North. Yes, Tickler-what, after all, equals nature! Here in Ambrose's-waiting for a board of oysters—the season has recommenced-I can sit with my cigar in my mouth, and as the whiff ascends, fancy sees the spray of Stonebyres, or of the Falls of the Beauly, the radiant mists of the Dresne! I agree with Bowles, that nature is all in all for the purpose of poetry-Art stark naught.1 Tickler. Yet softly. Who planted those trees by that river side ?-Art. Who pruned them?-Art. Who gave room to their giant arms to span that roaring chasm ?-Art. Who reared yon edifice on the cliff?-Art. Who flung that stately arch from rock to rock, under which the martins twitter over the unfeared cataract?-Art. Who darkened that long line of precipice with dreadful or glorious associations ?— Art, polity, law, war, outrage, and history, writing her hieroglyphics with fire on the scarred visage of those natural battlements. Is that a hermit's cell? Art scooped it out of the living stone. Is that an oratory? Art smoothed the floor for the knee of the penitent. Are the bones of the holy slumbering in that cemetery? Art changed the hollow rock into a tomb, and when the dead saint was laid into the sepulchre, Art joined its music with the torrent's roar, and the mingled anthem rose to the stars which Art had numbered and sprinkled into stations over the firmament of Heaven. What then would Bowles be at, and why more last words to Roscoe ? Who made his ink, his pens, and his paper?—Art. Who published his books?-Art. Who criticised them?-Art. Who would fain have damned them?-The Art of the Edinburgh Review. And who has been their salvation ?—The Art of Blackwood's Magazine. North. Go on, I'll follow thee. Is a great military road over a mountain, groaning with artillery, bristling with bayonets, sounding with bands of music, trampling with cavalry, red, blue, and yellow, with war-dresses, streaming it may be with blood, and overburdened with the standards of mighty nations, less poetical than a vast untrodden Andes, magnificent as may be its solitudes beneath the moon or stars? Is a naked savage more poetical than with his plume, club, war-mat, and tomahawk? Is a log of wood, be it a whole uprooted pine, drifting on the ocean, as poetical as a 1 See ante, p. 12, note 2. 54 THE SHEPHERD IN FULL DRESS hundred-oared canoe? What more sublime than the anchor by which a great ship hangs in safety within roar of the whirlpool? Than the plummet that speaks of the rock foundations of the eternal sea? Tickler. What is the chief end of man?-Art. That is a clencher. North. I cannot imagine, for the life of me, what Ambrose is about. Hush! there he comes. (Enter Ambrose.) What is the meaning of this, sir? Ambrose. Unfold. (Folding-doors thrown open, and supper-table is shown.) Tickler. What an epergne! Art-art. What would our friend Bowles say to that, North? "Tadmore thus, and Syrian Balbec rose."-(Transeunt omnes.) SCENE II.-The Pitt Saloon. North. Hogg, with his hair powdered, as I endure !—God bless you, James-how are you all at Altrive? Shepherd. All's well-wool up-nowte' on the rise-harvest stacked without a shower-potatoes like stones in the Meggat-turnips like cabbages, and cabbages like baloonsbairns brawly, and Mistress bonnier than ever.—It is quite an annus mirabilis. Tickler. James, my heart warms to hear your voice. That suit of black becomes you extremely-you would make an excellent Moderator of the General Assembly.3 Shepherd. You mistake the matter entirely, Tickler; your eyesight fails you;-my coat is a dark blue-waistcoat and breeches the same-but old people discern objects indistinctly by candle-light,-or I shall rather say, by gas-light. The radiance is beautiful. Tickler. The radiance is beautiful! Shepherd. Why, you are like old Polonius in the play! I hate an echo-be original or silent. Tickler. James ! Shepherd. Mr Hogg, if you pleese, sir. Why, you think because I am good-natured, that you and North, and “the rest," are to quizz the Shepherd? Be it so-no objectionsBut hearken to me, Mr Tickler, my name will be remembered ? A stream near Hogg's farm. 3 Of the Church of Scotland. 1 Nowte-cattle. when the dust of oblivion is yard-deep on the gravestone of the whole generation of Ticklers.-Who are you—what are you-whence are you-whither are you going, and what have you got to say for yourself? A tall fellow, undoubtedly-but Measure for Measure is the comedy in which I choose to act to-night-so, gentlemen, be civil—or I will join the party at Spinks' and set up an opposition Magazine, that . . 1 North. This is most extraordinary behaviour, Mr Hogg, and any apology Shepherd. I forgive you, Mr North-but. . . . . North. Come-come, you see Tickler is much affected. Tickler. Pardon me, James; say that you pardon me- -at time of life a man cannot afford to lose a friend. No, he cannot indeed. my Shepherd. Your hand, Mr Tickler. But I will not be the butt of any company. North. I fear some insidious enemy has been poisoning your ear, James. Never has any one of us ceased, for a moment, to respect you, or to hear you with respect, from the time that you wrote the Chaldee Manuscript. Shepherd. Not another word-not another word—if you love me. North. Have the Cockneys been bribing you to desert us, James? Shepherd. The Cockneys! Puir misbegotten deevils! (I maun speak Scotch again now that I'm in good humour). I would rather crack nuts for a haill winter's nicht wi' a monkey, than drink the best peck o' mawt that ever was brewed wi' the King himsel o' that kintra. North. I understood you were going to visit London this winter. Shepherd. I am. But I shall choose my ain society there, as I do in Embro' and Yarrow. Oh! Mr North, but the Cockneys are vicious upon Scotland the noo-and mair especially upon your Magazine. You may hae seen a noble, gran', majestic cotch wi' four, or aiblins sax bluid-horses, wheeling awa so smoothly, and wi' sae little splutter, that it seemed to be rinnin only at about seven miles an hour, when a' the 1 Spinks' Hotel,—the resort (real or supposed) of opposition literary convivialists. while it was snoovin' at thirteen,—and a' at ance some halfa-score o' mangy mongrels come yelping frae a close, or court, whare they had been howkin out food from the fulzie, and trying to bite the verra rims, and spokes, and axle-tree, and hoofs, half-hungry and half-angry, half-fearfu' and half-spitefu', some wi' cocket tails, but maist o' them wi' tails atween their legs, and wi' bleared e'en watching the whip at every flourish o' the gawcy driver, sittin on his box like a throne o' state, -ane gets a clour on the head o' him frae a stane that gangs spinnin aff the wheel-anither gets a stamp frae the hindhoof o' Bucephalus-a third sprawls into the kennel, pursy and short-winded on garbage—a fourth staggering in his fright between twa passers-by, after a caning from the one, is kicked by the other underneath a cobbler's stall—a fifth lies down, panting as if his heart would break in the Macadamised mire of the approach to a great city, and pretends to be chawing a bone, whereas he is in truth licking his mangled paws -a sixth splutters off in quite an opposite direction, wi' a yell that rues the day in which he and eleven other cynics were born-while a seventh (stranger to the rest of the pack) comes jingling by with a kettle at his tail, and throws quite a martial air over the meeting from his instrumental music— an eighth. North. Stop, James-stop-You have given me a pain in my side. Shepherd. Will you pree3 this blumanch, Mr Northit gangs slipping awa down the hawse* without let or impediment, and lies on the stomach as snaw on snaw, Mr Tickler. Tickler. God bless you, James-another lobster-scarcely killed yet but sweet as kisses. Shepherd. Kisses! Think shame o' yoursel. You that micht be, and perhaps are, a great-great-great-grandfather, speaking o' kisses afore twa callants like me and Mr North! North. By the by, Shepherd, have you ever observed that ladies-married ladies chiefly-who are more than ordinarily religious, are very fond of good eating? Shepherd. Without religion a woman's just an even-doun deevil-wi' religion she canna, in spite o' her teeth, be ony 1 Snoovin-making way quietly but rapidly. 3 Pree-try. 4 Hawse-throat. 2 Gawcy portly. thing else than an angel. But oh, sirs! Gluttony and greed in God's maist glorious earthly creatures is fearsome! North. I agree with Byron in thinking that a lady should be cautious what and how she eats-in presence of her lover or husband. Tripe, oysters, pork chops, pease soup, a lady should be shy of. Shepherd. And rumbledethumps. North. May I ask, with all due solemnity, what are they? Shepherd. Something like Mr Hazlitt's character of Shakespeare. Take a peck of purtatoes, and put them into a boyne1 -at them with a beetle-a dab of butter-the beetle againanither dab-then cabbage-purtato-beetle and dab-saut meanwhile—and a shake o' common black pepper-feenally, cabbage and purtato throughither-pree, and you'll fin' them decent rumbledethumps. North. Speaking of Mr Hazlitt-what think you of this charade? Pygmalion is proud o'er his cups to disclose Like a gem from Golconda my Twit2 at his nose; Bacchus Hunt through the kingdom of Cockaigne is reckon'd, Shepherd. I have it-I have it. It's a gude sharradd-but rather ower easy. Scabbards!-Scab, ye ken, and bards. Tickler. I hate personalities. Besides, why call that a scab which is only a pimple? 1 Boyne-a large pot. 2 For "twit" we should read "first ;" and so it was originally written. Twit was perhaps an accident of the press; perhaps a substitution by some pungent ally of Wilson's, who, having seen the proof, inserted the more pointed word. "Pygmalion" was Hazlitt, who had published a book entitled "Liber amoris, or the New Pygmalion," for the character of which the reader is referred to Blackwood's Magazine, vol. xiii. p. 640. Leigh Hunt "in his bright yellow breeches" (a facetious allusion to his nether attire, when a pupil of Christ's Hospital, London, where so many eminent men have been educated), was the translator of Redi's Bacchus in Tuscany. These personalities (biting enough, perhaps, at the time) were compensated at a later period by Christopher North, when, indignantly repudiating an offer made by some low hireling to run down Leigh Hunt and his London Journal, he exclaims, in words worthy of being written in letters of gold, "THE ANIMOSITIES ARE MORTAL; BUT THE HUMANITIES LIVE FOR EVER."-See Noctes Ambrosianæ for August 1834. Leigh Hunt's Legend of Florence was reviewed by Professor Wilson in Blackwood (March 1840) in terms of high commendation. |