middle-aged man; wondered at my error, and protracted the middle age to forty. Said to myself, "Forty is the age of wisdom." Reflected generally upon past life; wished myself twenty again; and exclaimed, "If I were but twenty, what a scholar I would be by thirty! but it's too late now." Looked in the glass; still youthful, but getting rather fat. Young says, "a fool at forty is a fool indeed:" forty, therefore, must be the age of wisdom. 31. Read in the Morning Chronicle, that a watch-maker in Paris, aged thirty-one, had shot himself for love. More fool the watchmaker! Agreed that nobody fell in love after twenty. Quoted Sterne, "The expression fall in love, evidently shows I love to be beneath a man." Went to Drury-lane; saw Miss Crotch in Rosetta, and fell in love with her. Received her ultimatum: none but matrimonians need apply. Was three months making up my mind (a long time for making up such a little pareel), when Kitty Crotch eloped with Lord Buskin. Pretended to be very glad. Took three turns up and down library, and looked in glass. Getting rather fat and florid. Met a friend in Gray's Inn, who said, I was evidently in rude health. compliment ruder than the health. Thought the 32. Passion for dancing rather on the decline. Voted sitting out play and farce one of the impossibilities. Still in stage-box three nights per week. Sympathized with the public in vexation, occasioned by non-attendance the other three; can't please every body. Began to wonder at the pleasure of kicking one's heels on a chalked floor till four in the morning. Sold bay mare, who reared at three carriages, and shook me out of the saddle. Thought saddle-making rather worse than formerly. Hair growing thin. Bought a bottle of Tricosian fluid. Mem. "a flattering unction." 33. Hair thinner. Serious thoughts of a wig. Met Colonel Buckhorse, who wears one. Devil in a bush. Serious thoughts of letting it alone. Met a fellow Etonian in the Green Park, who told me I wore well: wondered what he could mean. Gave up cricket club, on account of the bad air about Paddington: could not run in it, without being out of breath. 34. Measured for a new coat. Tailor proposed fresh measure, hinting something about bulk. Old measure too short; parchment shrinks. Shortened my morning ride to Hampstead and Highgate, and wondered what people could see at Hendon. Determined not to marry: means expensive, end dubious. Counted eighteen bald heads in the pit at the Opera. So much the better; the more the merrier. 35. Tried on an old great coat, and found it an old little one: cloth shrinks as well as parchment. Red face in putting on shoes. Bought a shoe-horn. Remember quizzing my uncle George for using one; then young and foolish. Brother Charles's wife lay-in of her eighth child. Served him right for marrying at twenty-one: age of discretion too! Hunting-belts for gentlemen hung up in glover's windows. Longed to buy one, but two women in shop cheapening mittens. Three gray hairs in left eye-brow. 36. Several gray hairs in whiskers: all owing to carelessness in manufactory of shaving-soap. Remember thinking my father an old man at thirty-six. Settled the point! Men grew old sooner in former days. Laid blame upon flapped waistcoats and tiewigs. Skaited on the Serpentine. Gout. Very foolish exercise, only fit for boys. Gave skaits to Charles's eldest son. 37. Fell in love again. Rather pleased to find myself not too old for the passion. Emma only nineteen. What then? women require protectors; day settled; devilishly frightened; too late to get off. Luckily jilted. Emma married George Parker one day before me. Again determined never to marry. Turned off old tailor, and took to new one in Bond-street. Some of those fellows make a man look ten years younger. Not that that was the reason. 38. Stuck rather more to dinner-parties. Gave up countrydancing. Money-musk certainly more fatiguing than formerly. Fiddlers play it too quick. Quadrilles stealing hither over the channel. Thought of adding to number of grave gentlemen who learn to dance. Dick Dapper dubbed me one of the over-growns. Very impertinent, and utterly untrue, 39. Quadrilles rising. Wondered sober mistresses of families would allow their carpets to be beat after that fashion. Dinner-parties increasing. Found myself gradually Tontine-ing it towards top of table. Dreaded Ultima Thule of hostess's elbow. Good places for cutting turkies; bad for cutting jokes. Wondered why I was always desired to walk up. Met two schoolfellows at Pimlico; both fat and red-faced. Used to say at school that they were both of my age; what lies boys tell! 40. Look back ten years. Remember, at thirty, thinking forty a middle-aged man. Must have meant fifty. Fifty certainly, the age of wisdom. Determined to be wise in ten years. Wished to learn music and Italian. Tried Logier. "Twould not do. No defect of capacity, but those things should be learned in childhood. 41. New furnished chambers. Looked in new glass: one chin too much. Looked in other new glass: chin still double. Art of glass-making on the decline. Sold my horse, and won dered people could find any pleasure in being bumped. What were legs made for? 42. Gout again: that disease certainly attacks young people more than formerly. Caught myself at a rubber of whist, and blushed. Tried my hand at original composition, and found a hankering after epigram and satire. Wondered I could ever write love-sonnets. Imitated Horace's ode "Ne sit ancilla." Did not mean any thing serious, though Susan certainly civil and attentive. 43. Bought a hunting-belt. Braced myself up till ready to burst. Intestines not to be trifled with: threw it aside. Young men, now-a-days, much too small in the waist. Read in Morning Post an advertisement "Pills to prevent Corpulency:" bought a box. Never the slimmer, though much the sicker. 44. Met Fanny Stapleton, now Mrs. Meadows, at Bullock's Museum. Twenty-five years ago wanted to marry her. What an escape! Women certainly age much sooner than men. Charles's eldest boy began to think himself a man. Starched cravat and a cane. What presumption! At his age I was a child. 45. A few wrinkles about the eyes, commonly called crow's feet. Must have caught cold. Began to talk politics, and shirk the drawing-room. Eulogized Garrick: saw nothing in Kean. Talked of Lord North. Wondered at the licentiousness of the modern press. Why can't people be civil, like Junius and John Wilkes, in the good old times? 46. Rather on the decline, but still handsome, and interesting. Growing dislike to the company of young men: all of them talk too much or too little. Began to call chambermaids at Inns "My dear." Thought the money expended upon Waterloo Bridge might have been better employed. Listened to a howl from Capt. Querulous, about family expenses, price of bread and butcher's meat. Did not care a jot, if bread was a shilling a roll, and butcher's meat fifty pounds a calf. Hugged myself in "single blessedness," and wished him a good morning. 47. Top of head quite bald, Pleaded Lord Grey in justification. Shook it, on reflecting that I was but three years removed from the "Age of Wisdom." Teeth sound, but not so white as heretofore. Something the matter with the dentrifice. Began to be cautious in chronology. Bad thing to remember too far back. Had serious thoughts of not remembering Miss Farren. 48. Quite settled not to remember Miss Farren. Told Laura Willis that Palmer, who died when I was nineteen, certainly did not look forty-eight. 49. Resolved never to marry for any thing but money or rank, 50. Age of wisdom. Married my cook! POETICAL WORKS OF MRS. JOHN HUNTER. In our last number* we commemorated the high individual character of the lately deceased Mrs. John Hunter, and paid a tribute to her poetical memory. Her poems have been for eighteen years before the public. From being published a long time after they were written, they were less attractive to the curiosity of the times than they might have been if they had appeared earlier; but their elegant language, and chastely interesting tone of sentiment, rendered them favourites with not a few good judges of literature. In the opinion of the first living poetesses, Mrs. Hunter's Miscellaneous Poems evince that she possessed the feeling and imagination of genius. The little piece, entitled La Douce Chimère, has great sweetness and felicity. Her lines entitled "To my Daughter on being separated from her on her Marriage," struck us as most touchingly pleasing. When we conceive a mother of sensibility addressing her child on such an occasion, poetry seems to perform a hallowed office; and unpretending as this little strain is to the character of originality, it still affects us with the truth and pathos of maternal feeling. Dear to my heart as life's warm stream And thus beguile the present pain Yet will it be, as when the past Twined every joy and care and thought, Of kind affections finely wrought? May he who claims thy tender heart And cheer thee till we meet again! Mrs. Hunter gave our language some of its most popular songs, among which we omitted to mention, in our former notice of her compositions, "The Mermaid's Song," and the delicious little piece "My Mother bids me bind my hair." We have happened by accident to meet with the following lines of her writing, which have never been before published. * Page 89 of the Historical Register. THE FALL OF THE LEAF. ADDRESSED TO LADY C. WITH AN EOLIAN HARP, In early youth, in riper age, But brief the gay delusions last. She dwells, how fondly! on the past. O Memory! if to thee she clings, Sad were indeed our wintry years, Lull'd in the lap of quiet, here From Spring to Autumn's chilling breath: Fresh verdant boughs, to deck the earth. When Nature sinks in deathlike sleep, Then robin tunes his lonely lay; Then shall the winds, with viewless wings, The humid drops, which then shall rise Titnest Cottage, Berks. A. H. |