47.-Page 235, line 17. No jest on "minors," quibbles on a name, [See the memorable critique of the Edinburgh Review on "Hours of Idleness."] 48.-Page 235, line 24. From Corydon unkind Alexis turns: Invenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin. 49.-Page 236, line 6. Must go to Jackson ere they dare to box. [Lord Byron's taste for boxing led to his intimacy with this distinguished professor of the pugilistic art, who was also much respected by Mr. Windham, the eminent statesman.] 50.-Page 236, line 25. And hark'ye, Southey! pray-but don't be vex'd- Mr. Southey has lately tied another canister to his tail in the "Curse of Kehama," maugre the neglect of Madoc, &c., and has in one instance had a wonderful effect. A literary friend of mine, walking out one lovely evening last summer, on the eleventh bridge of the Paddington canal, was alarmed by the cry of "one in jeopardy:" he rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on butter-milk in an adjacent paddock), procured three rakes, one eel-spear, and a landing-net, and at last (horresco referens) pulled out-his own publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its "alacrity of sinking" was so great, that it has never since been heard of; though some maintain that it is at this moment concealed at Alderman Birch's pastry premises, Cornhill. Be this as it may, the coroner's inquest brought in a verdict of "Felo de bibliopolâ " against a "quarto unknown;" and circumstantial evidence being since strong against the "Curse of Kehama" (of which the above words are an exact description), it will be tried by its peers next session, in Grubstreet-Arthur, Alfred, Davideis, Richard Coeur de Lion, Exodus Exodia, Epigoniad, Calvary, Fall of Cambria, Siege of Acre, Don Roderick, and Tom Thumb the Great, are the names of the twelve jurors. The judges, are Pye, Bowles, and the bell-man of St. Sepulchre's. The same advocates, pro and con, will be employed as are now engaged in Sir F. Burdett's celebrated cause in the Scotch courts. The public anxiously await the result, and all live publishers will be subpoenaed as witnesses. ---But Mr. Southey has published the "Curse of Kehama,"—an inviting title to quibblers. By-the-by, it is a good deal beneath Scott and Campbell, and not much above Southey, to allow the booby Ballantyne to entitle them, in the Edinburgh Annual Register (of which, by-theby, Southey is editor) "the grand poetical triumvirate of the day." But, on second thoughts, it can be no great degree of praise to be the one-eyed leaders of the blind, though they might as well keep to themselves "Scott's thirty thousand copies sold," which must sadly discomfit poor Southey's unsaleables. Poor Southey, it should seem, is the "Lepidus" of this poetical triumvirate. I am only surprised to see him in such good company. "Such things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil he came there." The trio are well defined in the sixth proposition of Euclid :-"Because, in the triangles D B C, A CB, D B is equal to A C, and B C common to both; the two sides D B, B C, are equal to the two A C, C B, each to each, and the angle D B C is equal to the angle A C B: therefore, the base D C is equal to the base A B, and the triangle D B C (Mr. Southey) is equal to the triangle A C B, the less to the greater, which is absurd," &c. The editor of the Edinburgh Register will find the rest of the theorem hard by his stabling; he has only to cross the river; 'tis the first turnpike t'other side "Pons Asinorum." * 51.-Page 236, line 29. Though "Madoc," with "Pucelle," instead of punk, Voltaire's "Pucelle" is not quite so immaculate as Mr. Southey's "Joan of Arc," and yet I am afraid the Frenchman has both more truth and poetry too on his side-(they rarely go together)-than our patriotic minstrel, whose first essay was in praise of a fanatical French strumpet, whose title of witch would be correct with the change of the first letter. 52.-Page 236, line 30. May travel back to Quito-on a trunk! Like Sir Bland Burgess's "Richard;" the tenth book of which I read at Malta, on a trunk of Eyre's, 19, Cockspur-street. If this be doubted, I shall buy a portmanteau to quote from. 53.-Page 237, line 20. (A limping leader, but a lefty bard,) [Lord Byron had originally written "As lame as I am, but a better bard." 54.-Page 238, line 26. Yea, baronets have ink'd the bloody hand! [The Red Hand of Ulster, introduced generally in a canton, marks the shield of a baronet of the United Kingdom.] *This Latin has sorely puzzled the University of Edinburgh. Ballantyne said it meant the "Bridge of Berwick," but Southey claimed it as half English; Scott swore it was the "Brig o' Stirling:" he had just passed two King James's and a dozen Douglasses over it. At last it was decided by Jeffrey, that it meant nothing more nor less than the "counter of Archy Constable's shop." 55.-Page 238, line 27. Cash cannot quell them; Pollio play'd this prank, ["Pollio."- In the original MS. “Rogers."] 56.-Page 238, line 30. Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' head; "Tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum, 57.-Page 239, line 12. The cobbler-laureats I beg Nathaniel's pardon: he is not a cobbler; it is a tailor, but begged Capel Lofft to sink the profession in his preface to two pair of pantapsha!-of cantos, which he wished the public to try on; but the sieve of a patron let it out, and so far saved the expense of an advertisement to his country customers.-Merry's "Moorfields whine" was nothing to all this. The "Della Cruscans" were people of some education, and no profession; but these Arcadians ("Arcades ambo"-bumpkins both) send out their native nonsense without the smallest alloy, and leave all the shoes and smallclothes in the parish unrepaired, to patch up Elegies on Enclosures, and Pæans to Gunpowder. Sitting on a shopboard, they describe the fields of battle, when the only blood they ever saw was shed from the finger; and an “Essay on War" is produced by the ninth part of a "poet;" "And own that nine such poets made a Tate." Did Nathan ever read that line of Pope? and if he did, why not take it as his motto? 58.-Page 239, line 12. sing to Capel Lofft! This well-meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent shoemakers, and been accessary to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing; nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt too (who once was wiser) has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry; but he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of "Remains" utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoe-making Sappho, may do well; but the "tragedies" are as ricketty as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end; and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done: for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these rakers of "Remains come under the statute against "resurrection men." What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? Is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? Is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath, than his soul in an octavo? "We know what we are, but we know not what we may be ;" and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through life with a sort of éclat, is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child; now, might not some of this "Sutor ultra Crepidam's" friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And then his inscription split into so many modicums!" To the Duchess of Somuch, the Right Hon. So-and-So, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these volumes are," &c. &c.-why, this is doling out the "soft milk of dedication" in gills, there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dozen. Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff left? Dost thou think six families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the grocer, and the dedication to the devil. [In the original MS. 59.-Page 240, line 4. "Some rhyming peer-Carlisle or Carysfort." To which is subjoined this note:-"Of 'John Joshua, Earl of Carysfort,' I know nothing at present, but from an advertisement in an old newspaper of certain Poems and Tragedies by his Lordship, which I saw by accident in the Morca. Being a rhymer himself, he will forgive the liberty I take with his name, seeing, as he must, how very commodious it is at the close of that couplet; and as for what follows and goes before, let him place it to the account of the other Thane; since I cannot, under these circumstances, augur pro or con the contents of his foolscap crown octavos.'"-John Joshua Proby, first Earl of Carysfort, was joint postmaster-general in 1805, envoy to Berlin in 1806, and ambassador to Petersburgh in 1807. Besides his poems, he published two pamphlets, to show the necessity of universal suffrage and short parliaments. He died in 1828.] 60.-Page 240, line 4. there's plenty of the sort Here will Mr. Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the sole survivor, the "ultimus Romanorum," the last of the Cruscanti -"Edwin" the "profound" by our Lady of Punishment! here he is, as lively as in the days of "weli said Baviad the Correct." I thought Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the penultimate. A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. "What reams of paper, floods of ink," Do some men spoil, who never think! Still I write on, and tell you why; Without the risk of giving pain, &c. &c. ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMISTS. In tracing of the human mind Through all its various courses, And men through life assume a par 61.-Page 240, line 23. Ye, who aspire to "build the lofty rhyme, [See Milton's Lycidas.] 62.-Page 240, line 33. If you will breed this bastard of your brains, Minerva being the first by Jupiter's head-piece, and a variety of cqually unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc, &c. &c. 63.-Page 241, line 12. And furnish food for critics, or their quills. "A crust for the critics."-Bayes, in the "Rehearsal." 64.-Page 241, line 16. As yawning waiters fly And the "waiters" are the only fortunate people who can "fly" from them; all the rest, viz. the sad subscribers to the "Literary Fund," being compelled, by courtesy, to sit out the recitation without a hope of exclaiming, "Sic" (that is, by choking Fitz. with bad wine, or worse poetry) "me servavit Apollo!" 65.-Page 241, line 16. Fitzscribble's lungs; ["Fitzscribble," originally "Fitzgerald."] 66.-Page 242, line 6. "To die like Cato," leapt into the Thames! On his table were found these words: "What Cato did, and Addison approved, can..ot be wrong." But Addison did not "approve;" and if VOL. I. |