it shall be needful to introduce their members to the reader, they may have something of the air of former acquaintance; for, unless we do mistake our purpose, we shall, in fit season, have employment for the special trick and chicanery of our attorney-general, for the piety and self-denial of the fairy-bishops, and for all the eloquent philanthropy of the honourable members of the sugar-canes. All these, however, in good time:-our present business is with Puck. Puck time out of mind" hath been the Fairies' jester. He knew, and oft availed himself of, the privilege of his office: indeed, he had too often practised it among the sons of men, to forget its sweet immunities. It is said Luther drove the Fairies from England By which we note the Fairies -- Yet, after the expulsion of his clan, Puck would, as before, now and then visit us in the person of some noted jester. He hath a thousand tales of the court of that exquisite king, Charles II., when, as Killigrew, he made jokes for his very sacred Majesty. It was Puck who lurked as "the lime" in the sack of Falstaff-it was Puck who lighted up the fire in Bardolph's nose-it was Puck who made Sir Andrew's hair to hang "like flax on a distaff." He hath, it is said, been heard of late by two or three poets, squeaking and gibbering in the Old Boar's Head, Eastcheap. There was he seen "o' nights with his merry crew:" there Falstaff held aloft his shadowy goblet, "parcel gilt;"-there was Hal-there Poins, with his leg "like the Prince's;-there, a red flame yclept Bardolph, with the leek-eating Pistol; the plump, buxom Doll Tearsheet; and the cackling Mrs. Quickly. There they were-and there (albeit the Boar's Head is vanished) they still haunt; and he must have a heart, like old Jack's "family ring," all "copper," who doth not, as he winds down Eastcheap, go accompanied with all that merry crew, the recollection of whom comes like a strain of music on us. Gen+ tle passenger, if on your road to a notary, to protest a bill (perhaps the paper wing of one who would scale Parnassus)-a moment pause; and, touched by the genius of the place, ponder on that sublime apothegm,—that fine, we may say, awful condemnation of the readymoney customer-that exquisite sentence which, coming from a man "who had known losses," should be carved over every poet's doorshould be hung between every poet's eyes, in characters of gold— "Base is the slave that pays!"-Ponder-ponder, and relent!-All this by the way. Puck is on his defence. The imp, with a mock gravity, set off by a pursing of the mouth, and a roguish twinkling of the eye, sidled into the royal presence. His Majesty tried to knit his brows in regal severity, but the spirit of humour was too much for the solemnity of the monarch, and Oberon threw himself back, and chuckled most unroyally. Of course, the whole court was convulsed-even the bishops smiled. "Well, varlet," cried the king, "what tricks have you been playing amongst the sons of men ?-Come, the history of your wanderings; for Oberon hath lost his blithe jester-aye, these three days!—Where hast been, Puck?" "In London," crowed the imp; and there was a sudden stirring among the crowd. The courtiers bent forward with expectation; the ladies' eyes lightened, and their little hearts leaped at the sound; the peers listened for the tidings of new creations; the law-officers glanced at their bags, and thought on the sweetness of a state persecution; and a deep, audible "Hem!" proceeded from the reverend bench, telling of anxious doubts and fears for erring souls and church possessions. Two or three hirelings of the Viper (the tea-table gazette for the scandal lovers of Fairy-land) out with their pens (hairs from the back of the caterpillar) at the word; their dull, leaden eyes reddened at the sound, and they spread their nettle-leaf note-books, and, dipping their quills in toad-spittle, were all prepared to canker reputations at a kpfm (the fairy penny) per line. "In London!" echoed King Oberon. "In London!" cried Puck" in sumptuous, noble, wise, charitable, squalid, infamous, ignorant, mercenary London; where the vices jostle the virtues; where they are so mingled and interknit, that one often passes for the other; where crime, lackered with gold, glistens a harmless pageant; where grinding oppression smirks a rare philanthropy; where black incontinence, dipped in Pactolus, comes forth a radiant purity: where diamond-studded rottenness struts a piece of moral adamant-In London, where men with counters, nay, with very sounds, buy the souls and hearts of men; where honour is a by-word, virtue a mask to rob under; where men lie as often as they respire; and where they live, buy lands, houses, the tinkling of titular honour, the praise of villains, and the stare of fools, with that which damns the purchasers; where one little bell from the cap of Folly outbuys a hundred fillets from the brows of wisdom; where the adroit scoundrel lives and dies, full-blooded and bursting, and the brave heart breaks in obscurity and want; where men rob and murder secundum artem; where to be honest, according to the Act,' is to be honest full-weight; where common sense is thrown a prey to law, and hashed and carved, and cooked a thousand ways to banquet such as are rich enough to pay for it.-Oh, London! rare London ! prime mart of juggling cheats, fantastic clowns-where a brow of brass wins more than a heart of gold; where beauty is knocked down to the highest bidderand the mind of man-that subtle, mighty agent, which can glide into a flower, or lift its broad forehead to the stars, is self-cast upon its belly in the dust, and winds and undulates before some glittering ass, till Nestor's self becomes a pimp to Pander.-Miraculous London ! with wonderful discoverers! who have tracked the olden fountain of eternal youth,' and sell a guarantee 'gainst death, and the cracks and wrinkles that herald his approach, at so much per phial; where rare cosmetics, keeping in any climate,' survive Siberia's snows or Egypt's sands.-All-healing, all-entrancing London! where syren pleasure lulls poor, squeamish guilt to sleep; where shares of human passion, honour, pleasure, the red lip of beauty, and an immortality of health, are bought for so much yellow dross, and the man of gold is not a little lower than the angels.'-Go, go to London! and if 6 you have Midas's ears, so you have Midas's wealth, poets will write sounets to your wisdom, and the ladies of the court Vow you are a fine gentleman.'-Rare London! great in thy baseness-mighty in thy shifts!" Why, Robin," cried Oberon, "what hath made orator?" you such an "Scorn and indignation," replied Puck. "I have been on my travels, and become sickened at human misery and human baseness." "And all seen in England?" "Not all;-I tarried awhile in its sister-land.--Sister!-Bondswoman-serf-a chained and goaded slave! I tarried there, flitting by the bright streams which, like threads of silver, vein her emerald breast. I wandered through her valleys, and rejoiced on her mountain-tops; and all, all was beautiful, and all things smiled in the light of heaven but man. He, the lord of the earth, was lower than its worms; he was a monster and a savage !-Want-that wolf was in his heart, and the milky charities of his nature became stagnant and poisonous. His divine part was struck into the dust, and brute instinct and brute strength did tread upon it.-Man was a speaking beast. Then I heard groans, and cries, and shrieks of madness; and I saw Death stride through the valleys, and, following him, Famine's ten thousand mercenaries, whirring on iron wings; their eyes had a silvery gleam, and their sinewy fingers clutched the air in anticipation of their prey; their nostrils dilated, and their blue lips seemed to pout for blood. They entered the hovels of the poor: there they seized upon the old man, within a pace of the grave-the peasant in the flush of manhood-the new-made mother, and the shrivelled babe; there they clawed haggard lines in the face of beauty; there, as they dried up the father's blood, they made torpid and stone-like a father's heart. The strength of manhood, beneath their hug, waned into the impotence of infancy; the full, deep voice of maturity fell into querulous weakness; and men, of once burly stature, piped and whistled,' and muttered the sorrow that consumed them. Some, as though bereft of feeling, would sit like pallid statues, glaring with idiotic eyes upon the coming death about them. They sat with their clasped, useless hands, and fiend-like thoughts would sear their brain, and they would instinctively bite their lips and gnash their teeth as they looked upon all they once fondly loved, withering before them; then, goaded by the hell of thought, they would rush forth, howling like beasts. Even I, spirit as I am,” cried Robin, "could not endure the scene. I left for England; and oh! it was a sight for the fiend himself, to see the cargoes of all kinds of aliment-good beef, pork, and rich butter, sent by lean sister Ireland to fat sister England! In truth, the love of some sisters passeth all elfin understanding! I arrived in England. There was, it must be owned, much tattling about the starving Irish. Mr. Roundpaunch was one of the most frequent talkers on the subject. He was considered by the parish authorities an excellent man. He paid the rates, hated beggars, had a pew at the Church, excellent wine in his cellar, and a thumping balance at his banker's. Still, with all these comforts, he was not inattentive to the condition of the poor Irish.' He had, in 133 fact, when I first saw him, just received a letter from his agent at “ Bristol, informing him of the arrival of three cargoes of provisions, torn from his Irish tenants, in the way of rent. was a non-resident: slander itself could say nothing worse of him. Mr. Roundpaunch A newspaper was lying on the table; Mr. Roundpaunch took it and his eye glanced at the following advertisement:"THE FAMINE IN IRELAND.-To-morrow morning, at St. up, will be preached by the Very Rev. Doctor Dogma, a Sermon in aid of the Subscription for the Relief of the Famishing Irish. Service to begin at eleven o'clock.' "Mr. Roundpaunch attended the church, and paid all due attention to a most moving discourse, stuffed full of charitable precepts. He put a sovereign in the plate at the door, and then descended the steps, with a look of oily satisfaction in his face, and, for a man of eighteen-stone, that certain elasticity of gait, which tells that the human blood is tingling with a sense of satisfaction at the accomplishment of some virtuous act. made an excellent dinner, drank half a bottle more than usual,—and, Mr. Roundpaunch returned home, as I lay amongst some vine-leaves in a dessert-plate, I saw him fall back in his chair, and in a minute he was off in full snore. tured him with a dream. Torture I knew it was, for his cheeks were I torreddened and drawn up, his nose worked, and his great belly heaved like a wave! He was awakened by the servant, who suddenly opened the door to announce the Rev. Doctor Dogma-no other than the very doctor, whose morning eloquence had extracted a sovereign from the pocket of Mr. Roundpaunch! "Oh, Doctor-(Clean glasses, John)-my dear Doctor,-pwegh, I'm quite a jelly-I've had such a dream-(Doctor Dogma threw a contemptuous glance)-such a horrible vision,-sure enough the world is cracking under our feet-patriots,-I gave a sovereign this morning-ar'nt troubled with dreams for nothing.' a "The doctor, with Christian calmness, helped himself to some wine, lifted one knee over the other, and as he squeezed grape by grape into his mouth, not forgetting his glass at due intervals, Mr. Roundpaunch proceeded to narrate the dream with which I had haunted his brain. As the speaker proceeded, the doctor became more attentive: for he, it must be known, had what he called ' stake in the country '—that is, he had the care of some ten thousand souls in Ireland (a heavy work for one poor man) which care he had fixed upon a deputy, with a salary favourable to the cultivation of the said deputy's Christian virtues-humility and temperance. Mr. Roundpaunch told his story; but yet with so many breaks and repetitions, that I shall not, if it please your majesty, repeat his words, but tell the tale-still assuming the character of Roundpaunch-after my own way." King Oberon nodded assent; and, in a trice, Puck rose up and expanded into the miniature figure of Roundpaunch. Under Robin's direction, Pease-blossom, the very elf that once sported in "a wood near Athens," became full-blown into Doctor Dogma. They seated themselves on either side of a mushroom, and the whole court pealed with laughter. The face of Puck, alias Roundpaunch, October, 1831.-VOL. II. NO. VI. K was broad and shining, his mouth grinned from ear to ear, and the point of his nose, almost buried beneath his cheeks, shone like a glow-worm in the night. His little belly was blown like a bladder, whereon his coarse unwieldy hands lay like two bits of rough-hewn granite. The spirit of no-meaning lurked in his eye-and a glossy nut-brown wig in small, tight curl, covered that ponderous globe, denominated the "palace of the soul:" though by the way, the soul of Roundpaunch, by mere secret sympathy, had sunk to the region of the breeches'-pocket. Pease-blossom was black and sleek as a beaver: his face, like the face of Sylla, was "a mulberry, dredg'd with meal!" "Such a dream, Doctor Dogma," cried Puck, commencing his part, and deepening his voice into something between a grunt and a snort-" such a vision. I was walking in the Strand, near Exeter Hall, when, suddenly, I saw a long procession of men and womenmen and women, did I say-lords and ladies, pillars of the nation and the church,-the elect and chosen of the land-some riding on mules and asses,-some barefooted, walking in the mire,-some with rent garments, and with faces defiled with tears and dirt, some clothed in sackcloth, and their heads covered with ashes. And as they walked, groans and sighs, and bitter wailings would break from them, and they looked piteously upon the agents that urged them onwards. These ran nimbly among the crowd, and with whips of living snakes, scourged on the loiterers, and as they lashed, the scales of pride and apathy fell from their bleeding hearts, which then began to feel for others' woe'-and compunction wrung them, as, for the first time, they looked beyond their callous selves, and wept tears of pity for their fellow beings. Then, for the first time, they saw man as he was ordained-a creature sensible of pain and pleasure-then, they no longer looked upon the human form, as a peg to hang stars and orders on-and wanting which,-a thing insensible and fit for meanest offices then their ideas of human nature and human right were not woven up with gold fringe, and brocade, and lace, but they saw-and the sight afflicted them—that each man was a thing holy in the scale of creation-a glorious creature, a sublime mystery-an embodied spirit made not for time but for eternity-an emanation of the awful power who sits crowned with snows upon the mountain-tops, who lurks in the humblest flower at their base-whose strength is in the eagle's wing, whose voice is in the hum of the bee. "Some were habited in robes of wealth, tattered and begrimed— they had hastened from the dinner and the ball, the gala and the show, and, drunk with pride, had cast them down to sleep,-when sudden compunction took the wail of famishing thousands, and shrieked loudly in their ears-their hearts were affrighted, and their blood ran cold in their veins. They rushed from their beds, and, horror-struck at the scene of human affliction, cried What good thing is to be done, that we shall be saved?' Thus the crowd swelled, and thus the agents of compunction drove them on. And they all brought offerings of gems and gold and silver. The servile pensioner, whose life had been a long-drawn lie-whose breath had been his sole stock in trade-whose aye' and 'no' his never-failing chat |