceful advances I 

'Tis the Helen of Isis if right I divine. 
Eros ! thou classical god of soft glances, 

Teach me to ogle and make the nymph mine. 
Look on a tutor true, 
Ellen ! for love of you 
Just metamorphosed from blacksmith to be^u. 
Hair combed, and breeches new, 
Grace your trim Roderick Dhu — 
While every gownsman cries, wondering, " Ho ! ho I" 

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 — 

Psha 1 this vile modem Greek 

Won't do for me to speak 

Let me try — Zg)ji, finffac ayazsu ! 

Zooks ! I don't like its tone : 

Now let me try my own — 
KATGI MET, EAENH, SOY TAP EPQ ! 

But, ha ! there's a young Christ-church prig that I plucked once ! 
. I fear he'll make love to her out of mere spite ; 
Ha ! twirl thy cap, and look proud of thy luck, dunce, 
But Greek will prevail over grins, if I'm right. 

By Dis ! the infernal God I 

See, see ! they grin ! they nod ! 
Q fioL dvg-yvcj ! £2 Ta?iag eyu ! 

Zounds ! should my faithless flame 

Love this young Malcom Graeme, 
'Oraroi I ToraroL I ^ev I uozjol I Q I 

But come ! 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 bluffj 
Levett, and Good enough — 
All clap my back and cry, " Rhoderick's her beau !" ^ | 

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1819.] odoheety's song. 125 

Come, then, your influence propitious be shedding, 

Gnomes of Greek metre I 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 Hephsestion rise, 
Haply to thee my success I may owe. 

Sound then the Doric string, 

All, all in chorus sing, 
Joy to Hephsestion, 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 Highness 
and Lordship every drap o't, an' it were melted diamonds — but I'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, of which both 
words and music are his own. 

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 vour mien 

That you doubt my affection — or scorn it. 

Ah me ! 

Not 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 ! how gladly Td 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. 

Ahmel 

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 mel 



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126 THE LAST DAY OF THE TENT. [Sept. 

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 I 

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 head? topsy-turvy. 

Ail 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- 
ble 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, nae mair nor yoursel, Mr. 
Chairman," were 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 ! 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 ! 

?. 

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 ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo 1 

* 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. 



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1819.] THE bishop's CHAJSTT. 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 toupee | 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 mo I 

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 ! 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 ne'er shall take pot-luck with Captain Paton no mo 1 

n. 

Or if a bowl was mentioned, the Captain he would ring, 
And bid Nelly run to the West-por^ 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'ex" shall taste the like of Captain Paton's punch no mo I 

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 ! we ne'er shall hear the like of Captain Paton no mo I 

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 I 



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128 THE LAST DAT OF THE TENT. [Sept 

11. 

And in spite of all that Cleghorn j 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^iorn-kirk — 'tis the way we all must go. 
Oh I we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo I 

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 ! 
For it ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo 1 

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 1" 

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." 



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NO. I.— MARCH, 1822. 

Christopher North, 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 ? — ^The Fleet, I suppose. How long have 
you lain there 1 

Odoherty', I have been out these three weeks. I suppose, for any 
thing you would have advanced, I might have lain there till Kingdom- 
come. 

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 ? — A poem 1 

Editor, Poems ! There's poetry enough without paying you for 
it. Have you seen Milman's new tragedy '?f 

Odoherty, 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 " name was as 
it had been the color of ebony." — M. 

t " 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 Dram.a. " Samor, Lord of the Bright City," a heroic 
poem in twelve books, appeared in 1818. *' The Fall of Jerusalem," and '' Anna Boleyne," 
were followed by ''The Martyr of Antioch" and " Belshazzar." Milman has contributed 
largely to the Quarterly Review, edited Gibbon's Decline 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 concealing that stately structure from view), and was appointed Dean 
of St. Paul's in 1849. As 'a poet, Dr. Milman's reputation is even now almost traditionary. 
Of his dramatic works, ' Fazio" alone is known to the bulk of the present generation, and ^ 

that from its frequent representation on the stage. Dr. Milman is now [18541 aged ^tyOOOlP 

6* ' ^ O 



130 NOCTES AMBEOSIAIT^. [March, 

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 then. What made you puff Procter f 
so much at first ? 

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- 
gan ? 

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. 

Editor, Let's hear it. 

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 done justice to the Quarterly Review; — his prose is deficient in 
force and terseness. The present Sir John T. Coleridge, no-w 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. — M. 

t Procter, who was Byron's schoolfellow 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 Colonna, The 
Flood of Thessaly, a Life of Edmund Kean (v. aich 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 Dot 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 name " the world will not willingly let die." — ^M. 

t Campbell, the poet, edited Colburn's JWto Monthly Magazine, from 1821 to 1831, at dB500 
per jijiJium, with separate payment, as a contributor, for all articles by himself. This im- % 



1822.] LITEKARY GOSSIP. 131 

miserable set of buUaboos 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 ? 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. 

Editor, What row ? and with whom 1 

Odoherty, Why, they call Murray Emperor of the West, and 
Longman and Company the Divan. They've fallen out about 
Mother Eundell's book upon cookery. I told Kitchener the next 
day, that I thought his own book as good a one.f 

Editor, Shanaeless fellow ! Don't you remember how you cut it 
up ? 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. J 

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 Lwndon— a 
pleasant lounging place, where public affairs, books, and personal gossip, supplied the conver- 
sation — Ridgeway's, in Piccadilly, was for the Whigs. To this hour, both places retain this 
distinctive character. — M. 

t In 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 snug house close toFitzroy-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 entertainments, which Theodore Hook frequently 
attended, judgment was solemnly passed upon the Doctor's gastronomic inventions or im- 
provements since the last repast. Sometimes, it is true, opinions would be balanced (particu- 
larly if the dinner 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 trial. 
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 Perisaltic Persuader, and sometimes would insist on coaxing his guests into 
swallowing one or two before dinner ! — M." 

if The story never was told in Blackwood, and is too good to be lost ; — ^Dr. Tomline had 



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182 NOCTES AMBROSIAK^. [March, 

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. 

Editor. 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. 

Editor. Do. What's afoot among the Tumbledowns 1 

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 Bishoip of Lincoln by him, and 
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. The 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 Latinized signature, as Bishop of Winchester. It happened 
that Murray was ignorant of this, and considering it a great liberty for an utter stranger to 
write a three-line letter to him, sent a sharp reply to the effect, that " Mr. Murray had received 
Mr. George Winton's note, and declined the proposed publication." Presently, Mr. Croker, (of 
the Admiralty), came in, and Murray, whose dignity continued to be slightly ruffled, 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 explained the matter of the Episcopal signature. " Bless me," 
said Muftay, "I thought it was some Grub-street compiler, and wrote him a stiff 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, offering 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 "Winton" 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 
extraordinary industry, lively wit, close observation, and sly satire. They give on the whole, 
more of political, literary, fashionable, artistical, and scandalous gossip during the last sixty 
years of the Eighteenth Century, than we have yet received. Walpole became Earl of Orford, 
by succession, in 1791, but never took his seat in the House of Lords. He died in 1797, in his 
eightieth year.— M. 

T The poem alluded to, was "The Irish Avater," written in September, 1821, on the visit 
which George IV. had paid to Ireland, in the preceding August. Byron, who was shocked at 



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1822.] THE MAGAZINES. 133 

Editor, Hoggh Chaldee ! — good. 

Odoherty. You would notice the puffs about another thing, called 
" the Koyal 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 European was disposed of t'other 
day for about 1600/., back numbers, plates, and all included. 'Twas 
about the best of them. 

Editor. I hope old Sir Richard is thriving. 

Odoherty. Capitally. He circulates between three and four thou- 
sand ; and his advertisements are very profitable, f Why don't you 
sport a little extra matter of cover 1 

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. J 

Editor. What is that thing called the Gazette of Fashion 1 

Odoherty. 'Tis a poor imitation of the Literary Gazette, Mr. 
,11 they say, patronizes it; but this can't be true, for it 



attacks, very shamefully, the man who did him more good than any 
body else ever will be able to do him, here or hereafter. 

Editor. Hercles' vein with a vengeance ! You've been studying 
the Eclectic, one would think. 

the enthusiasm with which the Irish Catholics received a monarch who had the power, but 
lacked the will, to give them Emancipation, headed his stanzas, which are strong and stinging, 
with this motto, from Curran, " And Ireland, like a hastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive 
the paltry rider." The poem, which gracefully closes with complimentary notices of Grattan, 
Curran, 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 

firivate circulation. Some of these found thciir 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. 
Christie, 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 the Memoirs of Lockhart, in 
the piesent edition of The Noctes), arose from a quarrel which sprung out of some articles in 
Blackwood. — M. 

t Phillips was a bookseller, who had been one of the sherifis of London, 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. Aspern, who published the letters of the 
famous John Wilkes.— M. 

jThe 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.— M. 

U I am unable to say what person is here alluded to.— M. 



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134 NOCTES AMBEOSIAI^^. [March, 

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 did not pay.f 

Editor. But yours may, — nay, will, — must pay. I'll, insure you 
of 3000/. if you go to " the proper man." 1 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 ? 

Editor, Droves. 

Odoherty. What do the lads chiefly affect ? 

Editor. Jocular topics. 'Twas an arch-deacon sent me the Irish 
Melodies, which I know you have been owning everywhere for your 
own. II 

Odoherty, 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.§ 

* 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, then 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 several editions in his life-time, and will always command a certain degree 
of attention. 

t 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, themselves not meriting nor 
obtaining success, consider it unpardonable in others to be more deserving and fortunate. — M. 

II 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. — M. 

§ When " Anastasius" first appeared, in 1819, it was reviwed, in Blackwood, as written by 
Lord Byron. The late Thomas Hope, whose previous literary publications, had been " The 
Costumes of the Ancients," and " Designs of Modern Costumes," avowed himself the author, in 
a brief letter which was printed in Blackwood. — ^M. 



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1822.] IN VINO. 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 ? 

Editor. 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.* 

Editor. 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 
Tete-a-tete with the public. \ 

Editor. Wh^t 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 ! 

Editor. 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. J — 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. 

t The name of an amusing, chatty article which had appeared in Blackwood^ some time 
before (evidently written by Wilson.) and had gained great approbation from the patient 
public. — M. 

X This is the tradition at Holland House.— M. I 

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136 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

Editor, " Experto crede. Koberto." 

Odoherty. I am glad to see you have dropt your cursed humbug 
articles on German Plays. I hate all that trash. Is Kempferhausen 
defunct ? 

Editor, I had a present of two aums 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. 

Editor, 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 ?* 

Odoherty. What bookseller do you recommend? (These are 
prime powldoodies !) 

Editor, 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 1 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 rem ember, f 

Odoherty, You'll cut a great figure in it yourself. 

Editor, A good one, you mean % 

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 — ran 
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 notorious as 
Editor of Bell's Life, a sporting paper, and author of '' Life in London," which, when drama- 
tized, had more success than any performance which the London play-goers had seen for years. 
" Life in London " was illustrated by George Cruikshank and his brother Robert.— M. 



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1822.] 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. 

Editor, 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. 

Editor, 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 mission- 
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. 

Odoherty, Byron ? 

Editor. Poh ! you're wild now. We may despise the cant about 
him, but you must confess that there's always a little of whafs ivrotig 
in the best of his works. Even the Corsair seems to have flirted a 
bit now and then. And Juan, you know, is a perfect Richelieu. f 

Odoherty, Have you anything to say against the Waverley 
novels 1 

Editor, Not much. Yet even the old Dame Noma in the Pirate 
seems to have danced in her youth. I strongly suspect her son was 
a Taerejilius carnalis, 

Odoherty. What of Kenilworth, then ? 

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. 

T Not the Cardinal, but the Due de Richelieu, of the Orleans Regency, equally distinguished 
for his profligacy and valor. — M. 



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138 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

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- 
bigne, or any of that sentimental set. 

Odoherty. Milman is a very well-behaved boy. You can say 
nothing of that sort against him. 

Editor. He is a very respectable man, and a clergyman to boot ; 
but the bridal songs in his Eall 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. 

Editor, Does this affair of Lord Byron's Mysteryf create any sen- 
sation in London ? 

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. 

Editor. I have often wondered at the face they show in that omis- 
sion. 

Odoherty. Really ? 

Editor. 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 ? 

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- 
mous. 

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-fed 
Archdeacons, and so forth, have their own ways of observing certain 
matters. 

* Poggio Bracciolini, Apostolical Secretary to eight Popes, but a profligate in his conduct and 
•writings. He lived in the fifteenth century. — M. 

t " 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 Chancellorr (Eldon,) declared that an immoraj or irreligious book was not 
entitled to protection. — M. 



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1822.] BYEON TO MUEEAY. 139 

Odoherty, Have you seen Lord Byron's letter on the subject to 
Mr. Murray ? 

Editor, 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. 

Editor, 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 mean 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. tfohn, 

Of being more than accoucheur to Cain ; 
What mortal ever said you wrote the Don? 

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. 

Pisa, Feb. 8, 1S22. 

Pear 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 / 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 poem, 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 ; and the stronger passions 
have ever been permitted to the drama. 1 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 notion 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 ycu, 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 yow to be 
singled out for a work oi 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 — me adsutn 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, Gifibrd remonStiated against the publication, as also Mr. Hobhouse ; that 
I Alone occasioned it, and I alone am 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. 



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140 NOOTES AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

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, 't is 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 ! — I 'm resolved I '11 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 '11 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 degantly 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 Blacktvood, the opening article was a review of Colonel David 
Stewart's Sketches of the Highland Regiments— not written, however, by Odoherty.— -M. 



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1822.] NEW BOOKS. 141 

Odoherty, Pm glad to hear it. Few officers write well except 
Julius Csesar, the Heavy Horseman * and myself. 

Editor. You forget General Burgoyne. 

Odoheriy, Aye, true enough. The General was a sweet fellow.t 

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. J 

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 1 Are you not always 
sure of your twenty guineas a-sheet 1 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 ? 

Editor. To be sure. — 'Tis very amusing. The old gentleman 
writes as well as ever.|l I wish he would try his hand at a novel 
once more. 

Odoherty. Why, no novels sell now except the Author of Wav- 
erley's. 

Editor. Write a good one, 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.§ 

Odoheriy. I don't think Sir Andrew near so good as the Annals 
of the Parish. — What say you 1 

* Poems by Ed'ward Q,uillinan (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 Quillinan went to Edinburgh to chal- 
lenge the reviewer, whoever he might be. Accidentally sitting next Hamilton at dinner, 
Q,uillinan 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 Q,uillinan 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 no 
private spleen in the matter. I, who wrote the article, knew nothing of the author I was quiz- 
zing, and am sorry that, by accident, I annoyed you." There was no more enmity nor anger, 
and they remained warm friends through life. — M. 

t This is the General Burgoyne who nad 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 Chrononhotonthologos. 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. 

t Southey's History of the Peninsular War. — M. 

II 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 Gait's novels of familiar life, improbable in incidents, and exaggerated 
in character, but clever, amusing, and full of natural interest. — M. 



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142 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

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 1 

Editor, 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. J The Whigs would be queer pigs at a drawing- 
room. 

Odoherty, Sir Ronald Ferguson seems to be a great spoon. 

Editor, 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 then, discover- 
ing his mistake, sat down in such a quandary ! 

Odoherty, Good ! they're a pretty set. What sort of a thing is 
the Thane of Fife — ^Tennant's poem ? 

Editor, 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 ? 

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. 

t George IV. visited Scotland in the autumn of 1822. — M. 

X 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. He died in 1825, after having been Governor-General of India and 
Governor of Malta. One of his daughters was Lady Flora Hastings, " done to death by evil 
tongues," in the Court of Q,ueen Victoria, in 1839. — ^M. 



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1822.] LITERATURE OF THE DAY. 143 

Odoheriy, 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. 

Editor, 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, f 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 1 

Editor, No — he's busy writing the Odontist.J 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 ? 

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 life 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. 

X He was not Doctor, and "The Odontist" never was written. — M. 

ll This unfortunate Essay, the constant hutt of the wits of Ebony, was written by Professor 
Macvey Napier, who succeeded Jeffrey in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review. — M. 



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144 N0CTE8 AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

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." 

Editor, Aye, you are always in that mood. 

Odoherty, Sometimes only. Do you disapprove of personality 1 

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 ? 

Odoherty, You get warm, Christopher ; out with it. 

Editor, Can a man read La Fontaine, Mr. Odoherty, without 
perceiving his. personal good nature 1 Swift's personal ill-nature 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 1 

Odoherty, Several — two or three, that is. But I 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 
failed as attorneys, apothecaries, painters, schoolmasters, preachers, 
grocers 

Editor, Or Adjutants,— Ha ! ha! ^This Barry Cornwall, do 

they still puff him as much as ever ? 

Odoherty, Yes, they do ; but the best jol^e 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. 

Editor, 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 Maginn, and called '' Daniel 
O'Rourkft "— M. 



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1822.] "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 
jserious, do you think Campbell is gaining reputation by his editor- 
ship ? 

Odoherty. No ; nor do I think Byron will by his.f 

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 Avinter was the flow 

Of Iser rolling rapidly. 

Editor, You are getting sentimental now, 1 think. Will you 
have another tumbler? 

Odoherty. Hand me the lemons. This holy alliance of Pisa will 
be a queer affair. J 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 
canter. 

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.§ 

* " The friend of Gerald " -was Sir James Mackintosh.— M. 

t Of '• The Liberal."— M. 

i The alliance between Byron, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, in the production of the Liberal.— 
M. 

II 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. — iVI. 

^ IJgo Foscolo, an Italian poet and exile, established his fame by his "Letters of Ortis." 
He contributed largely to the higher periodicals, and died in London, in 1827. — M. 

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146 NOCTES AMBROSIAlSr^. [March, 

Editor, Try to recollect it. 
Odoherty, It began 

Signor Le Hirnto, gloria di Coeagna 

Chi scrive il poema della Rimini 
Che tutta apparenza ha, per Gemini, 

D'esser cantato sopra la montagna 
Di bel Ludgato, o nella campagna 
D'Amsted, o sulle marge Serpentimini 
Com' esta Don Giovanni d'Endymini 

II gran poeta d'Ipecacuanha ? 
Tu sei il Re del Cocknio Parnasso 

Ed egli il herede apparente, 
Tu sei un gran Giacasso ciertamente, 

Ed egli ciertamente gran Giacasso I 
Tu sei il Signor del Examinero 
Ed egli soave Signor del Glystero. 

Editor, I don't see why Examinero and Glystero should be so 
coupled together. 

Odoherty. Both vehicles of dirt, you know. 

Editor, You have me there. Who is Eegent 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 
man. 

Editor, Quite done for. 

Odoherty, Will the ladies admire his sonnets when they come 
over? 

Editor, According to Dr. Colquhoun,f there is one parish in 
London, 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 ? 

Editor, I hear it will soon be out,J and that it is better than the 
Pirate. 

Odoherty, I can believe that. 

♦ John Hunt.— M. 

t Dr. Patrick Colquhonn was a Police Magistrate in London, of 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 of society in London. He died in 1820, aged seventy-five. — M 

t " The Fortunes of Nigel," was published in May, 1822. It was reviewed, very briefly, in 
Blacbwood, for June. — M. 



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182.2.] A VOLUNTABT. 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. 

Editor, I hope so, too. I think he shows most in a bustle. 

Odoherty, I don't know. I like the glen in the Monastery. 

Editor, 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. 

Editor, How did you get on ? 

Odoherty. 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. 

Editor, 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 Benuet, 

Fire on Joe Hume 
J'ire upon Lambton, 

Fire upon Brougham. 



Fire upon Hallam, 
Fire upon Moore, 
Spit upon Hazlitt, 

« jk « jK « # 



I've forgot the last line. 'Tis my call. Your stave, Christopher ! 

Editor, (Rings,) Waiter ! if Willison Glass be in the house, desire 

him to come up stairs, and he shall have a bottle of porter. 



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148 



NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. 



[March, 



Enter Willison Glass.* 

Willison. What's your will ? 

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 % 

Editor. Tip us the affair as it stands, Willison. 

DIALOGUE BETWEEN WILLISON GLASS, ESQ., OF EDINBURGH, AND JEREMY 

BENTHAM, ESQ., OF LONDON. 

1. 



Willison inviteth 
Jeremy to the sign 
of the Jolly Bac- 
chus, whereof he 
speaketh in com- 
mendation. 



Jeremy refuseth the 
invitation, blandly 
alleging that he had 
much rather destroy 
the young man of 
the -west, and other 
persons. 



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. 



Jeremy, thrbw your pen aside, 

And come get drunk with me ; 
"We'll go where Bacchus sits astride, 

Perch'd high upon barrels three ; 
'Tis there the ale is frothing up, 

And genuine is the gin ; 
So we shall take a hberal sup. 

To comfort our souls withm. 

2. 
cheerier than the nappy ale. 

Or the Hollands smacking j&ne, 
Is sitting by the taper pale, 

And piling line on line ; 
Smashing with many a heavy word 

Anti-usurersf in a row, 
Or pointing arguments absurd:|: 

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 Hke them to fear, 
But sweet is its brandy's genial run. 

And barmy is its beer. 

4. 
Brandy, I know, is liquor good, 

An'd barmy the beer may be ; 
But common law is my favorite food, J 

And it must be cruuch'd my 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.8 



* Willison Glass, vender of strong liquors and maker of weak verses, has been already noticed 
and annotated in The Tent. — M. 

t See Essay on the Usury Laws. t Reform Catechism. || Theorie de Legislation. — C. N. 

^ Jeremy Bentham, in hia day, like Thomas Carlyle in ourSy invented a new phraseology 
which had the advantage of being particularly obscure. — M. 



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WILLISON GLASS ANB BENTHAM. 



149 



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 windf 

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. 



Willison preferreth 
long draughts to 
long words. 



Jeremy bringeth up 
his nine-pounders, 
and declareth that 
he is a Berkleian 
philosopher. 



"Willison compareth 
Jeremy's Panopti- 
con to a porter-pot 
in a pretty simile. 



Sweeter it is to see the sheet 

With paradox scribbled fair. 
Where jawbreakmg 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,;): 
And Jeffrey will say, though my style is tough, 

Yet my arguments are divine. 



Jeremy calleth on 
three great men, 



Sir Pythagoras, Geo. 
Ensor, and Master 
Francis Jeffrey. 



9. 
Jeremy, trust me, the puff of the three, 

(I tell you the truth indeed,) 
fis not worth the puff you'd get from me, 
is 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 disparag- 
ing the three ; re- 
commendeth to blow 
a cloud. 



• Church of Englandism. — C. N. 

t Mr. Walmsley was Secretary to the then Archbishop of Canterbury.— M. 
X Mr. Richard Phillips, (of Bridge-street, Blackfriars), publisher and editor, was very likely 
to " puff" Bentham. Mr. Ensor was an Irish writer on Population, Political Economy, &c.— M. 



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150 NOCTES AJVCBROSIANiE. [March, 

10. 
Jeremy proposeth The world may lay what it likes to my charge, 

' If it do, I shall swear that the world at large 

Is no more than a jury pack'd ; 
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. 
who thereupon re- Jeremy, not for a gallon of ale 

Tft ^«Tti"fJh « Would I stay that book to hear ; 

and depaxteth to the -„. j_ '"i • ^ , i i i. i 

sign 01 the Jolly Why, even at its sight my cheek turns pale, 
Bacchus, there to And my heart leaps up Uke a deer, 

sing about Prince g^ j j^^^^ ^f[ without more delay, 
Charlie, and other -, , . -i.!. i 

goodly ballads. And My Courage to raise with a glass ; 

Jeremy abideth in And as you prefer o'er such stuff to stay, 
his place. j'jj toast you, my lad, for an ass. 

(Exit Willison Glass.) 

Editor, 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 1 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. 

Editor, What is this treasure 1 

Odoherty, The question, whether is Pope a poet 1 

Editor, True ! But confess, Odoherty, what have you been after 1 

Odoherty, The truth is, I have some thoughts of finishing my 
tragedy of the Black Revenge. 

Editor, 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." 

Editor, 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? 

♦ Elements of Packing.— C. N. 



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1822.] PEOSE 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. 

Editor, You are perfectly right. Novels may carry away sympa- 
thy, plot, invention, distress, catastrophe, and everything — (Vide Blair.) 

Odoherty. Do you mean Dr. Blair, or Adam Blair ? 

Editor, 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 afler 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. Any thing 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. 

Editor, 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, 



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152 NOCTES AMBEOSIANJE. [March, 

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 hurry 
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 Noma 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. 

Editor. 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 fr^Q 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. 



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1819.] 



"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, 

Or 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 ebbiog time. 

And nurtur'd in a fickle clime, 

May haunt this homed 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. 

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 ? 

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. 

Odoherty. {Sings.) 

Aria — With boisterous expression. 



m 



3 



-0—0- 



=P=:p= 



=P=p:"i 



There was a la - dy lived at Leith, a la - dy ve - ry sty-lish, man. And 



I 



in^Txi^t: 






itctz 



yet, in spite of all her teeth, she fell in love with an I - rish-man, A 



Chorus — Christopher ! 



i 



-0- 



S 



--^v- 



~ i » I * ^ 



-r-»- 



nas - ty, ug - ly I - rish-man, a wild, tre • men-dous I - hshman, A 



% 



fczs 



=?R^ 



P P .f 



1 



• ing, swearing, thumping, bumping, ramping, roaring I - rishman. # ^^^1^ 

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154 N0CTE8 AMBROSIAKJE. [March, 

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. 
0, 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 — ; 
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. 

6. 
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. 



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 ! 

{Exeunt Ambo.) 

* This song was written by Dr. Maginn.— M. 



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NO. IL— APRIL, 1822. 

Scene. — The little wainscoited room behind — a good fire — a table 
covered with books and papers, decanters and glasses. Time — Nine 
o'clock in the evening : — a high wind without. 

Present — Mr. Christopher North, and Mr. Buller of Brasennose 
{seated in arm-chairs at the opposite sides of the fire-place,) 

Mr. North, So— Mr. Buller, youVe 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 robe-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, lefb 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- 
ment. 

* In 1822, when his Life of John Home was published, Henry Mackenzie was seventy-five 
years old. But his reminiscences of the illustrious men whom he had long survived, were 
vivid to the last, and extremely graphic. When he died, in 1831, he was eighty-five years 
old.—M. 



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156 N00TE8 AMBEOSIAN^. [April, 

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. 'Ispsuff /uusv aXka Map^Tjrir)^, 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 poetf — a few such pages are worth an Ency- 
clopaedia. 

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 the 
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 Edinburgh. 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 
researches. — M. 



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1822.] JOHN HOME. 167 

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 Giflbrd 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.! '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. 

t 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. 



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158 NOCTES AMBROSIANyE. [April, 

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 ? 

North. Julia de Koiibigne 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 s-uppose. 

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. 

Buller, At that rate we shall have three or four more new 
Waverley romances every year ? 

North. 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 name 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 ^Eschylus 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 four years* older. 
Mackenzie was born in 1745, Goethe in 1749.— M. 



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1822.] 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 % 

North, 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 ^schylus. 

North. No more than Shakspeare wrote the same blank verse 
with Milton — or Byron, in the Corsair, the s'ame 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 
yellowt 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 1 

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 
f Navis Stultifera," or Ship of Fools, died 1532 ; Robert Barclay, author of "An 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 
*' Aryenis," 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. 

t " The blue and yellow" was the Edinburgh Review^ published with a cover of blue and 
yellow paper. — M. 



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160 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [April, 

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 Mon mouth-street. 

Buller. But to return to John Home 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 ? 

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 
a 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 Bed fords, 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 — 1 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 JDCsides 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. Inaction 
he was bold and decisiye, in manners gentle and courtly. He committed suicide in August, 
1822, while George IV. was in Scotland. — M. 



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1822.] JOSEPH 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 ? 

North, Did you never see him ? 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.f He has 
the air of a Montrose dandy, at this moment, and there is an intoler- 
able aff*ectation about the creature. I suppose he must have sunk 
quite into the dirt since Croker curried him. 

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 1 

North. I would not prostitute the name so far ; but he always 
voted with them.J 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 Cannings 
His piincipal 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, 
(when Lord Goderich retired from the Premiership), and died in 1830. In the bluff face, and buff 
waistcoat, and I might add the bluff manner in which he spoke, an imitation of Fox was 
palpable.— M. 

t Nor 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 Indies, where he made a fortune. — M. 

X 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 as 
a Radical member for Montrose. — M. 

II See Letter to a Friend in the Country. London, Triphook. 1821.— C.N. [" Van" meant 
Mr. Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer, afterwards Lord Bexley.]— M. 



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162 NOCTES ATVrRBOSIANiB. [April, 

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. 

NoriK 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 am 
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 1 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 1 

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. 

Buller, 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 ! 
Even Bennet is something with them still ! 

* O'Connor was tried for high treason. — M. 



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1822.] Mitchell's aeistophanes. 1C3 

Buller. Not much. 'Tis a fine thing to be Whig, however. How 
the 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. 

North, 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, 
III 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 1 

North, Aristophanes — Mitchell, I mean.* I think the verses are 
in his version of The Wasps. 

Buller, I have not seen his new volume yet. Is it as good as the 
first 1 

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 ^schylus 
as well as he has done Aristophanes 1 or perhaps some of Euripides' 
plays would fall more easily into his management. I wish he would 
try the Bacchce 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 papers 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. 



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164 NOOTES AMBROSIAJSr^. [April, 

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 / am the true represent- 
ative of the Vetus ComcBdia — 

" 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? I^o — 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, man — 

" 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 ?) fierce face are seen playing. 
Swathed and banded round his head, five-score sycophants were fed — 

Ever slav'ring, and licking, and glueing, (young Whigs to he 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." 

Buller. 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 foemau, to his cost, knew what strength and mettle are. 
the days that are gone by, <fec. 

Enter Mr. Ambrose. 
Mr. Ambrose. Mr. Tickler! [Enter Mr. Tickler. 

Tickler. Ha! Buller, iny dear boy — may you live a thousand 
years. 



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1822.] WORDSWORTH AND DRYDEK. 165 

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 ? What could 
be more interesting than to see Christ Church Walk swarming with 
the wives, children, and nurses of senior fellows ? 

Buller. Spare us. Tickler, spare us. What are you about ? 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 ? 

Buller, 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 loff;iest 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 eternal 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 Dry den's Ode is low, and vulgar, and 
stupid. 

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 
re^i/rw-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? — M. 



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166 NOCTES A^IBROSIAN^. [April, 

disrespect to that gentleman — ^but as long as my name is Tickler, he 
shall not abuse Dry den 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 ? 

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 1 Why, this very 
tavern of Mr. Ambrose, f admirable as it is beyond all earthly 
taverns, ought on the same principle to be pulled down. But may I 
never live see that time ! [Much affected. 

Buller. 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 monument to Lord Nelson, 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 nuts, 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. 



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1822.] 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 ninnies have not even the sense 
to know that our Gallon 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 tifl — 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 none. 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 1 

Tickler, One parish has subscribed, I understand, about nine gui- 
neas — Aberdour, I think. One old farmer there, has come forward 
with a sixpence for the Grand National Monument ;f 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 Buchan, who affected 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 
English Bar and rose to the Chancellorship, with a peerage. The other, Henry Erskine, 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, WELS erected between 1824 and 1830, on one of the summits of the Calton Hill. It never 
was, and never will be completed, and its thirteen columns simply record the expenditure of 
£20,000.— M. 



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168 KOCTES AMBROSIAKiE. [April, 

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. 

Biiller. 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 among 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, Duller, 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 no 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 t'other 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? 

North, Upwards of thirty years ago, he remained for a few weeks 



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THE KEVf MOKTHLY. 169 



in a small garret in Queen's — does that make him an Oxonian 1 — 
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.* 

Bulkr, What is the Prosecution-mania ? 

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 — nay, 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 prosecute every 
syllable that shall ever be written against any one of their degraded 
and slanderous selves. Is not this base and cravenlike ? 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, w^hether 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. 

B idler. 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. 



* Keelie-vine; — a pen, a pencil of black or red lead.- 

8 



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170 NOCTES AMBROSTANiE. [April, 

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- 
neys to criticise his contemporaries. 

North, Who are the poor creatures 1 

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 me ; 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 snoking 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, 

t De Quincey, speaking of the London Magazine, says, " Meantime, the following writers 
were, in 1821-33, among my own CoUaborateurs ; — 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- 
stract of politics, brief as it necessarily was, had been confided to the care of Phillips, the cele- 
brated Irish barrister." — There were others, among whom were John Clare, the peasant poet 



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1822.] THE MAGAZINES. 171 

receptacle of all the philosophy and literature of Germany. " Os 
magna sonatiirum !" " Vox et nihil prseterea." 

North. When he writes again in the London Magazine, it will be 
well worth half-a-crown. By the way, Tickler, what do you ttjink 
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 
notion, every thing that comes after another is a continuation of it. 
Is this quackery, or is it not. North 1 

North, 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 ? 

. North. Yes ; on the top of St. Paul's — or in my own Magazine, 
that is, before the whole universe. — BuUer, what are you about ? 

Buller, Mr. North, have you seen a new periodical called the 
Album ? 

North. I have; it promises well.t 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 Northamptonshire ; Talfourd, then the undistinguished, but future author of *' Ion ;" Wain- 
wright, whose nom deplume 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 London, which gave etchings from his pictures of Christ's Agony in the Garden, and the 
Entry into Jerusalem. With such an array of contributors, the London Magazine should 
have flourished. In the words of th»^ Irish Keeners, when they apostrophize the departed whose 
remains lie cold before them, we might ask, " Ah, why did you die ?" — M. 

* To continue Johnson's Lives of the Poets might have been " mere quackery," in North's 
opinion, but the Continuator was the Rev. Henry Francis Gary, the Translator of Dante, of 
the Odes of Pindar, and of the 'Birds of Aristophanes." — In the last London edition of John- 
son's Lives of the Poets, beautifully illustrated, the continuation by Gary has been incorpo- 
rated, and gives additional value to a work, which, with many faults (for .Johnson had numerous 
literary and personal prejudices), is one of the most remarkable books in the English language, 
not having been commenced until the author was seventy years old ! — Gary died in 1844. — M. 

t It was edited by Charles Knight (assisted, I believe, by Charles Oilier, author of " Inesella") 
and was short-lived. — M. 



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172 NOCTES AMBROSIANJE. [April, 

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 pastry- 
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 china shop. 

ficMer, 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 
courteous. 

North. What is the world saying now about me, do you think, my 
Tickler? 

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 1 

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. Let 
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 1 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. 

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. 



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1822.] JOHN BULL AND EBONY. 173 

times to see things under a tender, obscure, and hazy light 1 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 1 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 W' hig newspaper, but of course I supposed it to be a lie ; but, if 
true, what then 1 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 Oilier 
of Bond-street, — with you they are held in no distinction. Theii 
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. 1 
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 Henry Brougham.— M 



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174 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [April, 

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 honest peo- 
ple's legs ; but a dexterous turn of the ankle shys it into the kennel, 
and no harm done. 

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. (Yawnmg.) 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. 

JEnter 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 1 

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. — M. 



I Henry Grey Bennett, an active liberal, represented Shrewsbury in Parliament for many 
years, but on the discovery of certain criminal practices, fled to Paris, where he died. — M, 



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No. III.— MAY, 1822. 

SCENE l—TmE—Six o'clock, P. M, Scene— -The Blue Parlor, 

To Mr. North, standing in the centre of the room^ in full Jig^ 
Enter Mr. Timothy Tickler. 

JVorth. Good day, sir ; I'm glad I'm not to dine quite alone. I 
began to think nobody was coming. 

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. 

North. About what, you old rogue, you % 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 
natty 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. J 

Tickler, What ! he of that Ilk ? Old Wheelie ? 

*Tho 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 downs of Bruntsfield Links. — M. 

t Mrs. M'Whirter, Odoherty's ancient Philadelphia flame, never honored The Noctes with 
her presence. Her last appearance was — in The Tent. — M. 

I Gait, 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 hom^e with riches and rank. — M. 



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176 JTOCTES AMBEOSIANiE:. [May, 

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. 

TicJcler. 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 1 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. 

TicJcler, By Jove, if he leaps out of a window here, there will be 
a pretty end of the pretty-behaved gentleman. Imagine a fellow 
olearing the Cowgate, or Hopping over the Horse Wynd, fourteen 
stories deep, from a skylight to a chimney top.f 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 felh^w — but so are all the Taffy breed. But what was I 
thinking of? There's Feldborg behind. J 

TicJcler. Feldborg the Dane 1 — really ? 

North. Feldborg — ipsissimus ipse ! I hear his cough on the stair 
this moment. He arrived in the Roads last night at a quarter after 
eleven. 

Enter Mr. Ambrose. 

Mr, Ambrose. Professor Feldborg ! [JEIxit 

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 

* Dr. 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 Pen 
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. Pen Owen was reviewed in Black- 
wood for June. 18*22. 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 
Alberaarle-street, dining at John Murray's, next to Tom Sheridan ; in a sort of Cato-street 
Conspiracy, with an examination at the Home Office as a wind-up ; at Smithfield, amid the 
drovers, (how capitally Noah Tup robs simple Tom Crossthwaite !) ; in a political debating 
society ; in fact, in all places and with alk-people in London, in the year of grace 1822. Pen 
Owen, the hero, was the most impulsive of bei|^gs, and this is the gentleman brought into the 
Third of the Noctes.— M. 

t The Dane was imaginary— as far as the Noctes were concerned.— M. 



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1822.] THE GUESTS. 1Y7 

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 ahsente^ dum in Dani^ 
.mea 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 Danes 1 

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 Amove Northi 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, thr^e 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. 

Enter Sir Andrew Wylie, Dr. Scott, Mr., Pendarves Owen, 
Ensign O'Doherty, and the Rev. Donald Wodrow, 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-c/o, my good sir ? 
Has 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 — Fm 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 tuith 
small glasses, dtc.^enter Ambrose, with a towel under his arm.) 
8* 



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178 



N0CTE8 AMBEOSIAN^. 



[May, 



Ambrose, Gentlemen — dinner. 

North, Gentlemen, I'll show the way. Sir Andrew, your arm. 

{Exeunt C. N. and Sir A. W. 

Odoherty, Senior es sint prior es ! Cedant arma togcB. 

[Exit 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. 

[Exit Dr. Scott — exit Tickler. 

Odoherty, Come along, Mr. Owen. What a hubbub these old 
Puts make, with their hanged precedence ! Did you notice how the 
D.D. hopped off? As brisk as a beetle, by St. Patrick ! 

SCENE II. 
C. North, Esq. 



Sir Andrew Wylie 
Bart. 



Rev. Dr. Wodrow. 



TiMOTHT Tickler, 
Esq. 





, 






























Prof. Feldborg. 



Dr. Scott. 



Pendarves Owen, 
Esq. 



North. A bumper ! 
Omnes, The King ! [ 



Ensign Odoherty. 
The King ! God bless him ! 
! ! [Three times three, Trumjpets without. 
Air — God save the £jing,'\ 
Tickler, A bumper — the Kirk of Scotland ! 

Omiies, The Kirk of Scotland ! [Air — The Bush ahoon 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. (^^icf^.) Vide Shakspeare! hem! 
Omnes, The General joy, &c. {^Three times three,) 

{Air^ we are the Lads, <&c. 



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1822.] 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 ! 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, 
Lord 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'f? Ane 
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 ! 

North, Mr. Odontist, I disapprove of personalities. 

Dr. Scott. Hout ! Like the Duke of Bedford, I meant nothing per- 
sonal, 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 dinna 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 ! 

Feldhorg. 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 1, " What fools you are, let us go dine 
all together at the White Feather." This is a great inn, what you 
call, in Elsinore. 



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180 NOCTES AMBROSIANiE. [May, 

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 ! 

Pe7i Owen, {Aside to Odoherty.) — Noctes Coenseque Deum. 

Odoherty, {Aside to Pen Owen.) — Noctes Coenaeque de hum. 

Fen 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^hepherd ;" I was much amused with it. *^ ^ 

Fe7i Owen, Yes; but why Anecdotes of Instinct with a For trait of 
Hogg? — Do they mean to represent Hogg as being totally devoid of 
Reason? — A mere new edition o^ the Learned Fig? 

Dr, 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 
oi Mr, Southey ;'''' and, immediately after, comes another, "Anecdotes 
of Crime and PunishmentyVfith. a portrait of Sir James Mackintosh." 
Now, I for one, can make neither head nor tail of this. 

Fen 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 1 If so, what has been the learned knight's crime 1 
What has been his punishment ? 

Tickler, What say you. Sir Andrew % 

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 %\ 

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. 
Recubans sub tegminefagi 

* It was published in London. It was neatly illustrated. It formed a series of 40 numbers, 
or 20 duodecimo volumes. It professed to consist of " Anecdotes, original and select, by Sholto 
and Reuben Percy, brothers of the Benedictine Monastery, Mont Benger."— Sholto, being a 
Mr. Robertson, for many years editor of the Mechanics^ Magazine and the Railway Record 
newspaper. — M. 

t 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 India, and, as 
a member of Parliament, had endeavored to mitigate the severity of the English penal code. 
—M. 



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1822.] 



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, 1 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, tx) 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 l" 
Odoherty, {Sings,) 

SONG. 

ON THE WEDDING-DAY OF TIMOTHY TICKLER, ESQ., AND 
JdISS 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 — 

Di'inks 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 ; 
Kor 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. 



0, blest be this day, by the smile of the gay, 

By the bright eyes of beauty, by music and dance ! 
0, 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. 



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182 NOCTES AMBROSIANiE. [May, 

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 Wit 1 

D, Scott, [Singing,) 

" Let us hail 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. 

Rev, Dr, Wodrow, Cheers or children, Dr. Scott 1 ha ! ha ! ha ! 
the like o' that ! ( Trumpets without,) 

Omnes, Mrs. Tickler ! [Air — Green grow the rashes^ 0.] 

Mr, Fen Owen, {Aside to Odoherty.) They're getting dull at 
that end of the table. May I tip them a touch of the long pole 1 

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 1 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, 1 beg leave to propose the health of The Small 
Known. 

North, Gentlemen, this is an appeal to your liberality, and I am 
sure your conduct wall justify it. Take the time from me. 

Omnes, The Small Known ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 

( 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 % 

Rev. Dr, Wodrow, Dr. Cook, I take it. 

North, Pooh, pooh, 'tis our friend, the Prince of Reviewers, Sir 
Andrew. 

Dr, Wodrow, The like o' that — ha! ha! The Small Knoivn ! 
well, I never heard sic like toasts ! I'se propose it myself at the 
Moderate Club, the morn's night, — may 1 1 

North, By all means. A toast is nothing until it comes into 
general vogue, like The Cause for which Sidney hied on the Scaffold^ 
and Hampden on the Jield^ (&c. 

Pen Owen, Which is pretty much the same thing with "the 



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1822.] THE SMALL KNOWN. 183 

Cause for which Sandt died by the axe, and Thistlewood by the 
drop." 

Odoherty, 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 1 Was he a Tory Reviewer ? 

Br. Scott. Ask your friend Mr. Owen. I think he's like to give 
you the best notion.* 

Fen 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 w^hoever did your history, says the chapter 
about that affair was writ before the affair happened. 

Fe7i 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. 

Fen Owen. What do you believe, Mr. Odoherty ? 

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. 

Feldhorg. What 1 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 Burranf 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 arrest the conspirators. Thistlewood resisted, killed one of the police with a 
sword, escaped, was captured, tried, and condemned. Thistlewood and four others were ex- 
ecuted, as traitors, on May 1, 1820. — One of the scenes in " Pen Owen" was marvellously like 
the actual scene in Cato-street. 

t The PouldoodiescfBurran were a description of Irish oysters, anent which, Mrs. M'Whirter 
chanted a laudatory song, in presence of Christopher in the Tent, which see, ante. — M. 



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184: NOCTES AMBROSIAKiE. [May, 

Dr, Wodrow. Well, now, I must say that I read that passage with 
delight ; there is no doubt that Lord Byron is very much to 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 ! 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. 

Br, 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, 1 have not yet seen the last Number of the Edinburgh 
burgh 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 Jeffi-ey 
forgot that he could once read without spectacles 1 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 ? Was it not personality that 
pointed the path to Chalk Farm ? Has he forgot Thelwall ? 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 ?^ 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. 

Sir 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 Frederic 
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, (for which he was by no 
means adequate) shortly after George III. became king. — M. 



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1822.] PERSONALITY. 185 

in sic matters. Did Lord Byron ever write any thing personal about 
Mr. Jeffrey himsELF ? 

Tickler. Bravo ! bravissimo ! Eem acu tetigisti ! 

Odoherty, {Sings.) 

" Vaia 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 ! 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 imderstand 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, aiid 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 V 

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 still 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, Pillans, &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 
unmerited — 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. — M. 

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186 NOOTES AMBBOSIAKJE. [May, 

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 nem. con. by the side of 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! — 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. 

Tickler. Censer and censure, sir, came alike to him; — he was 
incensed by their very incense. 

Dr. Scott He became quite the rage with them ; yet his rage 
waxeth not cool, neither was his anger appeased. 

Dr. 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. 1 am inspired. Anck'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. 

{Flaudite Omnes.) 



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1822.] JEFFREY AND BYEON. 187 

Omnes {sing.) 

" Very good song, 
Very well sung, 
Jolly companions every one," <fec. <fec. <fec. 

Rev, Dr. Wodrow. Well, I never was in such a company as this 
since I was ordained. Why it beats Presbytery dinners, Modera- 
tor'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. Hand your tongues ! Hand your tongues ! Do ye no 
see how the chairman's drinking three bumpers all by himsel 1 
(Aside) — He's clearing his pipes, Fse warrant. Od, how he's glow- 
ering on yon decanter ! 

North. Revenons a nos movtons! 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 ? 

North. To say feebly what had been said strongly by fifty other 
people — to say late what should have been said early, or 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 !—-(^€ar / hear I) 

Odoherty, It puts me in mind of a thing I once saw at Don cas- 
ter. — I was sitting in the inn there with the landlady — a pretty, 
comely body, I assure ye — and through came Eeynard, and all Lord 
Darlington'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. 

(Sings) — 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 — 



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188 NOCTES AlklB ROSTAND. [May, 

I mean the grave of all my care, 
For I iutend to bury't there. 
Let it a bowl of China be, 
Worthy of punch composed by me, 
To drown pale cant and fat humbug, 
And stretch a Tory on the rug. 

Fill me a bowl, &q. [Enter 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 1 — Both are at 
your service. 

Omnes. The Parsonality ! the Parsonality ! 

[Odoherty gives a fac simile 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 ! 1 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 re 
personali. 

Tickler. Proving that every person had been personal, as well as 
Byron and Jeffrey 1 

North. To be sure — To begin with the blind old Mseonian — 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 ? 

Pen 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. 

Pen Owen. Aristophanes was, I suppose, just what Jeffrey says 
Swift was, " nothing but a great libeller." 

North, 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. 



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1822.] LITERACY PERSON-ALITIES. 189 

Pen Owen, It looks like a contradiction-^but go on with your 
sketch of the great treatise in posse, however. 

North. Is Horace not personal in his satires ? He is so in ever j 
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 % Is 
there no personality in Cicero's Philippics, or in his master, Demos- 
thenes '? or in Sallusf? 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 Eomans. 

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. — Fzc/e D'lsraeli ! — 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 
atas 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 Arbuthriot 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 hundred years ago, 
thank- God ! as it is now. 



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190 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [May, 

Pen Owen. But in those days there were no reviews nor maga- 
zines. 

North, True, but they came not long after, and personality, which 
no literature ever was without, blended itself wtth them ah 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 Dr. Smollett and the Critical ? and Fielding 1 How he 
kept the Thames on lire with his farces and novels, and roasted all 
his brother justices to cinders 1 

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 — 

Noetumd versate manu, versate diurnd. 

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 !) 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. 
Jeffi-ey himself is another unit — and if the question were, which of 



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1822.] " HEBE 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, 

surly and proud,) 

Odoherty (sings,)^ 

'Tis not when on turtle and venison dining, 

And sipping Tokay at the cost of his Grace ; 
Like the plate on his 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. 
Conversazioni — are not for my money, 

Where Blue Stockings prate about Wylie and Pen ; 
I'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 ai-e 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 battle — 

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 1 Here ! let me dine. . 

(Here I here!) 



This song was written by Dr. Maginn. — M. 

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192 NOOTES AMBROSIAKJE. [May, 

Pen Owen. Talking of Dean Swift, — what is Mr. Maturin about 1 

Odoherty, Grinding, grinding ! Isn't it a shame for people to run 
him down at such a rate ? 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 taire a wipe at Mother Morgan yourself?- 

Odoherty. I believe I may have done such a thing — But how 
different the case : why that little fidevani Miladi absolutely brags 
of her cash,t and sets off public reprobation with a balance of pounds, 
shillings, and pence. 

Tickler. Her motto is, no doubt — 

" Populus me sibilat : at mihi plaudo, 
Ipsa domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arc^." 

But did not Maturin write something called the Universe ? 

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 1 

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 rattan 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 w^s perfectly right in that decision. 

Pen 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. Robert Charles Maturin lived and died a curate in the richest Church Establish- 
ment in the world — that of Ireland. He was a native 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 
proiFer his tragedy of "Bertram," to the management of Drury Lane Theatre. It was accepted, 
acted, (Kean playing the hero), and brought Maturin £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 " Frcdolpho," the wild romance — as interesting as any of Mrs. Radcliffe's — called 
" Melmoth, the Wanderer," a novel, entitled "Woman, or Pour et Centre," and a poem called 
" The Universe." He published three other novels, very popular in their day : '' The Fatal 
Revenge." "The Wild Irish Boy," and "The Milesian Chief;" — these three appeared with the 
name of Dennis Jasper Murphy on the title-page. In 1824, 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 gifted 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. 



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1822.] " PEN OWEN^" 193 

Pen Owen, You are right. He is indeed a canny clever Scotch- 
man. Entre nous the king was deh'ghted with his book. You may- 
depend upon this. I heard him say so myself. 

Tickler, I have been much interested by your delightful descrip- 
tion of a certain beautiful creature, Mr, Owen ? Have you and Mrs. 
O. any family, by-the-by ? 

Fen 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 ? 

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. 

Fen 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 !" 

Fen 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 1 It is then that I comprehend how true to nature 
and to virtue is the exquisite apostrophe of the Epicurean bard — 

" Suave raari 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 ! 

Fen 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 ! 

VOL. I. 9 ,^ 1 

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194 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [May, 

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 howl, 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 ! 

CAorws.— Fa 1 la! la ! la! la ! la! la ! la I <fec. 

Feldborg, the Dane, Allow me to give you a little Scandinavian 
solo. 

North. {Knocking with his hammer.) Silence ! Eeldborg's solo. 
Feldborg (sings,) 

Hvem morgin ser horna, 
Hlock a tems — ar backa, 
Skala hanga ma hungra, 
Hrae — shod litud blodi 
Hre sigr — fickin saeldr, 
Snarla borgar karla 
Dynr a Brezkar bryniur 
Blod is Dana visi ! I ! 
Dynr a Brezkar, <fec. 

North. Come, it suits you very well, after what happened not quite 
fifty years ago, to sing such a ditty as this. 

I)r, Scott, Keep us a' ! Do you ken what he was singing ? I 
thought it was Danish or Dutch at the lowest penny. 

North, 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. [Fxit 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 1 to rend away 



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1822.] GETTING HUFFED. 195 

the veil of my: domestic concerns 1 — Sir, I scorn your sneers ! — Sir, 
your servant ! — Good night, gentlemen. 

[jE^xit Tickler, furiosus. 
Vdoherty, 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 I ! 1 

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 1 

Br, Scott. 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 q/'Sm Andrew.) 
Do you know that phiz, Mr. Baronet % 

Sir A. Wylie, {Throwing down his card.) Mr. Ensign, there's 
my address. Good night, gentlemen. [^xit Sir A. Wylie. 

Br. 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. 

[Exit Dr. Scott. 

North. 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 Life 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 MuUins, 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. M'Whirter, late 
of Philadelphia, was a fair participant, was fully explained — as the reader of " Christopher in 
The Tent," in this volume, may have seen, and if the explanation satisfied the lady, why should 
Sir Andrew Wylie cast a reproach in Odoherty's face ?— M. 



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196 N0CTE8 AMBROSTAN^. [May, 

A tax on Humbug, an excise 

On solemn plausibilities, 

A stamp on every man that canted 1 

l^o 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. 



Hp Closue. 

Spoken by Christopher North, Esquire^ and Sir A. Wylie, 

Baronet, 

Mr. North. " Something too much of this 1" I4iear 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, j&ash the shafts of wit — 

Sir A. Wylie. And Tories round a harmless table sit. 

Mr. North. Confess ; speak out, man 1 

Sir A. Wylie. Once upon a time 

You loved a joke yourself, if not a rhyme I 
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 dear Satire ? 
Sir A. Wylie. Well, well, I wish ye wiser, man, and fatter ! 
Mir. North. I find I can make nothing of these Whigs. 
Sir A. Wylie. We'll try to do without them, please the Figs I 
Mr. North. To you, to you, ye Tories of the land ! 

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 
most sparkling wits of his time, who may be reproached with not having written enough.~M.] 



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1822.] EPILOGUE. 197 

To shun the couflict but bold fast tbe spoil — 
Clutch at the trophy, having shirk'd the toil — 

Sir A. Wylie. — And gloat, Tvbile others sweat, on your snug roast and boil ! 

Mr. North, These are your maxims I Venal vapid crew I 
Low we may come, but ne'er so low as YOU ! 
" Low we may come !" forgive the hasty phrase, 
Ye Tories true ! whose patronage IS praise ! 
High the good eminence we now possess, 
Nor shall we e'er be lower down — 

Sir A. Wylie^ {loosening a fifth button.) Or less — 

Mr. North. While YOU our trumpet bear, and round our banner press. 
Both. Though gourdish scions of the " Servum Pecus" 

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 tliem for genuine juicy fruit. 
Squeeze hard ! One painful mouthful they supply, 
But thirsty wits must turn to US, or die ! 



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No. IV.— JULY, 1822. 

SCEN'El— '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 !f 
The dishes done to rags. 

Enter Waiter. 

Waiter, Milordo, here is questo grand Lord is come, for to have 
the onore of kissing the manos for sua eccellenza. 

Odoherty. Kissing my what 1 Show in the shaver — hand him in 
upon a clean plate. \^Exit 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 Maginn, 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 Byron had 
removed in the autumn of 1821, and remained until September, 1822, when he went to Genoa, 
and thence, in 1823, to Greece. — The mention of this reminds me, by the way, of what the 
Guiccioli said, in her visit to London; when she was so lionized as having been the lady-love 
of Byron. She was rather fond of speaking on the subject, designating herself by some Vene- 
tian pet phrase which certainly was not 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. He 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 m.e to go, and go I will." " Ah," said the dama, " there are not fourteen 
Greek captains in Italy ; 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 thait he strictly 
adhered to his word, on all occasions, a letter was written to Greece, and fourteen captains 
actually were sent out. They waited 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. 

t A hotel in Dublin.— M. 



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1822.] LACRYMA CHRISTI. 199 

Byron, My name's Byron. 

Odoherty, Byron ! 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! 

JSnter 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 1 I 
drink every thing bating water. 

Byron, Why, Mr. Odoherty, to be plain with you — you will find 
but poor accommodation in these Italian inns — ^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 — I 
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 exit; and after a moment 
returns with two flasks of Montifiascone,\ 

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 1 

Byron, Lacryma Christi.t 

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 1 

Odoherty, Whisky, made in the hills about Inishowen, in the north. I! 

* 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. It was in this palace that Byron gave 
rooms to Leigh Hunt and his family, and here the first number of The Liberal was pre- 
pared. — M. 

t This 1 take to be a mistake- They were in the region of Montepulciano, which R6di, (in 
his " Bacco in Toscano") has pronounced to be The Hfing of Wines. — It is a pleasant tipple, 
smelling like a fresh nosegay, but, unfortunately, ^oes not bear transportation. It must 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 aerated lemonade and sherry, — weak and sweet. The other (chiefly made in 
Sicily) has a ruby tint, is rough to the taste, being nothing more nor less than an Italian port- 
wine. This red Lacryma Christi is much used in England to adulterate the Portuguese port- 
wine. The sweet, pale Lacryma, mixed with an equal portion of good brandy, used to 
make a passable libation. — M. 

U Of Ireland.— M. 



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200 BOOTES AMBROSLOTiEJ. [July^ 

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. 

Odoheriy, Why, then, I wrote rather a neat song about it once on- 
a time, which I shall just twist off for the edification of your lordship. 

Odoherty (sings,) 

1. 
I care Dot a fig for a flagon of flip. 

Or a whistling can of rumbo ; 
But my tongue through whisky punch will slip 

As nimble as Hmiothrumbo. 
So pnt the spirits on the boards 

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-breeeh'd Dutch in juniper gin, 

I own, are very knowing ; 
But are rum, gin, brandy, worth a pin. 

Compared with Inishowen ? 

Extempore 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 misfy ; 
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 ? 

Byron. How is Ebony? I'm told he's been getting fat since I 
saw him. 



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1822.] SAM ROGERS. 201 

Odoherty, A porpoise. No wonder, my lord; let them fatten 
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 ? 

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. 

Byron. 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 p#or 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 plehs occasionally write 
good verses. 

Odoherty, I shan't give up Hogg. 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 
Black wood, t 

Odoherty, Thank you. Baron ! I take you. By-the-by, what a 
right good poem that was of yours, on old Bam Rogers. J 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 Byron, by Leigh Hunt, who commenced what he 
had to say in prose 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. 

t 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 
another 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 notoriety I — M. 

t 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. 

9* 

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202 NOCTES AMBROSIANiE. [July, 

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. 

Byron, Oh ! the old Ponder ! The great god Pan ! is he extant 
still ? 

Odoherty. Alive and sulky. He has been delivered of two octavos 
this spring. 

Byron, So have T, for that matter. Are his as heavy as mine ? 

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 name of Nicholas. 

Byron. Hie 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 sid# 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. 1 
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 — 

Byron. Who? 

Odoherty. His editor — now-a-days commonly called Sir Mungo 

* Maginn made a mistake in putting such a word as civilation into Byron's mouth, as it 
was one which he (Maginn), had invented, and solely used for a long time. De Quincey 
records Maginn's opinion " that no man, h6wever much he might tend to civilization, was to 
be regarded as having absolutely reached its apex until he was irunk ;" also the fact, that, after 
10 P. M., civilization being an odiously long word to utter, it might be abridged to civilation. 
Therefore, in De Ctuincey'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"—^ 



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1822.] DON JUAK. 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 1 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 niy 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 
you have had me make him look as wise as a Quarterly Reviewer ? 
Every 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 



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204 N0CTE3 AMBROSIANJE. [July, 

must represent) more or less warmly, just as they are more or less 
men. 

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. 

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,f 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. I 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. J 

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 — nay, 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 whicli 
spiritual matters are introduced. The antagonist of Heaven — of 
whom the Prometheus of ^Eschylus 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 the 

* Dr. William Magee, author of "Discourses on the Scriptural Doctrines of the Atonement 
and Sacrifice," (directed against the tenets of the Unitarians,) after having been Dean of Cork 
and Bishop of Raphoe, was made Archbishop of Dublin, in 1822. He died in 1831. — M. 

t Dr. William King, Archbishop of Dublin, born in 1650, died in 1729. In his treatise " De 
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. 

J Dr. William Warburton, Bishop of Glocester, (author of the Divine Legation of Moses,) 
published, in a periodical entitled The Works of the Learned, a vindication of Pope, who had 
been charged with having evinced a tendency to Spinocism and naturalism, in his Essay on 
Man. When this poem was translated into French, it had been skilfully attacked, on the above 
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 
^Pope's) views clearer even to himself !— M. 



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1822.] HUMBFG 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. 

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." 

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, (fee, 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 stuflf all that 
aflfair 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 done the business. 

Byron. 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! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! {Bihunt ambo.) 

Odoherty. Why, you see, what with utterly squabashing JeflTrey, 
and what with giving Malagrowther an odd squeeze or so, — but most 

* Lawrence, a celebrated anatomist 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 poem. In 1836 Southey included Wat Tyler in his collected works, without 
altering a line of it, and it certainly does not appear so republican as was originally repre- 
sented.— M. 



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206 NOCTES AMBEOSIAN^. [July, 

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. 

Byron. Himself included % 

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 qua 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 matei'ials 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 1 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 
moment. 

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. 

Byron, Which he is. 

Odoherty, I won't swear to that, knowing what I do about Anasta- 



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1822.] 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 ? 

Byron, Yes, — but no matter. Could you give me any more infor- 
mation de re periodically as the Baron of Bradwardine would have 
said? 

Odoherty, I shall sing a stave touchant that point — 

1. 

! 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 apit-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, Jeffi-ey, and Smith, 

Began to belabor the natives ; 
Who, bothered at first by their bravo and burst. 

Sunk under the scribblers like caitiffs. 

3. 

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 was con- 
ducted by Sir Richard Phillips.— M. 



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208 N0CTE8 AMBROSIAN^. [April, 

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 ! .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 % 

Odoherty. Not L 

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, f 

Byron reads. Cantat Dohertiades. 
1. 1. 

Backe and side go bare, go bare, Sint nuda dorsum, latera — 

Both foot and bande 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. — M. 

t This Latin version has been considered one of Maginn's best translations. It gives not only 
the actual meaning, but the measure, with rhymes and double rhymes. — M. 



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1822.] 



BISHOP STILL S CHANT. 



209 



I caDDot eat but lytle meate. 

My stomacke is uot good ; 
But sure I thmke that J can drynke 

With him that weares a hood. 
Though I go bare, take ye do 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. 



I love no rost, but a nut-browne toste. 

And a crab laid in the fyre ; 
A little bread e shall do me stead, 

Much breade I not desyre. 
No frost nor snow, nor wiude, 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, <fec. 



And Tyb, ray 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, 1 took my parte 

Of this jolly good ale and olde." 
Back and side go bare, <fec. 



"Non possum multum edere. 

Quia stomachus est nuUus ; 
Sed volo vel mouacho bibere 

Quanquam sit huic cucullus. 
Efc quamvis nudus ambulo, 

De frigore nou est metus ; 
Quia semper Zytho vetulo 

Veutriculus 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 

Afiicerent injuria ; 
Haec sperno, ni adesset mi 

Zythi veteris penuria. 
Sint nuda, &c. 

3. • 
Et uxor Tybie, qui semper sibi 

Vult quserere Zythum bene, 
Ebibit haec perssepe, nee 

Sistit, dum madeant gense. 
Et mihi turn dat cantharum. 

Sic mores sunt bibosi ; 
Et dicit " Cor, en ! impleor 

Zythi dulcis et annosi." 
Sint nuda, (fee. 



Now let them drynke, till they nod and wynke. 

Even as good felowes should doe : 
They sliall not mysse to have the blysse 

Good ale doth.briuge men to. 
And all poore soules that have scowr'd boules, 

Or have them lustely trolde, 
God save the lyves of them and their wy ves, 

Whether they be yonge or old. 
Backe and syde go bare, <fec. 



Nunc ebibant, donee nictant 

Ut decet virum bonum ; 
Felicitatis habebunt satis, 

Nam Zythi hoc est donum. 
Et omnes hi, qui canthari 

Sunt haustibus laetati, 
Atque uxores vel junior es 

Vel sencs, Diis sint grati 
Sint nuda, &e. 



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 



* Camillo Q,uerno was a Neapolitan poet of the 15th century, -who acquired great fame by 
his faculty for extempore versification, and obtained the name (first given him by some of his 
convivial friends, while at Rome, in 1514) of Arch-Poet. Leo X, was much pleased with his 
buffoonery, and often admitted him to his table. He died in 1528. — M. 



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210 NOCTES AMBROSIAlfiE. [July, 

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. 

Odoherty, Curse it, — it is getting cold on my stomach. Is there 
no more stout potation in the house 1 

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 1 

Byron. Not the least ; whatever is agreeable to you. Hola ! — 

Enter waiter — exits — 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 ! 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, publ ished 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,f 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 aknowledge of languages. 
He was acquainted with nearly all the dead, and most of the living tongues. — M. 

t Dr. Watkins was a sort of general life-writer. He compiled Memoirs of Byron, which 
sold very well, and wrote a Life of Sheridan, composed from newspaper paragraphs, play-books, 
and Parliamentary reports. — M. 



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1822.] BYEON 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 / 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. 

ON READING THE APPENDIX TO LORD BYROn's TRAGEDY OF THE TWO 

FOSCARI. 

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 Martm ? 

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. It 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."* 

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. 



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212 N0CTE8 AMBEOSIAN^. [July, 

Odoherty, Ah ! poor Jack Polidori I Lord rest him. Polidori 
was bribed on the occasion.* 

Byron, 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 ? 

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 
me. 

Odoherty, Oxoniensis gave you, or rather Murray, a good rib- 
roasting. I trouble you for the bottle. 

Byron, I think too harsMy — but the Oxonians are great big-wigs. 

Odoherty, Oh ! thundering tearers, in their own opinion. I 
remember ****^ who, n'importe — agoing 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 ! ha ! ha ! 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 \\ 

* 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 physician,) 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. 

t For a Fellowship ?— M. 

i Magi an has a. lapsus penna here. It was not "old Oxford's hoary piles among" which 
Byron roamed. He was a member of Trinity College, Cambridge. — M. 



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1822.] «rOHN 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, (fee, 
scribblers 1 

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. 

*Bi/ron, Quelle gloire ! they should have an amabean contention, 
like the clowns in Virgil. Suggest this to North, with my compli- 
ments. 

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 been 
always too much a lady's man. 

Odoherty, Ay, — and so has somebody else who shall be nameless. 
I have had, I take it, somew^here 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 1 

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 ! 

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. 

* The continuation was -written, not ty John Taylor, but by Gary, the translator of 
Dante.— M. 



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214 NOCTES AMBROSTAN^. [July, 

Odoherty. I know it was d ^d ungenteel in Elliston to put it in 

the way of being so.* But there is no making a silk purse out of a 
sow's ear. 

Byron. How is my old friend, " My Grandmamma's Review, the 
British r 

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 ? 

Odoherty, Lots. Valpy setup the Museum, a weekly paper, f the 
other day, against it. When I tell you that black-letter Tom 
Fogrum Dibdin J 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. 

Odoherty. Shall I give you news from Parnassus ? 

Byron, No — no — no — I am sick of that. Did you see my Wer- 
ner and my New Mystery 1 

Odoherty, Yes — Murray showed them to me in sheets. 

Byron, Well, what did you think of them 1 

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 flctwers 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 1 

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 1 

* As the la-w then stood, once that a play was printed, a manager might put it on the stage, 
without payment to the author, or even asking his permission. Elliston, when manager of 
Drury Lane, in 1821, produced " Marino Faliero," though Byron, in the preface, had said that 
it was neither intended nor written for the stage. It did not succeed in representation.— M. 

t The British Review, British Critic, Monthly Literary Censor, and Museum, have long 
been of the past. — M. 

I Thomas Frognall Dibdin, nephew of the song-writer, was a zealous bibliographer. 
Originally intended for the law, he entered the church in 1804. His "Bibliomania," which 
at once established his character as a writer, was published in 18(>9, 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 1847, 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. 



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1822.] ISMAIL 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 
mount. 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. 

Odokerty, 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] 

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. hows 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 out, and I am some hundred yards distant from civilation yet. 

Byron. Pardon me — do as you like ; but I shall not drink any 
more. 

Odoherty. Not till the next time, you mean. Could I get a song 
out of your lordship ? 

Byron. On what subject ? 

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, f 

* Tn 1820, Ismail Fitz-Adam published a spirited poe,m called " The Harp of the Desert," 
descriptive of the battle of Algiers. In 1821, he brought out " Lays on Land," which attracted 
considerable notice. In June, 1823, he died. This author's real name was John Macken, and 
he was a native of Ireland. Although of respectable family and classically educated, he 
served as a common sailor in the Battle of Algiers, in 1816.— M. 

t The bag-pipes are nearly as well known, and as much played on, in the North of Italy, as 
in Scotland. — M 



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216 NOCTES AMBKOSIAN^. [July, 

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. 
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 /walk as 1 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 ? 

Odoherty, Your antagonist ? 

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,) is 
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.— M. 
t The ipsisima verba are *' Though wit may flash from fluent lips."— M. 
t One of Bowles's pamphlets, during the controversy with Byron, on the merits of Pope, as a 
poet, had the motto " He who plays at Bowles must expect rubbers.'''' — This was about the 
be t thing in the work, — M. 



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1822.] WILLIAM L. BOWLES. 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 1 

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 done, Joannes de Moravia, But is Bowles 
as thin-skinned as ever with respect to criticism ? 

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, in 
the expected turn-up between Christopher and Tom Moore,* in the 
most handsome manner possible, chanting a 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 [ineaning 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. 

Odokerty. 1 have not any. So push on. 

Byron, This poor country is so misgoverned — 

Odokerty. Ay, so your man Hobhouse says — 

Byron. What, Hobbio — mobbio — Psha ! But really the Austrian 
domination is so abom — {Beft speaking.) 

* Blackwood, for January. 18-22, opened with a truculent Preface, in very large type, in which 
Christapher 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 
umpires be appointed from among the friends of the distinguished combatants,— '• We appoint 
fur ourselves Neat [the pugilist] and the Rev. William Lisle Bowles— and we suggest to Moore, 
in the true spirit of British courage. Gas [also a bozer] and Mr. Montgomery, the " author of 
the World before the Flood." In the words of the Ring, I have to state that Moore did not 
come to the scratch ! — M. 

VOL. I. 10 



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218 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [July, 

iHetricmn SgmpoBmm 5ltr)bco0ianttm* 

SEU PROPINATIO POETICA NORTHI.* 

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 Counemara, 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, 
To burn that half man they call Sardanapalus. 

His Lordship, who, in the dull play, the Fosoari, 
Wrote worse than e'er Cockney land'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 sei'geant — * 
On his arms he should quarter a halbert in argent. 

* This chant, too full of personalities not to be given, appeared in Blackwood^ Jiily> 1822, 
and was originally intended (as a brief foot-note indicated,) to be introduced in The Noctes, 
No. III., of the preceding number. " This," quoth North, '' was before the Adjutant went on 
his Italian tour." The Noctes, No. IV., had its locality transferred to Pisa, and the dialogue 
was solely between Odoherty and Byron. — M. 

^George Gordon Byron, born 22d January, 1788, in London, died in Greece, April 19, 
1824.— M. 

2 A Poney— Hibern.— C. N. 

3 Alias, a tester — ali'as, a sixpence. — C. N. 

* Byron, who had previously resided at Kavenna, 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 
joined the Carbonari. The result was, that the military attempted to arrest him, a fracas 
ensued, which ended in the removal of Byron and his friends, first to Leghorn, and finally to 
Genoa. — M. 



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1822.] METRICtTM SYMPOSIUM. 219 

But, his health ! — like ourselves, he is fond of a frolic, 
May he ne'er die in child-bed, or faint with the colic ! 
May he die an old man, good, religious, and hoary. 
And win and wear long the true wreath of his glory I 

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 I — but stop, he's no poet. 
When the Cockneys think meet, they will easily show it.^ 
Sir Walter a poet 1 Faith, that's a misnomer. 
But still, here's success to our Northern Homer. 

Come, fill high for Tom Moore ! would this bumper could gain us 
A truce with the sweet little Pander of Venus T 
'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 thaty 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 Hoi born ; 
Whose jingliugs 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 out-cants Wild Kant, and out-Bacons old Bacon — 
The vain, self-tormenting, and eloquent railer, 
Who out of his tropes ^VrnVs Jeremy Taylor. 

6 It was laid down, in the Cockney canons of criticism, that Sir "Walter Scott was — no 
poet I — M. 

6 To be pronounced Hibernically, Va-nus, rhythmi gratia. — C. N. 

7 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. 

5 Thomas Campbell, at this time, and for some years later, was editor of Colburn's New 
Monthly Magazine. — M. 

10 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 
Rylstone, in 1815 ; Peter Bell, in 1819 ; Sonnets, in 1820 ; Memorialsof aTouron the Continent, 
in lS'2'i, and Poems of Early Years, in 1842. — M. 

11 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in 1770, died in 1834.— M. 



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220 NOCTES AMBROSIAK^. [July, 

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 CoryphcBus, 

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 tbem — 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, no longer is skittish, 
Though he's puflfd 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. 

13 Percy Bysshe Shelley, born in 1792, drowned in the Gulf of Lerici, on the Italian coast, 
July 8, 1823. No man, in his life, more thoroughly opposed the conventionalities of society. 
Few have exhibited higher poetic genius. — M. 

1* William Lisle Bowles, (born in 1762, died in 1850), whose sonnets, published in 1789, first 
drew Coleridge's attention to poetry.— M. 

15 James Montgomery, born in 1771. died in 1854. He belonged to what has 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. — M. 

16 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 Life, 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. 

i« West of Ireland, nifallor — 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. 

21 John Wilson Croker, born in Ireland, in 1780, Secretary of the Admiralty from 1809 to 



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1S22.] METEICTTM 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 Avere blind to the beams of the author of " Paris.*' 

N^ow, the bards of the drama — from Ireland — all 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 ^® 

Ht;re's to poor Skinny Sheil, whose entire occupation 
Is gone, since O'Neil ceased delighting the nation ; 
Whose head's much more empty than Maturin's wig, sirs, 
But^ nevertheless, well give Sheelahnagig^^'' sirs.*-*' 

1830, — author of some satirical verse, editor of BoswelPs Johnson, and other works, and, from its 
commencement to the present time, [July, 1854], one of the most frequent, powerful, and 
sarcastic contributors to the Quarterly Revieio. The individual familiarly mentioned as " Joo, 
that booby," was Joseph Hume, now oldest member, 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. — M. 

22 See note 6. 

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 native 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. 

2-i A beautiful pass in the Co. Wicklow. You ought to go and see it. Ans. We are too old 
to go touring. — C. N. 

26 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 acknoAV- 
ledged humorist of the company had not even the ghost of fun to bring before the audience. 
The curtain fell " in solemn silence." It was again played, with like result, and then 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, of 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 a play has failed, because it did not succeed!"] 
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 grinding-), young 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 Honorable John Philpot Curran, Master 
of the Rolls in Ireland, much to the satisfaction of the poet. Sheelahnagig, is the name of a 
popular tune in the Sister Island, but, we are sorry to say, to words of rather an immoral 
tendency. — C. N. 

2« Shell's three plays, (of which Evadne was the most successful), were written for the . 

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222 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [July, 

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 ! 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 Beubulben 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 Coekneyish 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 perform.ed 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. 

^0 A Poet mentioned by Cornelius Webb, under the title of " Green Knowles." Rather 
personal this of Corney. Af 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 ive apples swim." On the sam^e occasion an Alderm.an, (we never mention names,) 
Captain of Trainbands, 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 Banim, 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 Banim? Q,uaere. Is it possible there is such a name? — C. N. 

33 Mr. Haines, an Irishman, was a writer on the London press, and published a play called 
" Conscience, or The Bridal Night," which never was performed. — M. 

3* 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. 

35 Charles Phillips, had not only come out, as a "celebrated Irish Orator," but published a 
prose romance, and a great many verses.— M. 

36 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, Hart, 
Rees, Orme, & Brown.] — M. 

3' 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 time coming. — C.N. [A pretty 
close examination of Blackwood enables me to say, that any notice of the Rev. George Crabbe, 

" 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. 



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1822.] METKICUM SYMPOSmM. 223 

Here's to Frere, who some time since wrote Dan Whistlecraft, 
Aud 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 merits 

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 .*» 

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 luUings 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 sapphie 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 fii'st 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 doubty 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 ,4^ in whom wit and wisdom are blended, 
By whom everything's seen, felt, and comprehended — 

^8 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 principally 
be recollected by his facetious poem written under the 7iotn de plume of Whistlecraft (and 
called The Monks and the Giants), which suggested to Lord Byron the stanza, in M'hich 
he afterwards 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, Southey, and, in short, with all eminent literary men 
during the whole period of his life. He survived Scott. — M. 

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, Christopher I 
See how differently he is appreciated in London — 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. Arts. We defy any one to point out a passage in which 
we have not extolled Mr. Cornwall. 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 I 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. 

*2 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. 
43 Lucy Aiken, author of Biographies of Q,ueen Elizabeth and James I. — M. 



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224 JTOCTES AMBEOSTAK^ [July, 

And here's to the genius of Helen Maria, 
Of all that is frothy the Bntelecheia** 

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 Lub^.*® 

Now here are four bards, to whom genius is pater, 

Who never suck'd poetry from Alma Mater — 

Who just knew so much of the great Aristotle, 

As they got from the fields, from their feelings, and bottle. 

Fill first for the Chaldee — the shepherd of Ettrick, 
Who stole from the Hills' hums his musical rhet'rick — 
For Hogg's rhyme is no gruntiug — and here's a libation 
To Bloomfield, the simplest sweet Bard of the nation.*^ 

Here's to Clare and his verses, so simple and pleasant, 
The London ones 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 ; 
Hero's to Lloyd, the preserver of great Alfieri ; 
And this bumper to Lamb we send gratefully greeting, 
For we love his deep baaing and beautiful bleating*' 

Here's Thurlow half-witted, and Spencer half-attic, 
Yet not lame in the light and the epigrammatic ; 

** Helen Maria Williams, certainly one of the English "strong-minded -women," born in 
1762. died in 18127 ; 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 
narrowly escaped the guillotine. She also published a Narrative of Events in France in 
1815.— M. 

** Amelia Opie, widow of the painter, and an authoress of some note. She died in 1853. 
Hannah Wore, (born in 1744. died in 1833,) an eminent writer. — Joanna Baillie, author of 
Plays on the Passions, and other dramas and poems. She died in 1851. Felicia Hemans, the 
best of the female lyrists of England, born in 1704, died in 1835. — Of Miss Luby I only know 
that she published, but was unable to sell a volume or poems. — M. 

40 Pretty, indeed, and very pretty — but no brogue, or no blarney, Mr. Paddy. — C. N. 

♦T Full particulars about James Hogg, (born 1772, died 1&35). are to be found in my Memoir of 
him, in this edition. Robert Bloomfield, author of The Farmer's Boy, and other poems of great 
merit ; born 17G6, died 1^23.— M. 

*8 John Clare, the Northampton Peasant and Poet, now [1854], in alunatic asylum. Allan 
Cunningham, a Scottish poet, novelist, critic, and biographer, born in 1785, died in 1842. — M. 

*9 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 parish in London. — Charles Lloyd, translator of Alfieri, and 
an early friend of Southey and Coleridge. — Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, was born in 1775, 
and died in 1834. Few authors have won more sincere and genial regard from "hosts of 
friends." His Essays form, one of the most popular works in the language. A great deal of 
good pity has been expended on the fact that Lamb was "doomed to the cruel desk in daily 
toil." He was a clerk in the accountant's office in the East India House, commencing on a 
respectable and rising salary, his sole labors being to copy papers into books of record. When 
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 £450 a year. Great consideration was shown him by 
liis superiors. On one occasion, however, (the usual office-hours being nominally from 10 to 4), 
he entered his office at noon. The principal said, " IMr. Lamb, you really do come so late." 
Lamb paused, and said, with the arch simplicity which distinguished him, " True, sir, but 
then — I go away so early ."• — M. 



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1822.] METRICUM SYMPOSIUM. 225 

Herbert, tasteless and black, as a glass of bad negus f'^ 
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, Barton 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'nnight, 
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 jingo ! 'tis day. 
Can Alaric^* save them ? — No ; our personality 
And Maga alone can give them immortality. 

60 Hibernice Nagus. See note 4. — C. N. 

51 This is the Lord Thurlow, whose volume of middling rhymes, in 1813, so much excited the 
ridicule of Byron, that he perpetrated some 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 
amber. — William Robert Spencer, a lively poet of the Regency, born in 1770, died in 1834. — Dr. 
Herbert, son of the Earl of Carnaervon, dean of Manchester, author of Attila, and other poems 
of m^arked merit, and also of Mr. Henry William Herbert, the best sporting writer in America, 
(" Frank Forrester'), distinguished as poet, novelist, critic, historian, and artist. — The 
translator of Camoens was addressed in Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, as 
Hibernian Strangford ! with thine eyes of blue 
And 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 
Camoens. are no more to be found in the original Portuguese, than in the Song of 
Solomon." — M. 

53 By " Silent Sister," is meant Trinity College, Dublin — A most unfounded and ridiculous 
calumny, as we shall have the pleasure of proving ere long. — C. N. [Which was never 
done.— M.] 

53 Darley eventxially became critical pre face- writer to Cumberland's British Drama, — Bernard 
Barton, 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 Dinner. — M. 

5* Alaric A. Watts, Esq., 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 fig. — C. N. [The 
work appeared, in two volumes, but was not a good collection of poems. — M.] 



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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 — 

Enter Mr. North. 

Mr. North. 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. North. 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. NorthbS right hand^ 

Mr. Seward. Well, did he not look every inch a King,* this even- 
ing ? A King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, ought, if possi- 
sible, 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 ? 

* In August, 1822, George IV. visited Scotland. He had visited Ireland and Hanover in the 
preceding year. He remained in the vicinity of Edinburgh (the guest of the Duke of Buc- 
•leugh, 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 Holyropd, 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. 



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1822.] THE EOYAL VISIT. 227 

Odolierty, 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. 

Mr, Blackwood. Do you think, sirs, that the King would become a 
contributor to the Magazine 1 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 1 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 deceit 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." How then 1 

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 prince of princes at the time, 
With fascination in his very bow, 

And full of promise, as the spring of prime. 
Though royalty was written on his brow. 

He had then the grace, too rare in every clime, 
Of being, without alloy of fop or beau, 
A finished gentleman from top to toe.'" — M. 



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228 NOcrrEs ambrosian^. [Sept 

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. North. 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. Ambrose and Waiters with rizzard haddocks^ cut of warm 
salmon^ 7nuirfowl^ 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 
omnes.) 

Mr. North. Odoherty, be pleased to act as croupier. 

Odoherty. More porter. 

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 honest-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. Buller. I have seen the king in public oflen ; 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 hurdles like twa 
distant hills." 

Mr. Seward. What are hurdles ? 

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 Tent."— M. 



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1822.] LAY OF THE KILT. 229 

Chieftain. 14th of September. I cannot be home sooner. Is it 
a promise ? 

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. North. 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. 

Tichler^ {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 eallant 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 ! Lord bless your soul ! 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.f 

Ye'se ken the cause o' a' the steer ; — the Heeland Dhuine WassalsJ 

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 daurna mention ; 

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 ; Boi'der lairds and ancient British, 

There were Dutchmen, Danes, and Portuguese, and French and Otabeitish ; 

And a' professions, frae the lad that's only just apprenticed. 

To the great 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. 

But when the pawky Highland lairds had fairly set the fashion, 

Up gets an angry Chief o' Chiefs in a prodigious passion : 

" Fat Teil hae 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 ; 

* Hurdies in a philaheff, — his buttocks in a kilt. — M. 
\SpleuchaH ; — tobacco-pouch. — M. 

X Dunnie-wassal.—A Highland gentleman, generally the cadet of a family of rank, who 
received his title from the land he occupied, though held at the -will of his chieftain. — M. 
II Tod.— AFox.—M.. 



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280 NOCTES AMBROSIAN.E. [Sept. 

Ye shanna wear your elaes like me, I look on you as fermin, 

Ye liae nae mair o' Highland pluid than if you were a Cherman."* 

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 baud the hail town in a steer, expellin' ane anither. 

And how the bus'ness is to end, is mair than I can tell, sir. 

Indeed it seems to fickle and perplex the Sheriffs sell, sir ; 

But this I ken, that folk that's wise think they maun be nae witches, 

Wha ever let a Highland Kernf 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.f 

Omnes. Glengarry. Hurra, 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 
damned deal easier, to shoot an eagle than a peacock. But the 
easiest way of any is to knock an eagle down with a shillelah. 

Mr, Seivard. 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 — 

* Grerman. — C. N. j Kerne.-- A freebooter.— M. 

X 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 I 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 ludicrous. 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 efforts 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. 



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1822.] OS8IAN. 231 

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, w^ould take, and promote the sale with 
dull people. Yes, it is a fact, that we want facts. 

Odoherty. Damn your Magazine, Ebony ! 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.f Did 
the gentleman you speak of ever see a lake or a mountain 1 

Buller. He lives on the banks of a tarn about a mile round 
about. 

Chieftain. I am sorry for him. 

Mr. North. 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 thoroughly 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, ho has been Oscar, king of Sweden.— M. 

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232 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept. 

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. 

Chief tai 71. There are — and scientifically constructed, though of old 
date. 1 have seen 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. North, Pray, were not all the Highlands once called " Mor- 
ven ?" 

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 ovm a little better. Who pre- 
fers Alice Fell to Malvina ? or Peter Bell to Abelard 1 Oh ! 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. 0)ie 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 1 

Odoherty. No, no, my good fellow ; they throw out their bait, but 
I won't nibble. 

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,) 



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1822.] SCOTTISH 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, North. 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.* 

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 ? 

Mr. Bunting. I was glad to see the King, and I trust he will not 
be misinformed of our sentiments towards him. 1 respect him as the 
chief magistrate. 

Mr. Tickler. That is infernal nonsense. Master Bunting, begging 
your pardon. 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 ? 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. 

Young Man. In my opinion the question of borough reform 

Odoherty. Sheep's head or trotters, sir 1 

Mr. Bunting. Unless his majesty's ministers assist the Greeks, and 
ransom the young women ravished from their native Scio 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 1 

Mr. Bunting. No. But I attended a meeting t'other 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. 



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234 NOCTES AMBEOSIAK^. [Sept. 

the affairs in general of Greece were admirably discussed. And are 
we to countenance rape, robbery, and murder 1 

Odoherty. Why, 1 don't know. As an Irishman, I am scarcely 
entitled to answer in the negative. But what has all this blarney to 
do with King George the Fourth's Visit to Scotland ? 

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. North. Where art thou, Odoherty? 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 ? 

Voice., 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 borne. 

Mr. Seward. Pray, sir — I beg your pardon, but I do not see you 
very distinctly ; what do you mean by un homme borne 1 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 ? — 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 un homme borne. 

Mr. Bunting. We, all of us, hate smoking. But, Mr. North — 
gentlemen — good night. 

{Exeunt Mr. Bunting and the Young Men.) 

Mr. Buller. Are these a fair specimen of your young Edinburgh 
Whigs ? 

Mr. North. I fear they are. Their feebleness quite distresses us. 
Jeffrey himself, I am told, is unhappy about it. What am I doing % 



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1822.] 



"welcome the king/' 235 



lighting my pipe with an article that I have not read. There, {fiing- 
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 for an article about the King in Edinburgh, 

1. 

Chief of scribblers 1 Wondrous Editor ! 

Why d'ye 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 o^ the spot : 
Stir up your own Bard truly national, 
First 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 ? 
1^0, 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.* 

• fn 1821. at John Murray's, in London, Sir Walter Scott was introduced to Crabbe, the poet, 
who promised to visit him. He arrived in August, 1822, when Scott was immersed in what 
has trulv been called "the tumultuous preparations" for the King's visit. Scott could give 
little of nis time to Crabbe, who was astonished (as it were), at the fulness and freshness 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. 



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236 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept. 

4. 

Mr. Croly, my brother Irishman, 

Was there with you, as I am told ; 
He, I think, could give you a flouri^, man. 
In verses bright of gems and gold. 

Soho, Cataline ! 

Prime hand at a linje 1 
Haste, 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 Peveril ! 
There are several 
People who. never will miss the things 
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 ?) 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 
Had 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.) 

END of act first. 

* The line occurs in the song of " The Sprig of Shillelah," in which an Irishman, at Dpnny- 
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 " neat but not gaudy."— M. 



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1822.] MODERN ATHENS. 237 



ACT II. 
SCENE I. — DuJce of AthoWs 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 I 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. 

Odoherty. Coxswain, give North the tiller. Now, lads, down with 
your oars — splash — splash. Are we all on board 1 

Omnes. All — all — all — pull away. • 

Mr. North. For the King's yacht. Beautifully feathered ! Remem- 
ber whom you have on board ! 

Butter. 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. 

Mr. North. 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 ? 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 % 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. North. 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. 



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238 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept. 

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 '? Why sue for Parliamentary grants ? Are 
you not " a nation of Gentlemen f Put your hands then into your 
breeches-pockets, (1 beg your pardon, Chieftain), and pay for what 
you build. 

Air. 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. 1 think Mr. 
Linning deserves the highest praise for his zeal and perseverance. 

Odoherty. And 1 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. JSorth. Shall I steer under her stern, or across her bows 1 

Coxswain. 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. Seivard. Whom are you speaking of? Not a female, 1 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 1 

Coxswain. 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. 1 believe he is an honorary member of 
the Celtic Society. 

Mr. Seward. Are turtles ever caught on the coast of Scotland 1 

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 1 

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. 

Mr. Blackwood. Dog on it, Mr. North, you would steer, and you 



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1822.] CHEAP TRAVELLINa. 239 

would steer, and a pretty kettle of fish you are making of it — I wish 
I were safe at Newington !* These boating expeditions never 
answer. My brother Thomas told me not to — 
Coxswain, All's well. Unship oars. 

SCENE ll.—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 ? 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, see my 
friends, and return under fifty guineas. 

Odoherty, But then you indulge in luxuries, extraneous expenses 
— works of supererogation. 

* Blaxikwood's country residence was at Newington, near Edinburgh.— J/T. 



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240 KOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept. 

Mr, Blackwood, Not at all, Adjutant. To be sure hunting costs a 
good deal. 

Buller, Hunting ! Are you a sportsman ? Do you join the 
Surrey ? and conspire with your friend, Leigh Hunt, to worry hares 
in the dog-days 1 

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, among 
literary men. Nobody will accuse me of being straight-laced ; but 
while the love-fit lasts, 1 am true as steel to one mistress and 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 1 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. 

B idler. Do you seriously opine, Mr. North, that much money is 
made by periodical literature in London 1 

Mr, North, 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, Dog on it. Adjutant, why don't you give us some 
more Boxiana articles % 



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1822.] BOXIAJSTA. 24:1 

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 scholasticalJy 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 '' Fancy 
Gazette'* is to kick curs and crosses out of the ring.* It is full of 
the true English spirit. Why, 1 gave a few numbei-s 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, ruffianingit 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 ? 

Odoherty. Not at all. I saw Randal welt Macarthy in a roora 
about this size, and Jack Scroggins serve out Holt — 

Mr, Seward, Where is North ? I hope he has not leapt out of the 
cabin window. 

Oinnes^ (rising from the King's sofa,) North — North — Editor — 
Christopher — Kit, — where the devil are you 1 

Mr, North, {from within his Majesty'' s bed-room.) Come hither, 
my dear boys, and behold your father reposing on the bed of royalty ! 
(Tiey all rush in.) 

Bailer. Behold him lying alive in state ! Let us kneel down by 
the bed-side. {They all kneel down.) 

Oinues, Hail, King of Editors ! Long may est thou reign over 
us, thy faithful subjects. Salve, Pater ! 

Mr. North. Oh ! my children, little do you know what a weary 
weight is in a crown ! Alas, for us Monarchs ! Oh 1 that I could 
fail 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 gem\ 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. 

t 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 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." — M. 

VOL. I. 11 

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242 NOCfES AMBROSIANiE. [Sept. 

Mr, North) — 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 '? 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. North {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 Cutter, the Orion, 

Chieftain. Bargemen, there are five guineas for you to drink the 
King's health, from Mr. North and his friends. 

Bargemen. 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 dais^". 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 ciRce of Governor-General of India, was 
appointed to succeed Lord Londonderry, as Foreign Secretary. — M. 



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1822.] NAPOLEON. 243 

dom of Fife. See now, Seward, that you don't let her miss stays. 
She goes round withm 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 heer — 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 ? — What cargo ? — Timber and fruit, staves and potatoes ? 
Son of a sea-cow, you are drifting to leeward. 

Mr, North, 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 snivelling 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.f 

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 ? 
I ask, was his own a good one ? Was not his army cut to pieces as 
it fled ? 

Mr, Tickler, Odoherty, did you read t'other day, in the newspa- 
pers, of a Liverpool barber, shaving eighty chins, in a workmanlike 
style, within the hour 1 

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 shavees. 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 volum.e II., p. 223, of O'Meara's " Voice from. St. Helena." — M. 

t He intended proclaiming a republic, abolishing the peerage, setting Burdett to re-model the 
constitution, and dividing the property of the nobility among the partisans of this new revo- 
lution.-^M. 



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244 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept. 

Mr. North. Was he allowed to draw blood 1 

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 dined with me last 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 
fine thing. North, full of life, and glee, and glamour.* So is Don 
Juan. 

Mr. North. 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 ? Henceforth I 
patronize prose. 

Mr. Tickler. So does Mr. Blackwood. Confound him, he is inun- 
dating the public. I wish to God Gait was dead ! 

Mr. Blackwood. You are so fond of saying strong things. Gra- 
cious me ! before he has finished the Lairds of Grippy ^f 

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 ofTHopetoun House. t 

Odoherty. Hark ! the sound of the fiddle from that snug farm- 

* In 1810, William Tennant, author of "Anster 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. 

t The Entail, or the Lairds of Grippy, one of John Gait's best novels, was in the press at this 
time. — M. 

t 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. 



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THE DANCE. 245 



house amidst a grove of trees ! Pity they 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. North leaps out^ followed by the Standard Bearer^ Chief- 
tain^ c^c. ; and the Orion, her sails soon filing, wears, and 
goes down the Friths goose-winged, before the wind, 

END of act second. 

ACT III. 

SCENE I. — Kitchen of the Farm-house of Girnaway, Gudeman in 

his arm-chair, by the ingle — Mr. North 07i 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? 

Mr. North. He has a tail twenty gentlemen long.* 

Gudeman. I'm thinkin' it wad be nae 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 
wunna 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. {Exeunt Chieftain and Meg.) 

Odoherty, Madam, you cannot go wrong, it is just the eight 
figure — so — 8. Jig, or common time ? 

* The personal importance of a Scottish Chieftain was estimated by his Tail, or number of 
immediate followers.— M. 



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246 NOCTES AMBROSIAKJE. [Sept. 

Gudewife. Oh ! Jig — -jig. 

A Foursome Reel by the Standard-bea7'er, 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, North, 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 Duller is yonder in 
the corner, at the end of the kitchen dresser. 

Mr, North, Laird, the gudewife foots it away with admirable 
agility. I never saw a reel better danced in my life. 

Gudeman, She's a gay, canny body ; see hoo the jade puts her twa 
neives to the sides o'her, and hands up her chin 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 
pay? 

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. 

One Fiddler, {to another.) He fingers bonny, bonny, but he has a 
cramp bow-hand. He's shouther-bun'. 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 George IV., who was sixty in August, 1822.— M. f OOOlP 



1822.] 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 % 

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 declare ! 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 ane 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. North, 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 nae 
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, North, 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, 1 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? 

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, 1 canna hear 
either my gudeman or you, sir. But I'm awa' into the spence to 
mak some plotty, and baste the guse. [Exit, 

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248 ISrOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept. 

Mr. North. It does my heart good to see such a scene as this. I 
hope our dancers are all loyal subjects. Or do they care nothing 
about their King 1 

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 1 

Gudeman. Twa — that's ane 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. North. 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 ain Scotland, frae Hopetoun House. The auld 
royal bluid o' Scotland, I ken, is in his veins ; and there is some- 
things 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, whose 
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 thmg, 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 naething for puir people ; and that the twa Houses o' Parlia- 
ment should baud him in wi' baith snafl[le 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 
maunna deceive yoursel' wi' fine words. Mirth isna foi^ 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, 

* £e-Jrw5,— eyebrows. — M. 



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1822.] NORTH imYEILED. 249 

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. North, I hope, Mr. Girnaway, that when you come to Edin- 
burgh, you will take potluck with me. 

Oudeman. Dinna Mr. me ony mair, sir ; call me just Girnaway. 
I'll do't. Now, sir, may I ask, cannily, what ti'ade ye may be when 
you are at hame ? 

Mr. North. I am Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, of which you 
may have heard. 

Oudeman. 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. 

[Exeunt North and Girnaway into the Spence. 

SCENE \\.—The Spence. 

Gudewife (sola.) It's no every ane can set down a bit supper like 
Tibbie Girnaway. Had that guse 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. 

Enter Girnaway and North. 

Girnaway. Gudewife, you ken that bulk 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. 

Gudeijcife. I jaloused something wonderfu', whene'er I saw the face 
of him, and that Adjutant ane. Siccan a bulk I never read afore. 
It gars ane 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 buik, and your Magazkieis 
baith. I'm a friend to general education. 

Mr. North. Girnaway, 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 ain 
weans and servants, after glowring at them a while on the dresser or 
the bunker, fling them frae them, like rowans, and neist time I see 
them it's on the midden. Hawkers come mair speed wi' ribbons, 

11* i \ 

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250 NOCTES AMBKOSIAN^. [Sept 

and shears, and knives, and bits o' funny ballads, than profanity and 
sedition. But the General Assembly should ken best. 

Gudeivife. 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. 

{Exit the Gudewife^ and enters with the Standard Bearer, 
Chieftain, Buller, Seward, Tickler, and Mr. Black- 
wood.) 

Mr. North. Might I take the liberty of requesting the pleasure of 
your daughter's company, maam. Mr. Buller will go for his part- 
ner. (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 
darts off.) And her friend. Miss Susy, the only dochter o' the Anti- 
burgher minister, wha was dancing wi' Mr. Blackwood. (Mr. 
Blackwood darts off.) And Meg herself, though she hasna 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 % Weel, weel, we maun sit close. Where's Mr. Odoc- 
terme ? 

Adjutant. Here, maam. 

(Gudeman says grace^ and the Company fall to.) 

Gudewife. I fear, Mr. Adjutant, that you fin' that spawl o' the 
gusy rather teuch ? 

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 night in Spain, on the tail of an old 
French artillery horse. It was short, but sweet. 

Gudeivife. Let me lay some more rumble-te- thumps on your 
plate. Colonel Odocterme. 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 couldna 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 ? 

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. 



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1822.] 



C!OUNTRY SONGS. 251 



Miss Grace (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 1 

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 pride to her parents." 

Gudewife. 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 naething 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 ? 

Gudewife, Will she sing 1 We'll gar her sing. We maun a' con- 
tribute. 

Mr, Blackwood^ {starting.) We maun a' contribute ! Whose 
voice was that promising an article ? 

Gudewife, 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 pipes. 

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. 



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252 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^ [Sept. 

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 1 

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 ? 
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 
Kitchen^ and a crash of chairs^ and tumbling of tables, Omnes 
rush out) 

SCENE m.—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 rin into the fanners 
or the mill-wheel at ance. 



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1822.] north's speech. 253 

Davie Girnaway. Fli 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. North. 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 brawl 1 
Party ! and the King in Scotland ? Smith, Miller, you are both 
honorable men. Your professions are indispensable. Without you, 
what is this agricultural parish ? 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. Hand your tongue, Tibbie. Bring ben the plotty and 
a' the spirits into the Kitchen ; and a' bad bluid shall be at an end, 
when 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. North. 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 1 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 
phanthom 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 inVar by the blood of their hearts. Now, 



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254 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept 

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 hag 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 ? We had then been lost. England, Scot- 
land, would, at this hour, have been peopled by slaves.— rOur 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 such 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. 

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. 1 1;vas 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 flour of speech for you. Gif he were but in 



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1822.] NORTH 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 
Lord 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. {Th^y do so.) 

Mr. North. 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 North, d;c. 
to the beach. 

END OF ACT THIRD. 



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No. VI.— DECEMBER, 1822. 

Die veneris, Node 15 to 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 expose of our 
noble friend, without preparing a small canticle in honor of his gifts — 
something in the occasional way, as it were ? 

Odoherty, If the Hogg will take the Boar, I will venture on the 
Deer. 

Hogg, Done for a saxpence — here's my thumb : sing ye awa, 
Captain, and I'll be casting for an edeeo. in the meantime. 

Odoherty. Look sharp, if you get a nibble, Shepherd — / 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 ! 

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 Diilies — 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. 

8. 
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 nobility, and is also a General officer in the 
Spanish army. He obtained these honors during the Peninsular War.— M. 



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1822.] LOED fife's COUNTRY. 257 

Sure his graceship of Brandon has but little to stand on,* 

When he doth abandon the Grothic 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 to-day 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 fifieenth of December — the chiefest of cheer. 

5. 

Let us hope he'll produce such aftairs 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 % 

North. Why, I believe the Thane has introduced the breed 
among the remains of the old Caledonian forest on his Mar estate. 

Hogg. 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 norfor 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. 

Kempfei'hausen. 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 
Hamilton in Scotland, and Brandon on the peerage of England. — M. 
t Vide Hume passim.— C. N. 

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1822.] SOUTHEY AND BYRON. 259 

Odoherty. A fig for the Constitutional — you see they don't dare 
to meddle with Lord Byron ! 

Hogg. What has Byron been doing in their line ? 

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 1 

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 ? 

North. 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 ! 

North, I respect Southey as one of the most accomplished scho- 
lars 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 
Dunce in it. And the world were not thinking of Mouthy Southey 
or his hexameters. I 

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258 NOCTES AMBEOSIAN^. [Dec 

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 
Forest. All through Lord Fife's country great improvements are 
taking place. The Abbey of Pluscardine, near Elgin, has been 
restored. 

Odoherty. Hogg, you've been " glowring frae you," and preaching 
long enough ; incipe nunc, musa / 

Hogg. 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 sangs 
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 Plector, 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 haujad yoursell. I'm to tell a' my new 
stories here forsooth, and what would come of my new Winter 
Evening Tales, think ye. 

Tickler. To be sure mutton's a drug at present, What news 
from Germany, Meinheer Kempferhausen % 

Kempferhausen, The celebrated professor of Ingolstadt, Doctor 
Blumensucker, is about to put forth his long-expected work " De Be 
Chaldeall'' — 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.f 

* Edmund Henry Barker (born 1788, died 1839.) was one of the most eminent of modern 
scholars. He edited Stephens' '* Thesaurus Linguae Graecae," 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 irreligioii, 
but were too well bred to trouble offenders of rank or wealth. — M. / /-^ /->>. r-<i \ ry^ 

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260 



NOOTES AMBROSIANiE. 



[Dec. 



North, 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 ? 

North, Come, away with your parody then, if you have it in your 
pocket. 

(Tickler sings, accompanying himself on the fiddle,) 



I 



X 



li^ 



ES 



±=i 



-1 ^-^- 



— ^ 

'Let us drink and be mer-ry, Danc«, joke, and re-joice, With ela - ret, and 




=zz=^sz:i:^ 



-f- — ^—0--f 



tt; 



r-^i ■ — — '—i — ' r 

slier - ry. The or - bo, and voice." So sings the old song, And a good one it 



=P=p: 



â– #-v V -d- 



-"?- 



IS ; Few bet - ter were writ -ten From that day to this : And I hope I may 



gli 



:1=!- 



^z±t 



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. 



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. 



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 wy part to wisdom 

I make no pretence, 
m be as wise as my neighbors 

An hundred years hence. 



I rejoice that I saw her 

Triumphant in war, 
At sublime Waterloo, 

At dear-bought Trafalgar ; 
On sea and on land, 

Wheresoever she fought, 
Trampling Jacobin tyrants 

And slaves as she ought : 
Of Chuech and of King 

Still the firmest defence : — 
So may she continue tOOqIc 

An hundred years hence. o 



1822.1 BYBON. 261 

6. 1. 

Whey tlien 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'a drown it in wine 1 

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. 

Jlo^g. It is glorious ! it is perfectly glorious, as Gray would say. 
ICempferhausen (sings.) 

Stille, hersch', andacht, und der seel'erhebung. 
Rings umber ! Fern sei was befleckt von sundist, 
Was dem Staub anhaftet zu klein der mencheit 

Hoperen aufschwung ! 

Tilly leeri, oiko, hi oiko, hi oiko ! 
Tillee oiko, oiko. Tilli oi-i-oi-i-oiko I 

North. Your voice is much improved. You really begin to sing 
now, Meinheer. 

Kempferhausen. Give me a flash of the Rudelsheimer — (i-oiko ! 
i-oko — ) 

Hogg. Wheesht, wheesht, callant — you're deafening Mr. Tickler. 

Tickler. Let me tip ye another bit of sense, will ye, lads 1 

Odoheriy. 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 ? 

North. I think. Colonel Timothy, that it is naught. Not that I 
am 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. 

Hoyg. Lord keep us! whatfor an incurable ? — he's just ane of the 
finest, cleverest chiels of the age, and if he was here just now, he 
would be a delight to us all. 

Odoherty. Experto 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. 



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262 NOCTES AMBBOSIAN^. [Dec. 

North. I did. But what was there to surprise you ? He had 
already done Theocritus into the psahn measure (long metre) — was 
there any farther march in the kingdom of absurdity ? 

Tickler. No, no; hut one really cannot suffer such a fellow to be 
choppifying and patchifying at the Orlando Furioso, w^ithout 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 ! 

North. What an abortion is that tale of the Florentine Lovers !* 
How 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 aperturarn^ 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 
Hazlitt 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 noon, 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. 

Kempferhausen. 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- 
peau, — full of life, truth, and splendor. I think it must be very like 
Goethe's affair. 

Kempferhausen. 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 taJe in The Liberal, by Leigh Hunt,;;severely reviewed in Maga. — M. 



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1822.] THE CHALDEE. 26S 

to me from the Sea of rocJcs^^'' 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.'''' 

Hogg. 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. Confiteor. 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 Staffs 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 ; 
naebody fand me out, — I kent that would be the way o't. 

Odoherty. After all, Hogg, what devil possessed you to own the 
Chaldee ? 

Hogg. 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 night. 

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. 



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264: NOCTES AMBEOSIANiE. [Dec. 

Tickler, Has Hogg heard or seen the Epigrams by Mr. Webb, 
and Mr. Hazlitt, on General North's arms 1 

Hogy. 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 ! Ah I 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 North." 

Odoherty. Rather jaw-breaking that last line, like Cornelius's 
sonnets ; but truth may well compensate for want of melody.* 

Hogg. It often surprises me w^hen I think on't. But, after a', 
there's but few of the Eirst-raters, except Christopher himself here, 
that really excels in periodical WTiting ; I confess I never thought 
I myself for ane was ony 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 1 Is not he himself a 
goodish periodicaller ? 

Kempferhausen, Donner and blitzen ! do you talk so of the author 
of the Chaldee ? 

Tickler. Aye, that, to be sure, is one chef-cToeuvre; 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, na — nane o' youa jeers, auld man ! 

* Cornelius Webbe, a London writer, author of Glancesat Life, Sonnets, &c. — M. 

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1822.] CAMPBELL. 205 

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 
neatish 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 ? 

Kempferhausen. Mr. North, did you not like the letters of Don 
Leucadio Doblado ?* 

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 1 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 noae^ and eyeing Mr. Editor.^ Poo ! 
poo ! we could match that elsewhere. 

Norths 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 w^orthy sant's in 
heaven, too ? or whare did ever ony body see ony thing like yon 
epigram sf on Lord Castlereagh's death ? 

* By Rev. J. Blanco White, a Spaniard.— M. 

+ 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 
rmi thus 

" So, He has cut his throat at last I — He ! Who ? 
The man who cut his country's long ago." — M. 

VOL. I. 12 



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266 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Sept. 

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. 

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, P3^thagoras, 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 everything 
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. 

North. Poor idiot ! he is hammering at Napoleon still ; now, in- 
deed, he has taken to exhibiting a two-penny-half-penny 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- 
zine. 

North. Yes — but Mr. Croker's letter of 1818 had not been pub- 
lished then — at least I had not seen it, else 1 would have scored out 
the paragraph.* 

* Copy of the official Letter which notified to Mr. O'Meara his removal from the situation 
of a Surgeon in the Navy : 

"Admiralty Office, Nov. 2, 1S18. 
" Sir — I have received and laid before my Lords Commisioners of the Admiralty your letter 



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1822.] BARRY o'mEARA. 267 

Hogg, What does Crocker say about him ? 'Tis like he might 
ken something about him in Erland. 

North. Why, you see, Mr. Hogg, the story was just this : — Mr. 
O'Meara . 

Odoherty, O'Mara, 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. 

Kempferhausen. Has he never made any answer to all this ? 

Tickler. Answer ! — Poo 1 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 trieir judgment thereupon.' 

" Their Lordships have lost no 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 nature 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 manifesting 
great confidence in me by loading me with civilities, inviting me constantly to dinner with 
him, conversing for hours together with me alone, 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 n^ 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 mine, was peculiarly distressing to me.' 

" It is impossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was intended to convey, and my 
Lords can as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood; but, if it were true, 
and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you, directly or indirectly, it was your bounden 
duty not to have lost a moment in communicating it to the Admiral on the spot, or to the 
Secretary of State, or to their Lordships. 

"An 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- 
vice, and \hey have directed your name to be erased from the list of Naval Surgeons accord- 
ingly. I have, &c., (Signed) J. W. Croker, 

•' Mr. O'Meara, 2S Chester Place, Kensington." 



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268 



KOCTES AMBKOSIAN^. 



[Dec. 



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." 

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. 

Kempferkauseii, Bravo ! Colonel, sing, sing — hurra ! hurra ! 
hurra ! 

Hogg (sings.) 

Air — Lively. 




-N— N— N 



j^v-*— 



^^^^ 



f: 



sair - ly may I rue the day I fan-cied first the women-kind, For 






-jS K fv 



i 



aye sin - syne I ne'er can ha'e A qui - et thought or peace o' mind. 



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They ha'e plagued my heart, and pleased my e'e, And teased and flat - tered 



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Ja!; 



-ti?trdr:i 



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me at will ; But aye, for a' their witcherye, The paw - ky things, I 
CHORUS, /rs 



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t^ 



^st-- 



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lo'e them still. the wo - men folk, O the wo - men folk, But 



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jnzyzzj/. 



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V—- 



they ha'e been the wreck o' me ! O wea - ry fa' the 






wo - men folk, For they win - na let a 

I've thought, an' thought, but darna tell ; 
I've studied thetii \vi' a' my skill ; 



bo - dy be. 



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1822.] 



THE WOMEN 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, <fec. 

That they hae gentle forms, and meet, 

A man wi' half a look may see, 
An* gracefu' 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, (fee. 

Even but this night, nae farther gane, 

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 wa§ on the door, and 
practise the fiddle till the cattle danced upon the meadow. 

Hogg. Hoh ! sirs, we're a' turnin' auld noo : we've seen our best 
days, my dear Mr. Tickler. 

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 ? 

Odoherty. I don't recollect the words exactly, but I's give you 
something to the same tune, and similar in its scope and tendency, 
(ut cum Macveio loquar.) But you must be all ready with a chorus, 
mind that — 

Odoherty (sings.) 



^^. 



^^ 



^*=?E 



53 



^ 



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dzi 



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Let wit and wag-ge-ry, joy and jol - li - ty. Be the or - der, boys, of the 
#-5~# #- 



itei 



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W 



night. Is not our wine of the prim-est qua- li - ^asJagbb^WjfiiOQlC 



270 



N0CTE8 AMBKOSIAN^. 



[Dee. 



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^i 



;^.iir:^:t=^ 



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hearts and our spi - rits light ? Cho-rus my song then, joy-ous -ly cho - rus it ; 



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-»H*- 



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Why should tue look dull or blue 1 There are some mo - ments of 



fe3=Bi^^^i^iii 



Epr. 



plea - sure be - fore us yet. Fol de rol tol de rol lol de rol loo. 

2. 
He who of tax or tjthe is gabbliog — 

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 ? 

Odoherty. An ass. — (Sings.) — Chorus my : 

Hogg. I never heard of him. 

Odoherty. Of course not ; but don't interrupt the song. Tchorus^ 
a-' Mulligan has it. (Sings.) Chorus my song then, &c. 

3 

He who prates of Reform in Parliament, 

Send him adrift to the right or left, — 
Why need we care what the big whig Charleyf meant — 

Whether 'twas treason, or only theft ? — 

Chorus my song, <fec. 

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, &q. 

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 'i 
There are some moments of pleasure before us yet. 
Folderol^ tolderol, lolderol, loo ! 

-I'll be as hoarse as as a cuddle for 

t Charles Jameg Fox.— M. 

Hosted t 



flogg, (^coughing.) Hoh ! hoh !- 

* Bentham. — M. 



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1822. J HOOK AND MOOKE. 271 

a week after this wark. And div ye no find that sangs maks a body 
foil as soon as whisky ? 

Odoherty. Yes — when they act kindly together, like Wellington 
and Blueher, I confess these affairs have an exhilarating scope and 
tendency. 

Hogg, 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. 

Hogg. 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 jprone-mg of such 
a fellow as Borthwick,* a person who, according to his own story, 

* One of the persons connected with the Beacon and Glasgow Sentinel newspapers, just then -w 
in very bad odor, in the laM' courts, from the nnmher of libel suits against t^g^ted^fev VjOOQI^ 



272 NOCTES AMBROSIAiq-^. [Dec. 

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 
more. 

Tickler. Have you seen Alexander's pamphlet ? 

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 say who^ but he states the fact 
broadly.* 

Odoherty. John Bull, who has eyes everywhere, ought to take 
it up. 

North. 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 
â– whole circumstances which led to the robbery of the Glasgow Sentinel Office, to the Death of 
Sir Alexander Boswell, Bart; and the Trial [June 10, 18-2-2] of Mr. James Stuart, younger, of 
Dunearn ; 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. 



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1822.] ^'the beacon." 273 

Hogg, Puir callants, nae doubt they Loud 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 wroug to right, 
As you chance to be feed. 

Leave musty reports, 

And forsake the King's courts, 
"Wliere 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. 



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No. VII.--MARCH, 1823. 

Sederunt — Christopher North, Esq., Chairman; Timothy Tick- 
ler, Esq., Croupier; Morgan Odoherty, Esq., James Hogg, Esq., 

(Sec, &c. 

SCENE — The Blue Room — the Table crowded with Bottles^ Pitchers^ 
Devils^ Books, Pamphlets, c&c. 

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 ? 

Odoherty. I was in quod — hang it, they say John Bunyan and 
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote books there, but my spirits always sink. 

Hogg. And wha brought ye out ? 

Tickler. Poo ! poo ! he took the benefit of the cessio as usual. 

North. 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 hurdles were horrible, his tread 

* This was entitled "The Honorahle Captain Napier and Ettrick Forest," and was a notice 
of " Napier's Treatise on Practical Store-Farming, as applicable to the Mountainous Region 
of Ettrick Forest," &c. Truth to say, it was a strong puff of the Captain— the same who, 
when Lord Napier, died in China, in 1834.— M. , . 

Hosted by VJ O OQ IC 



1823.] brodie's execution. 275 

was terrific. 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. 

Odoherty, Had you your tail on, Clanhogg ? 

Hogg. Ye ill-tongued dyvour.* But what's the use o' argufying 
wi' the like o' youl — {Sings.) 

Knees an' elbows, and a', 
Elbows and knees, and a' ; 
Here's to Donald Macdonald, 
Stanes an' bullets, an' a' ! 

North, 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 1 You may kick it behind the 
fire for what I care, I assure you of that, sir. 

North. Not so fast, Timotheus ; but w^hat 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. 

Hogg. Hand • 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 Cassar ;" 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. 

t In Blackwood, for February, 1823, was a review of D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, in 
which, noticing the fact that. the Earl of Morton died by the Maiden, which he introduced 
into Scotland, the critic affirmed that Deacon Brodie, 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-anim.ate his body 
were fruitless. The reviewer said, " We have reason to say we know this, for we are old 
enough to have often talked with the surgeon who was present when the experiment was 
made."— M. 



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276 NOOTES AMBEOSIAN^. [March, 

Odoherty, Alas ! p r Brodie ! — ^To tell you the 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; btit 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 ?" I 
think, " The Three Perils of Man" were, according to our kilted clas- 
sic, " Womes, War, and Witchcraft." 

Hogg. Aye ware they — but faith, guess for yoursell, my cock. I 
ance told ane of you the name of a book I was on, and ye had ane 
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, Eakes, and Ratafie V 

North. " Flattery, Flirting, and Philabegs ?" Three F's, Hogg. 

Hogg. Weel, I thought of some o' thae very anes. I thought of 
" Kirns, Kirk in gs, 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 V 

Hogg. Na, na, you're a' out. " Love, Learning, and Laziness." 

Odoherty. O, most lame and impotent conclusion I 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. 

Hogg. If ye say another word, I'll dedicate the bulk to you, Captain. 

Odoherty. Do. I always repay a dedication with a puff. 

Hogg. Yon D'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 tales,) I beg of you to 
imitate, above all other novel writers, my illustrious friend, the 
Viscount D'Arlincourt.* 

Hogg. Arlincoor, say ye ? Wait till I get out my kielevine pen. 
Od ! I never heard tell of him afore. 

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 modern French novelist.— M. 

Hosted by CjOOQ IC 



1823.] VISCOUNT d'arlincouet. 277 

North, {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 nane the waur of a hint or twa 
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 

Hogg. 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 1 

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 — 

Hogg. 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 tbe Princess, borne on her gentle palfrey, abandoned herself to these 
sad thoughts, Lutevia, at a turn of tbe 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 inexplicable horrors, produced by the 
various revolutions which had acted upon thin region. In one place were seen 
streams of basaltic lava, thick beds of red pozzolanum, calcareous spars, and 
gilded pyrites, 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, sonorous congelations^ sparkling ecorios, and crystallized 
prismSf were mixed accidentally with the confused works of different regions. A 



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278 NOCTES AMBEOSIAJST^. [March, 

crater had become a lake ; an ancient bed of flames, a cascade ; the waves of the 
ocean had driven back the bUiziiig volcanoes, had placed the peaks of mountains 
where their bases had been, and had rolled pele mele^ zeolites and dlices, cinders 
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, 
bad contended ; 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 heayens 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 almost 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 ! 1 1" 

Hogg. Oh man, that's awfu' grand ; thae lang words gie siccan an 
air to the delineation. - 1 dare say some o' the bonny words would 
suit very well in my " Learning." Will you lend me the bulk, Mr. 
North ? 

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, noo 
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 molli culi,vf ith. calcined andvitrijiedsuhstsinces, 
bore in every part the destructive marks oi fire ; while the sunken earth, the 
schistous stones, the beds of mud, the irregular mixture of volcanic with marine 
productions, and the regular piles of basaltic prisms, were evidences of the opera- 
tion of contending elements!' 

Hogg. " Evidences of the operations of contending elements !" It's 
perfectly sublime. It dings Kilmeny — na, it clean dings her ! 

North. Nil desperandum! Spout us a bit more, Odoherty. 

Hogg. Speak weel out. Captain- — gie yoursel breath. 

Odoherty. Read yourself, Hogg ; there's a fine place. 

Hogg. 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 ? Well, hear how 

♦ In Canada.— M. 



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1823.] HOGG, " WATERLOO." 279 

this virgin Princess here describes one she saw sleeping in his own 
bed-room, to which she had penetrated. " His chest," said she, "his 
chest half-bared, 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 . 

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. 

Hogg. My gudeness ! This is just the book I wanted. Od, I'll 
come braw speed noo. 

Odohertg. 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. 

Hogg. De'il a fears o' me ! 

Odoherty. If your heroine is to be woo'd about St. Leonards, be 
sure you turn 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 Linnsean 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. 

Hogg. 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 denner 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. KcjpaKeg dg 

knpavra yapvefiev 
Aiog zjpog opvtda detov. 

* James Simpson, an Edinburgh lawyer, published an interesting account of his visit to 
Waterloo, in 1815. In the late editions he gives some delightful recollections of Sir Walter 
Scott.— M. 

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280 KOOTES AMBKOSIAN^. [March, 

Hogg. Eh! 

North, Grsecum est. 

Odoherty. (Sings, accompanying himself on the trombone.) 

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 cm" age. (bis.) 

2. 

'Tis he will tickle ye 

With Molliculi, 
Pouzzolanum, Schorl, and Schist ; 

'Tis he will bristle. 

With cone and crystal, 

His shepherd's whistle 
Is now, in loathing and high scorn, dismist. (bis,) 

8. 

Show your glory 

In shells and scoriae I - 
Pour your lava, drop your spar I 

With Stalactites, 

And Pyrites, 

And Zeolites, 
Hogg now will make thee stare, prodigious Parr ! (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 shore ! (bis.) 

5. 

Grasp your slate, sir. 

Scratch your pate, sir. 
You must speak — the world is dumb ! 

Logic, Ehet'ric, 

Chemic, Metric, 

Fresh from Ettrick, 
With glorious roar, and deaf ning deluge come ! (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 ? 

* Macvey Napier edited the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.~M. 

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1823.] TJGO 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 '? 

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 Pecchio, and Count Pecchio repays Edward Blaquiere, Esq. 
in the body of the book. It contains, however, and that's what 
brought it to my recollection just now, some most eulogistic pages 
about 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 ouc obscrvcs movlug 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 !" 

North. Pooh, pooh ! Timotlty, you're daft. I confess I regret that 
he should have been called Fudgiolo — for a man never finds it easy 
to lose a nickname. 

Odoherty. Of my making. 

North. Sorrow on your impudence ! — You have cost many a 
w^orthy 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 w^ould not be a better-natured book in a' the 
world — it's just that lang-legged Adjutant that pits the deeviltries 
intiirt. -^ 

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 I — M. 



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282 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

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. 

Odokerty. 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 get 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." 

Hogg. Meaning me ?— ^Od, I'll no be lang about twal tumblers, if 
that's a' the matter. 

Odoherty. Ha ! ha ! honest Jemmy ! — But, to be serious, old boy, 
who then is the man that hath been elevated ? — who is he that hath 
in this sort been depressed ? 

North. Why, as I said before, you will creep out upon your "/?er- 
manently .'''' 

Odoherty. And you may say that. The fact of the matter, or ut 
cum Josepho hquar^ " 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 dream 
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 
l)een able to ferret out a long-concealed author of genius ? — No, no. 



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1823.] PUFFma 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 1 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 ? Is it not true, that 
Barry Cornwall's dramatic scenes formed a delightful little book 1 
and ought they to be quite forgotten, merely because he has written 
three or four confounded trashy ones since 1 Is it not true that Mrs. 
Hemans is a w^oman of pretty feeling and writes sweetly ? — Is it 
not true that Bernard "Barton and Allan Cunningham are both of 
them deserving of commendation 1 

Hogg. Hear ! hear ! 

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 ? 

ilogg. The Forty -Three's a long look — heh, me ! we may a' be 
aneath the moulds by that time.* 

Tickler^ [dejectedly.) The wicked shall cease from troubling — 

Hogg., (ditto.) And all their works shall follow them — 

Odoherty. Come, come ; what's the fun of all this % (Sings.) 

1. 

Time and we should swiftly pass ; 
He the hour-glass, we the glass. — 
Diiuk! yon beam which shines so bright 
Soon will sink in starless night : 

Tchorus, now, Tchorus — 

• All were, except Wilson, who died in 1854. — M. 



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284: NOCTES AMBROSIANJE. [March, 

Ere it sink, boys, ere it sink — 

Drink it dim, boys ! drink, drink, drink 1 

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 1 drink, drink, drink ! 

{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 ? 

Hogg. I write in The Quarterly myself now and then, 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. Whatna 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.) Divinitv 
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 — I 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 — ainsi ya le monde ! 
North. So, Principle, Mr. Odoherty, is entirely laid out of view 1 

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 Wica- 
tures ? Are a man's five fingers 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. 

* He did not.— M. 



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1823.] THE QUARTERLY. 285 

Odoherty, " Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimirie agetur" — 

North, You talk en Suisse. 

Odoherty. Ay, and as you know to your cost, old boy, 
d^argent, point de Suisse ! 

Hogg. I dinna follow you vera weel, but I'm feared you're r. 
a very shameful story of yourself, Captain Odoherty. 

North [aside to Hogg.) My dear Cory don — he's only bammii 
I believe. 

Hogg. Oh ! the neerdoweel ! to bam Mr. North ! this beats 

Odoherty. " This beats York races, Doncaster fair, and Juages 
come down to hang folks." 

North. Enough ! enough ! — but once more to business, my friends ! 
what say you as to the Quarterly 1 

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 an 
article upon it. 

North. 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.* 

Hogg. Can it be Mr. Canning 1 

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. f 

* Dr. Maginn.— M. f Gifford retired from the Quarterly in 1824, and died in 1826.— M. 



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286 N0CTE8 AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

Tickler. It will be a great loss to literature when he retires from 
his Review. \ 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 them among the bene rneriti 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 1 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 ! Plow you would squeal if I put the knife 
in your hide ! No jokes on me, my formose puer. 

Hogg. Dinna gloom that gait. Od ! 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 1 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. 

* CoLbett -wrote leading articles, at that time, in The Statesman, which, soon went down M. 

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1828.] BOOK 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 exposee, 

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 I 

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. 

Hogg. 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 Norths 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 1 — I'm wae 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 Allen 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 Idll he 
was elected Warden, and in 1820, Master of Dulwich College. He contributed largely to the 
Edinburgh Review^ and died in 1843. — M. 



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288 KOCTES AMBEOSIAK^. [March, 

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 ! 

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 narrative, 
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 Devil, 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. 

Hogg. 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, f 

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 then manager of the Haymarket Theatre in London, and Murray of the Edin- 
burgh Theatre.— M. 
t Pierce Egan's " Tom and Jerry."— M. 



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1823.] 



RHYMma PROSE. 289 



Odoherty, You're as great in proverbs as Sancho himself, I swear. 
Why don't you write a rational book on them ? 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. 

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, 1 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 no less an author than 
D'Israeli, in his " Wondrous Tale of Alroy." However, he did not make very ra.uch use of it. 
In May, 18;i3, Maginn, who wrote nearly all the letter-press to the " Gallery of Literary 
Characters" in Fraser^s Magazine, (the etched portraits were by Daniel Maclise, then a young 
Irish artist rising into celebrity, and now one of the first painters in Europe,) hit off this 
rhyming prose very neatly. The sketch thus commenced: ''0 Reader dear! do pray look here, 
and you will spy the curly hair, and forehead bare, and nose so high, and gleaming eye, of 
Benjamin D'is-rst-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. Maginn could talk in this 
rhymed prose for half an hour at a lime, 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. 

VOL. I. 13 



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290 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

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 nullities, 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 nob, to draw into his own fob such a 
noble shower of pounds, shillings and pence. 

Hogg, 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 ; 
or you, why won't you do the same good turn for me, Mr. North 1 

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 — proclaimed that he had a right 
to confer titles of nobility 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 embr(»idery — 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 
perished, most m.iserably, of want and other discomforts — and, in a word, naade many dupes. — 
He wzLS an impudent and successful charlatan. — M. 



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1823.] CHBISTOPHER A CACIQUE. 291 

(Sings.) 

O 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 ? 

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, <fec. 

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 nonce, 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 ^orm^, et sus suus Laureate ! — 
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. 



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292 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [March, 

Hogg. Will you be a despot, though ? 

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 
oi fricassee and frommage, 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 a la 
Pte.* 

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 1 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 police Magistrate in 1792, and died in 
1813. H e wrote a great many bad verses : — the best known being an epic, called " Alfred." — M. 



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1823.] 



GEORGE BUCHANAN. 



293 



Odoherty [reads.) 

ON THE STAR OF " THE LEGION OF HONOE." 

{From the French.) 

Star of the brave ! — 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 I 
Wild meteor of immortal birth. 
Why rise in Heaven to set on earth ! 

Souls of slain heroes form'd thy rays ; 
Eternity flashed through thy blaze ! 
The music of thy martial sphere 
Was 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 beneath 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 ; 

For 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. 

Star of the brave ! thy ray is pale, 
And darkness must again prevail I 
But oh ! thou Rainbow of the free ! 
Our tears and blood must flow for thee. 



ITogg {extemporizes.) 

ON THE HEAD OF GEORGE BUCHANAN. 

(From the Chaldee.) 

Head of the Sage ! whose mug has 

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."* 

Limbs of torn authors form its rays ; 
Eternity attends its praise ; 
The music of its partial puff 
Gives fame and honor quantum' suff. 
And its fist darkens hostile eyes, 
Like Randalf 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,§ 
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 ! thy own old bones || 
Lie snug beneath Greyfriars stones. 
But, oh ! thou Rainbow of the three I 
North — Tickler — and Odoherty 1 



* A poem by the Right Hon. the Lord Byron. — C N. f Eandal, a prize-fighter. — M. 

X The tri-color.— C. N. 

^ 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. 

II 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. Should not this be corrected 1 
It certainly should.— C. N. [It has not yet been corrected.— M.] 



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294 



NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. 



[March, 



When thy bright promise fades away, 
Our life is but a load of clay. 

And Freedom hallows with her tread 
The silent cities of the dead ; 
For beautiful in death are they 
Who proudly fall in her array — 
And soon, oh, Goddess ! may we be 
For evermore with them or thee I 



Were thy bright look to fade away, 
Our life were but a load of hay. 

Scorn hallows with a hearty kick, 
The dumb posteriors of Sir Dick ;* 
And beautiful, but dead, we deem 
Tom Campbell's mess of curds and 

cream ; 
And soon, 0, Taylor ! will it be 
A match in Balaam ev'n for thee ! 



{Hogg kneels^ a solemn air is heard from Odoherty^s trombone, 
Tickler, with dignity, hands the poker to Mr. North ; while 
it is descending slowly towards the Shepherd'' s shoulder, the 
curtain is dropt down very gradually upon the dramatis per- 
sonce, tvhoform a perfect picture,) 

* Sir Richard Phillips, editor of the Monthly Magazine. — M. 



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295 



No. VIIL— MAY, 1823. 



Present — Ettrick Shepherd, Chairman ; Kempferhausen, Crou- 
pier ; Tickler, Odoherty, Dr. Mullion, &c. 

SCENE — The Chaldee Chamber — Table as it should be, 

Tm^~Ten P. M, 

Kempferhausen. Ah, mein Gott ! what for a barbarian ! And you 
came to town on purpose ? 

Hogg. Deed did I, lad. And what for no ? I aye come in when 
there's ony 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. 

Kempferhausen. 0, Mr. Odoherty, you too ! 

Tickler. Pooh, pooh ! Odoherty went to get materials for an article 
— he has promised Ebony a series of HoR^ Patibulan^, and they will 
be taking papers I believe, after all. 

Hogg. I think I could contribute to that series mysel. Odd ! Fve 
seen a matter of fifty hangings in my time. 

Odoherty. Fifty ! why, Hogg, you're old enough to be my grand- 
father — and yet Fve seen three times that number myself — besides 
plenty of shootings, and all manner of outlandish doings — guillotine 
— sword — axe 

Hogg. 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 



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296 IsrOCTES AMBROSIAK^. [Mat, 

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. 

Hogg, Weel, I never saw onybody gang aiF easier than Luclcy 
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. Million. 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 hke 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 ? 

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 jfield — 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 Si facsimile 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 Eai'l of Morton, who constructed the instrument of decapitation called 
The Maiden. Dr. Guillotin, who improved on this, did not fall a victim of his ingenuity, as 
has been, reported, but survived until 1814. — M. 



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1823.] QUENTIN DUEWAED. 297 

Odoherty. I fear they have heard of the hoax, and cancelled that 
sheet of their Transactions. What a pity ! 

Hogg. Hoh ! hoh ! hoh ! The organization of a fozy turnip ! Hoh ! 
hoh ! hoh ! hoh ! the hke 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 I — 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. 

Hogg, Wha were the twa saps ? Name them, name them. 

Odoherty. No, I shall spare their names ; for I hear 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. 

Hogg. We'll see — we'll see. 

Tickler. And is it really to be a personal work, Hogg ? 

Hogg. It sets you weel, hinney — but ha' done, ha' done. Ye'll a' 
read and judge for yourselves in 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. 

Hogg. Wait a wee. 

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 ? and div ye really think sae in earnest ? Weel, 

I cannot but confess it, 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 yom'self — what 

♦ The SGQtamaa newspaper aad the Phtmological M€ei&w.—M, ^^ . 

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298 NOCTES AMBROSIAK^. [May, 

capital characters those two ladder boys are — and then their never 
stirring without rope and pulley, any more than a parson without a 
corkscrew ! 

Hogg. 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 
afl". 

Odoherty, Your imagination is lively, good Shepherd. Have you 
introduced any similar scenes in your work ? 

Hogg. Ha ! lad — wait a wee, again — pumping, pumping ! 

Odoherty, You seem to think every body is on the qid vive for your 
bundle of balaam. 

Hogg. Balaam ? Gude have mercy on us I 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 ? Are you serious ? 

Hogg. 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. 

Hogg, 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. 

Hogg. 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- 

♦ Mackay'8 Hotel, Prince's Street, Edinburgh.— M. ^ 

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1823.] BERANGER. 299 

ever my fingers are dinnled wi' driving the pen. And Fm a' in the 
heart o' business too — Mr. Constable's grand new shop's just foment 
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 Bete-bottee. 

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 m the ratio of their unintelligibility. 

Hogg. 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. 

Hogg. '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 Beranger — the very 
last thing Beranger has done. 

Tickler. Ha ! I've seen very little of his works, — they say he's the 
Tommy 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 Beranger 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 

* Beranger, the greatest song-writer France ever had, was born in 1780. The brilliant suc- 
cesses of Prance, 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 
honorable and happy retirement. — M. 



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300 NOCTES AMBROSIANiE. [Mat, 

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. 

Hogg. You 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'gmbee d'anacreon. 

Air : de la Sentinelle. 

Un jeune Oree s'^crifc k des tombeaux: 
Victoire ! il dit ; I'echo redit : Victoire I 
O demi-dieux, vous nos premiers flambeaux, 
Trompez le Styx et voyez notre gloire. 

Soudain sous un ciel enchants 

Une ombre apparait et s'ecrie : 

Doux enfant de liberty, {his,) 

Le plaisir veut une patrie, 
Une patrie. 

O peuple Grec, c'est moi dont les destins 
Furent si doux chez tes ayeux si braves ; 
Quand il chantait I'amour dans les festins, 
Anacreon en chassait les eselaves. 

Jamais la tendre volupte 

N'approcha d'une ^me fletrie. 

Doux enfant de la liberty, {his.) 

Le plaisir veut une patrie, 
Une patrie. 

De I'aigle encore I'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 fetes passent sans gaiety, 

Sur une rive encore fleurie. 

Doux enfant de la liberty, {his.) 

Le plaisir veut une patrie, 
Une patrie. 

D6ja vainqueur, chante et vole au danger, 
Brise tes fers, tu le peux si tu I'oses : 
Sur nos debris, quoi I le vil stranger 
Dort enivr6 du parfom de tes roses I 

Quoi ! payer avee la beaut6 

Un tribut 4 la barbaric ! 

Doux enfant de la liberty, {his*) 

Le plaisir veut une patrie, ,. 
Une patrie. 



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182a] BEEANGER. SOI 

C'est trop roiigir aux yeux du voyageur, 
Qui d'Olympie evoque la memoire. 
Frappe, et ces bords, au gre d'un ciel vengeur, 
Reverdiront d'abondance et de gloire. 

Des tyrans le sang detests 

Rechauffe une terre appauvrie ; 

Doux enfant de la liberte, {bis.) 

Le plaisir veut une patrie, 
Une patrie. 

A tes voisins n'emprunte que du fer, 
Tout peuple esclave est allie perfide. 
Mars va farmer des feux de Jupiter, 
Cher a Venus son etoile te guide. 

Bacchus, dieu toujours, indompt^, 

Remplira la coupe tarie. 

Doux enfant de la liberty, {bis.) 

Le plaisir veut une patrie, 
Une patrie. 

n se rendort, le sage de Theos 

La Grece enfin suspend ses funerailles, 
Thebes, Corinthe, Athene, Sparte, Argos, 
Ivres d'espoir, exhumez vos murailles ; 

Yos vierges meme ont rep6t6 

Ces mots d'une voix attendrie, 

Doux enfant de la liberte, (bis.) 

Le plaisir. veut une patrie, 
Une patrie. 

ITogg, 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 ? 

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 sent toujoura tendres, 
Toi, peuple Grec ! " 

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 PerUs of Man,"— M, 

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302 



NOCTES AMBROSIANiE, 



[Mat, 

Beranger, too, robbing Hogg ! — But 



Odoherty. Ha! a new light ! 
begin, begin, dear James. 

Hogg. Ae mair round of the bottles ere I begin — [Drinks a bumper 
of toddy), — Ay, now — my whistle will do now. — (Sings.) 




i 



Come, all ye jol - ly shep-herds that whis-tle thro' the glen, VU. 



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tell ye of a se - cret that courtiers din -na ken. What is the great-est 



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bliss that the tongue of man can name 1 'Tis to woo a bon -' ny 

CHORUS. 



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las - sie when the kye come hame. When the kye come hame, when the 



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kye come hame, 'Tween the gloaming an' the mirk, when the kye come hame.* 

'Tis not beneath the burgonet, nor yet beneath the crown, 
'Tis not on couch of velvet, nor 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 he ! 

* 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 kye. Hogg accordingly re- 
moved the superfluous and peccant s. When next the song was printed it had the correction, 
and the words were, "When the kye come hame," — but his rural admirers refused to adopt 
the alteration, which they said was " dreadfu' aflfeckit," and, to this hour, the words are sung 
as originally written. Hogg used to relate this anecdote with great glee, in justiflcation of 
his unmitigated and undisguised contempt of verbal criticism. — ^M. 



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1828.] ^'WHEN THE KYE 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. 
W.hen 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 blnelift 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 ewes 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, (fee. 

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, Hogg? You have done nothing so sweet these three 
years. 

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 ? 

Hogg. 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 ?" — 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 
right, it begins with some trash about " Tarry woo','' and " whistling 



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304 NOCTES AMBBOSIAJSTiE. [Mat, 

at the plow." The Standard-bearer might easily think the song a 
new olie. 

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, Tarn 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 — Hihernice, 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 ! 

Kempferhausen. Champagner ! champagner for Hogg. Ha ! that's 
your sort ! what for a cork ! 

Hogg. Eh ! siccan a clunk as that chiel's loupit awa wi' ! There — 
hand yer hand, Mr. Ambrose — eh ! siccan a ream ! (Brinks.) 

Odoherty (drinking). I pledge you, my Chaldean Shepherd. Well, 
the wine is prime. Ferguson for ever, say I ! 

Hogg, Oh dear ! I never faund ony thing sae gude since ever I was 
born — heh, there's anither glassfu' 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 ! 

Kempferhausen. 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 the 
bottle. 

' Tickler. I suppose you would never think of small beer with your 
porridge again ? 



♦ .4«^We«— Half-seas over.— M. 

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1823.] DmNEB AT YAEEOW. 305 

Hogg. Na, fkith I — nor tiyacle neither — no, nor porter and sugar, 
whicli 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 ? 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 ? — Mr. Kemperhuusen, the call is for you. 

Kempferhausen (sings). 

Der wind geht durch die Baiime ; 

Aus grunen Schatten schwebt 
Die milde schaar der traiime 

Aus Luft und Lust gewebt. 
" "Was bringt ihr aus der feme 

Und locket mich zur Ruh ? 
Spriicht ihr von Leibgen, gerne 

Driickt ich die Augen zu I" 

Hogg. Awfu' toothbreakers ! wheesht, wheesht. 

Kempferhausen. Well, very well, mein Herr Hogg. Ich sange 
nichts mehr — Potztausend ! 

Odoherty. J) German ! — Dr. Mullion, what are you ruminat- 
ing ? — And you. Tickler, what book is that you are fumbling with ? 

* The Black-faced sheep are found to thrive so extremely well on the Scottish hills, that the 
breed has become very general.— M. 



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306 N0CTE8 AMBEOSLAJNi^. [Mat, 

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. 

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 ac<5use of low 
mendacity a man of letters, even though no tradesman, for j^alming 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 
ex-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 disabilities 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 rufl&ans 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 eoa-offieio^ but the Government, alarmed at the prospect of defeat, never 
brought the accused to trial, and thus gave a triumph to the Orangemen. — M. 



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182y.] SCOTCH TITHES. 307 

ignored the bills — I longed to liear how the staunch advocates of the 
Revolution of 1688 would treat the memory of William III. — I ex- 
pec ted savory remarks on the Beef-steaks — and, in general, looked for 
somewhat ingenious and piquant on Forbes, Stand wich, 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 ? 

Hogg. I wonder what it could be ? 

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 !" 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 
tlieir 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 forty 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. 



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308 N0CTE8 AMBROSIAN^. [May, 

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 5^. note, a good 
character for sobriety, and his discharge. 

Tickler. And Jeffrey thought he could make the young idiot 

go down by giving his effusion a catching name. That's all, Odo- 
herty. 

Odoherty. 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 1 

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 6e." 
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 and mantua-makers' literature.-rM. 

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1823.] 



HENBY ORATTAN. o09 



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 naivete 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 theii* 
panegyric, 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 brilHant 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?" 

Odoherty, Some of them might be more likely to act a Paris in 
1792, or to act a Catiline.f But to proceed — "Even-handed justice 
returns the poisoned chalice to our own hps." 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 T do not gbject 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 has 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. Brougharu'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 employed 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 Rectory 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. 



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310 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [Mat, 

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 
mad.e 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 ! hoch ! heegh ! heegh ! hoch ! 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. 

Tickler, Perhaps the whole is an invention of the Gentlemen of the 
Press. 

* 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 1823,) Brougham stigmatized him as having exhibited the most incredible 
specimen of monstrous trickery, for the purpose of obtaining oflSce, that the whole history of 
political tergiversation could afford. 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 !" 
Eventually, it appeared that the retort and rejoinder had been made only in a Pickwickian 
Bense. — M. 



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1823.] JOANNA BAILLIE. 311 

Odoherty, Hogg, have you had any thing to do with this ? 

Hogg. I'll tell you what it is, Hogg kens naething about the Edin- 
burgh 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 seen 
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 ? 

Hogg. See there, man. 

TO 

A MAN OF LETTERS, 

A MERCHANT, POLITICIAN, AND ECONOMIST ; 

A GENTLEMAN 

WHO MIGHT BE NAMED TO FOREIGNERS, AS A MODEL OF AN ENLIGHTENED 

AND LIBERAL 

BRITISH TRADER ; 

A JUST AND ZEALOUS MAGISTRATE, 

AN ESTIMABLE PRIVATE CITIZEN, 

AN ABLE WRITER, 

AND ORIGINAL THINKER ; 

TO THE ROSCOE AND RICARDO OF GLASGOW, 

JAMES EWING, Esq., 

THESE VERSES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 
BY 

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 1 I had not heard of her being in the press. Tragic, I 
hope. 

Kempferhausen. 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. 

Hogg. And some very bonny pieces amang them — rax me the vol- 
ume, Mr. Tickler. 

Tickler. With your leave, Mr. Hogg — just let me look over the 
index — ha ! " Macduff^s Cross, a drama, by Sir Walter Scott." What's 
this, Hogg? 

Hogg. Go, 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" — ^so called from-an erec- 
tion (of which the bottom-stone or socket alone remains now) on which was recorded the 
bounty of King Malcolm Conraore to the unborn Thane of Fife. — M. 



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312 KOCTES AMBEOSIAN^. [May, 

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 I 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. 

TicJcler. Ah! "Otho?" 

Hogg. And ane Sir George Beaumont, that Wordsworth dedicates 
. ane of his poems to— the White Doe if I mind right — and Rogers, and 
Hook. 

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. 

Hogg. 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 ver}^ 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 " Pen Owen," and " Percy Mallory." — M. 

t 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 jeux W esprit^ 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 Holford also 
wrote verses. General Dirom had a call in the same 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. 



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1823.] THE DEVONSHIEE LANE. 3;[3 

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 I^even Water itself? 

" Hail, modest streamlet, on wliose bank 
'No willows grow, nor osiers dank ; 
Whose waters form no stagnant pool, 
But ever sparkling, pnire and cool, 
Their snaky 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 
iust 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. 

Hogg, Na, I'm nae critic. I oxAj 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. Nane o' your quizzes, Captain, — but I'll tell ye what, I'm no 
gaun to read ony 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. 

Hogg (sings to the tune of Derry down), 

THE DEVONSHIRE LANE. 

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 Unnet ; 



* Merivale subsequently translated SchUler and Dante, with marked success.— M. 

VOL. I. 14 



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314 NOCTES AMBROSIAJ^^. [May, 

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 the most that together can ride; 
And even there 'tis 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 baiiks 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— <}heers 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 ? 

Hogg, Some capital jeesting bits — particularly some riddles and 
the like. What think you of this on a pillion ? 



Inscribed on many a learned page. 
In mystic characters and sage. 

Long time mjjirst 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 aU 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! 



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1823.] "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 !" 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. 

Hogg, 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- 
ron'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 
ower 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 Kimini Hunt, and three or four 
more 

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 ? 

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 reriew, 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. His death, in July, 1822, sealed the fate of this periodical, 
which had very few redeeming features. — M. 



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316 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [May, 

Tickler, Aj, 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 one Cockney that would shake in his shoes 
if he heard what I am saying. 

Hogg, Ye gar me shake myseP when ye speak with that groaning 
key, and lay out your leg that way. -O, Mr. Tickler, ye're an awfu' 
auld carle when your birr's up. Sic an ee too ! ye put me in mind, 
no oftence, sir, of Gait's Archbishop.f 

Tickler. Hah ! hah 1 the Archbishop of St. Andrews 1 Old Ham- 
ilton ? 

Hogg. Ay, just him. I have Ringan in my maud here .J I cofb 
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 ki things of the cranreuch of 
^gQ — 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 Gait 
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.§ 

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 One of the characters in " Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters," by John Gait, which was 

X Maud. — A Scottish peasant's plaid. — M. 
publislied in May, 1823— M. 

§ " The Brownie of Bodsbeck," one of Hogg's first prose stories. — M. 

I On the contrary, like the rest of Gait's historical novels, " Ringan Gilhaize" was never of 
much mark or note, and was soon forgotten. — M. 



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1823.] 



LADY CAROLINE LAMB. 317 



ment of the Reformed and Presbyterian Religion in this kingdom — 
very great art in the management, I assure you. 

Hogg. Oh, it's a braw book — it's a real book — I aye liked Gait, 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 showthers. The real truth of the character 

Odoherty, Who the devil cares about the Covenanters ? Confound 
the old bigoted idiot, say 1 1 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. 
NichoFs Mause, and Mason's old Milnwood, are particularly excellent. 

Hogg, 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. 

Hogg. 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 taies 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 
Boston, and half a dozen mair of their towns intill the bargain ; and 
then, how they translate me in Germany ; but Kempferhausen can tell 
you better aboot those things. 

Kempferhausen. 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 Bodsbeek, 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 Vathek, Ada Reis ? 

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 
Hon. 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 Reia." — M. 



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318 NOCTES AMBEOSIANiE. [May, 

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. Vathek, sir, is one of the most original works 
that our age has seen.* It will Hve when Fonthill is in ruins — cere 
"perennius. 

Hogg, I wish you would tell me your notion of some more of the 
new books, sirs ; for IVe gotten some of the Ettrick lads' siller yet, 
and Fm 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 

Kempferhausen. 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 placej — (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.§ 

Tickler. Right in both. Butler is a delightful writer — so calm, so 

* William Beckford's singular tale of " Vathek," 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 diflBlcult to believe that it was written by an European, anc 
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 vo, England, where 
(to secure the copyright) most of them were first published. — M. 

X Washington Irving (says " The Men of the Time") passed the winter of 1822 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 Roman Catholic lawyer, published his agreeable and instructive " Reminiscences** 
in 1823. He also was eighty-one when he died, in 1882.— M. 



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1823.] SCOTTISH PAINTERS. 319 

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." 

TicMer, 0, a very clever book — ^I mean to give N'orth 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 ? 

Tickler. God knows I 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.f 

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 .J 

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 — 
but 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. 

X 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 



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820 N0CTE8 AMBBOSIAN^. [Mat, 

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- 
â–  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. 

Hogg. Set him up wi' chariots ! Deil mean him ! I think if yon 
auld clattering rickerty of a gig does for a poet hke 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 ? 

TicJcler. " The West Country, a Novel V 

Odoherty. The same.* Guess, Timothy. 

Hogg. Five hundred 1 

Tickler. A cool thousand ? 

Odoherty. Fifteen hundred guineas, by the holy poker ! What 
think ye of that, Jamie Hogg ? 

Hogg. Fifteen hundred guineas ! hoh, sirs 1 What will this warld 
come to ! Thae booksellers are turned princes. It will be an awfu' 
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 Gait 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 Hving idiot equal to Wattie,f and eris mihi Mag- 
nus 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.j 

in 1823, — in subjects of domestic life, none surpassed the second, whose death took place in 
Gibraltar Bay, in 1S41, — 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. 

t The half-witted hero of " The Entail."— M. 

i Cantos I. and II. of Don Juan were published in July, 1819, without the name of author or 
publisher. Cantos III., IV. and V. appeared together, in August, 1821 , still without the name 
of either author or bookseller. Cantos VL» VII., and VIII», written at Pisa, in July, 1822, were 
published in London in July, 1823. — ^M. 



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1823.1 ^^^ JUAN. 321 

Hogg. They're extraordinary clever — they're better even than the 
twa first ; but that mischievous Constitutional Association will not le^ 
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 foi 
a midwife ! Horrible barbarism ! 

Tickler, Just retribution ! How are the mighty fallen ^ 

" Crede Byron ! !"t 

Odohertg. Crede humbug I {^tft 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 " Crede Byron," — the heraldic motto of the house of Byron. — M. 



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322 



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 Vi- 
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 ^aid-funus 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.f 

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 Tent, in August, 1819, as heretofore related. — M. 

t Quentin Durward, published in June, 1828, 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 made a splendid spectacle.— M. 



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June, 1823.] THE DEFIAKCE 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 ? 

Mullion. I suppose that when the Re^aewerrs 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 text). Would not this read grandly 
in future ages, '' Ensign and Adjutant Morgan Odoherty, a renowned 
and undaunted warrior ^" 

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 " 

Hogg, Wha the deil will he be ? 

Odoherty, Don't interrupt me. " A handsome page, James Hogg, 
Esq., Shepherd of Ettrick " 

Sogg, Hear till him ! Me a page to a stickit Ensign ?* 

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 " 

Tickler, What, by the way, did the Great Unknown mean by such 
a phrase as '•'present time f'' 

Mullion, Perhaps, because the business was no past time. 

North {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 tho 
pulpit, happens to fail as a preacher, he is usually spoken of as " a stickit Dominie." In like 
manner, no doubt, Hogg thus alluded to Odoherty as a mere carpet-knight. — M. 



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324 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^, [Juxe 

Omnes, Hear, hear, hear ! 

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 
Poker ; 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 (loith 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 Tete de Buchanan !' 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 V 

" But the King appeased the tumult, by exclaiming, 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 lose your blunt ; Christopher is too rum a customer for me? " 



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1823.] LEDDT GRIPPY. 325 

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. 

Miillion. 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- 
pense. 

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- 
ground. 

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. 

North. 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! 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 Grippyf 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. Gait 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 abominble an animal 
as ever I saw." — M. 
+ The heroine of Gait's novel of " The EntaU."— M. 



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326 NOCTES AMBROSLOr^. [JuNB, 

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 
jay, got up in the back shop. 

Hogg. That naebody need misdout ; mony a hoax and ither black 
jobs hae been clecket there. 

Odoherty. The Chaldee, Jamie. 

Tickler. The leddy means to raise an action. She lays the damages 
at five thousand pounds sterling. 

Hogg. 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. i)o. Captain, let's have it. Sure we are all alike implicated 
in whatever affects the general concern ? 

Odoherty. The fact is, that Gait 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 Journal, 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.* 

{Unter a Devil with a proof-sheet, which is handed to Odoherty 
— Hogg looks over the EnsigrHs 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 me to go." There is nothing, in a newspaper, so systematic as pro- 
claiming your own infallibility and questioning that of all others.— M. 



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1828.] ODOHERTy's NOVEL. 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 ?" 

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' Gait'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. 

Hogg (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 Gait's style — 
noo, this is no ae bit like it. 

Omnes. Proceed 1 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 pr^ent, 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, Lad 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 (turns over a leaf <yr 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 " 

Tickler. Mrs. Oswald ! Who the deuce is she 1 I remember no 
such person in any of Gait's works. 

Odoherty. " Margaret Lyndsay 1" The Doctor was speaking of her.* 

Tickler. What has she to do in your work, Odoherty ? 

Odoherty, Read on, Hogg. 



* WUson's " Trials of Margaret Lyndsay."— M. 



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328 NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. [June, 

Hogg {reads). " I ne'er," said Doctor Pringle, " could hae thought 
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." 

" She took him in her advanced years for a bein down-seat," said 
Sir Andrew WyHe. 

" 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, Jfenny, my 
dear, I wouldna like to see't." 

Omnes. Bravo, Captain ! 

Odoherty,. Yes — I think you must allow that pathetic touch to be 
Gait 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 
\ ourself on our mercy. Acknowledge that Gait assisted you with the 
General Assembly chapter. 

Buller. Veniat manus auxilio, quae sit mihi 

Tickler. . But joking apart. Is Gait really the author of these books ? 

Buller. I have heard 

Omnes {in amazement). What have you heard ! 

Enter 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. North ! 

Enter Ambrose showing in Leddy Grippy. 

Omnes {all rising). Mrs. Walkinshaw ! . 

The Leddy, That's my name for want of a better. 



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1823.] FAMA CLAMOSA. 329 

North, A glass for Mrs. Walkinshaw. 

The Leddy. Wliilk's Mr. North ? 

Hogg, 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 sail 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 
place. 

The Leddy. Warna ye art and part guilty of a fama clamosa, in 
the Hebrew tongnie, 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. 

Omnes. 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 camna 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