DR. JOHNSON. Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled, But still fought on, nor knew that he was dead. DR. JOHNSON. Shakspeare has not only shewn human nature as it is, but as it would be found in situations to which it cannot be exposed. DR. JOHNSON. These observations were made by favour of a contrary wind. The Scottish dialect is likely to become, in half a century, provincial even to themselves. DR. JOHNSON. Every monumental inscription should be in latin; for that being a dead language, will always live. DRYDEN. Obey'd as sov'reigns by thy subjects be; DRYDEN. A horrid silence first invades the ear. POPE. When first young Maro, in his noble mind, POPE. Eight callow infants fill'd the mossy nest, THOMSON. He saw her charming, but he saw not half Horne. Beneath a mountain's brow, the most remote HORNE. The river rushing o'er its pebbled bed, LITERARY CASUALTIES. No. I. MELANCHOLY DEMISE OF MR. COWIE's Ass. 66 ON Saturday, the fifteenth ultimo, as we were passing down Fetter Lane, our footsteps were arrested by a low moaning noise, which in its crescendo swelled into something like the feeble bray of that muchenduring animal the ass. With Coleridge, we have always been a warm admirer of the patience of this useful but most stolid order of quadrupeds; and we remembered, too, that Sterne had not disdained (sentimentalist as he was) to feed one of these laborious innocents with macaroons. We accordingly perked up our head for the purpose of discovering, if possible, from whence the strange and intermittent sounds of distress proceeded. We entered the shop of Mr. Cowie the bookseller, at No. 24 of the street through which we were then peregrinating, for the purpose of making some inquiries on the subject; but who shall describe the anguish of our too sensitive heart, when, directed to the spot by a faint bray, our eyes lighted upon the way-worn and emaciated form of a poor ass, which lay stretched at its full length, and apparently in the agonies of death, by the inner side of the counter. Rosinante, in the leanest hours of her existence, was a rhinoceros when compared with the attenuated form of this unhappy beast of burthen; he was the "living skeleton" of four-footed creatures: truly, he was in "piteous case." Big tears coursed each other down our sympathetic cheeks as we listened to his feeble moans, and met his imploring looks; "verily," apostrophized we to Mr. Cowie, who stood by with apparent nonchalance, wasting" (as the booksellers have it) a large bundle of periodical publications bearing the effigy of poor Neddy, in all the bloom and vigour of his youth, upon their covers, verily, Mr. Cowie, here has been murder perpetrated; or, at the least, an offence indictable under the humane act of my worthy friend Dick Martin." Mr. Cowie smiled, and went on with his work. "Please your reverence, he is dying.' "So I perceive," rejoined we; "but of what disease?"— "Starvation!"-" By whom?"- "The public, to be sure," responded the bibliopole. "Oh, oh, (pursued we), if he has been the ass of the public, he must, indeed, have been a beast of many burthens; but that great legislator, Dick, has not forgotten his own brethren in his rage for legislation, so I will indict the public under the new bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals." Just as our feelings of honest indignation were rising to our throat, poor Neddy uttered a last bray, gave a posthumous kick, and rolling on his back, departed this life, as tragically as the king in Hamlet. Finding that his mortal career was now closed for ever, we took out our snuff-box, and sweeping it round for one last solacing pinch, began to inquire a little into his birth, parentage, and education. We were informed that in his youth he had been a vicious animal, and was once wont to bite, throw out his heels, and play all kinds of ridiculous antics, for the mere purpose of attracting popular observation. He seemed at that time to forget, with his brother in the fable, that he was somewhat too big for a lap-dog; but having been fed highly by a certain Knight of renown, who had taken him into his service, in the 66 expectation that he would carry his friends at a safe pace round the Modern Athens and Babylon the Great, and who even went so far as to dine him (to his cost) upon "attic fragments," he was of much too lofty breeding for Mr. Cowie's humble purposes; who wanted him as a hack, whom he could afford to let out at fourpence a week with all his accoutrements complete. There was a tacit understanding, that those who trotted him should feed him; but business having been slack with his master for some time past, our ass had nothing to do, and as little to eat; whereupon he grew moody (quasi Mudie), and died, in the affecting manner above narrated. An inquest has since been held upon the body, and such of his bones as had protruded through his skin, were admitted as evidence of the fact that he had died of starvation. A grave Scotch physician has, however, suggested that the kick which sent him flying out of the Modern Athens gangrened, and produced a suspension of the functions of the organs of the stomach, which led to the melancholy dissipation of his flesh already noticed, and ultimately to his demise. Those who believe in the transmigration of souls, are of opinion that Neddy's spirit has passed into the mortal coil of a well-known gentleman of the press. He will do well, at all events, not to carry his ears along with him, for they were of tremendous length and peculiarity. To those who recognise the propriety of the proverb," De mortuis nihil nisi bonum," we leave the task of erecting a tribute to Neddy's memory; merely suggesting, that the principle of a great deal of modern criticism will make an admirable motto for his tombstone. "A dead ass is preferable to a living lion." II. MARRIAGE EXTRAORDINARY OF THE EUROPEAN AND WE perceive, by a very droll announcement on the covers of a late number of the European Magazine, that that octogenarian periodical will henceforth be merged in the Monthly. Accordingly, last month, the same work was circulated under two different garbs and nomenclatures, to the no small edification of such of his Majesty's liege subjects as purchase magazines for the purpose of reading them. The old lady has, truth to speak, experienced great and most painful vicissitudes. For nearly half a century, she was husbanded by that free and accepted mason, James Asperne, of the Bible, Crown, and Constitution, Cornhill; and with the assistance of various 'prentice lads, and sentimental straw bonnet makers, noviciates of Cheapside, Bucklersbury, the Poultry, and the Minories, (for he never dreamt of paying an editor, and preferred correspondents who lived near enough to him to obviate the necessity of their transmitting their favours by post), he used to print six sheets of double-columned bourgeois monthly, on every possible variety of subject, and in every possible variety of style. To these James would sometimes superadd a skreed from Plutarch, Hume, Gibbon, or Robertson; for he was not particular as to what he published, provided he gave nothing for it. The establishment of Blackwood's Magazine, and the introduction of that most pernicious custom (as James used to deem it) of paying for contributions in hard cash, totally overwhelmed him, and he never again held up his head. Indeed, he died a few months afterwards; and the European would have chaperoned him to the river Styx, had not one Mr. James Thomson kindly rushed to the breach, and undertaken the duties and functions of a Bible, Crown, and Constitution-editor. He was however merely the " locum tenens" on this occasion; for a few months after his accession, the "propriety" of our octogenarian, (for so the auctioneer would insist upon entitling it) was disposed of, with all the useless lumber she had hoarded from the commencement of her career, for upwards of seventeen hundred pounds. The purchaser was, as may readily be anticipated, a "country gentleman," who had great expectations of setting the Thames on fire, and who accordingly engaged a new editor (a Mr. Bucke, we believe) and constituted Mr. Lupton Relfe his publisher. In due time, however, Maga was once more transferred to Messrs. Sherwood, Neely and Jones. It was then that the London Newspapers announced that the able and celebrated Martin M'Dermot, Esq. would migrate from one of the upper flats in the loftiest house in the old town of Edinburgh, for the purpose of undertaking her management, so soon as he should have put the finishing stroke to several "important works, on which he was then engaged."* No sooner had the probable hegira of Martin M'Dermot, Esq. transpired, than a mighty commotion arose throughout the "great city." Paternoster Row was in a state of painful excitation, and one hundred bibliopolic heads, in white cotton night-caps, were popped out of windows in that vicinity on the morning of his disembarkation from the Leith packet, in anxious expectation of his approach. At length he came, and having personated the ass in the lion's skin to the life, was duly installed, and managed to persuade his employer that he was the prince of magazine editors. In a few months, however, after "running-a-muck" at every one he met, this universal genius disappeared from the face of the earth'; killed, as we have heard it shrewedly hinted, by the fall of a huge stack of his own unsold " Essay on Taste." On his demise, Maga was purchased by Messrs. Shackel and Arrowsmith, under whose auspices she experienced a manifest alteration for the better. But her accession of friends proved of little avail; for although the sprightly Mr. Dubois was her manager, Washington Irving and Theodore Hook condescended to trifle with her, and the John Bull Newspaper set its great bellows to work to puff her into notoriety; all would not do: her disorder was too far advanced to be removed even by such skilful physicians. To save appearances, therefore, and avoid wounding the self-love of her friends and relations, it was determined to merge her in the Monthly Magazine. How the ultra tory politics of the one, and the snarling whiggery of the other, will amalgamate, we do not pretend to surmise. The Monthly was, as every body knows, originally the pet bantling of Sir Richard Phillips, and what with the assistance of Enort, J. M. Lacey, Capel Loft, a long list of equally illustrious obscure, and several such exhaustless cruises as Stephensiana, Walpoliana, &c., Sir Richard managed to fill his pages from month to month with very little difficulty, and still less expense. On the retirement from business of the worthy * See the newspapers for 1822-3. knight, Messrs. Cox and Baylis became the proprietors of his bantling. But that which furnished a profit, when Sir Richard was his own editor and principal contributor, was found to be a losing concern, when these very necessary appendages came to be provided for at his owner's expense. With the beginning of the present year the Monthly Magazine turned over a new leaf; and as his present proprietors are really persons of considerable spirit and enterprise, and pay like heroes for good articles for his pages, whether in verse or prose, his importance ought now to be, and we dare say is, proportionably increased. Certain it is, that he has become of late a very able and edifying old gentleman; but as poets and punsters are always allowed three removes from truth, we may, we hope, make bold to print the following squib, sent us by a correspondent and said to have been written on the circumstance which has given occasion for this notice, without the smallest offence to either of the parties referred to. The thing is, our readers will readily perceive, a gross plagiarism from Dryden :— Three Magazines, in different ages born, We had almost forgotten to mention, that the bride was given away by Mr. Shackel, with a hearty good will; and that immediately after the ceremony the happy couple set off to Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where they will pass their honeymoon, preparatory to their final settlement in Ave-Maria Lane. The bridegroom is some years younger than Maga. They have promised not to sleep together; and we trust they will keep their promise. III. CUTTING AND MAIMING. Gibbon v. Bowdler.-On the first of last month, a very respectable and even clerical-looking personage, of the name of Bowdler, was brought before John Bull, and a full bench of critics, at the court of Criticism and Common Sense, in Paternoster Row (which happened fortunately to be sitting at the time the offender was apprehended), charged with having (by force of arms, and with malice prepense and aforethought) feloniously cut and stabbed, and otherwise maimed and mutilated, one of the most popular and deservedly esteemed of British historians, Mr. Edward Gibbon; whose portly person, as exhibited to the observation of the court, was so savagely injured and disfigured, as to excite in the bosoms of all who were present unmitigated horror and indignation. Not content with having amputated one of his legs, and several of the fingers of his right hand, the inhuman prisoner had positively so dreadfully beaten the author of the Decline and Fall about the head and face, that it was with the greatest difficulty his most intimate friends could establish his identity. The poor gentleman, who had been brought before their worships in an arm-chair, lined with |