* Let not England think that a nation containing, at least, two-thirds of the military population of the empire, is to remain upon her knees in hope of the interval when cruelty and folly may work themselves to rest, and humanity and justice awaken.-I say forbid it the living God! that victim man should not make his election between danger and degradation; and make a struggle for that freedom, without which the worship of His name has no value.'-CURRAN

RECOLLECTIONS OF

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE JINGLE, ESQ
By Himself.

It was with mingled feelings of in- Life'-that I edited Harriette Wildignation and contempt, Mr. Editor, son'-that Mr. Martin's lachrymose that I read the malignant libels which orations on the tyranny of men over Mr. O'Toole has thought proper to the nobler part of the creation, and write upon me, and which you have Cornet Battier's veracious epistles to not hesitated to insert in your last the Editor of the Morning ChroNumber. It is thus that I am ever nicle,' were all indited by me, is true treated; it was the purest feeling of most true: I own the soft imkindness and compassion which in- peachment.' But that I ever comduced me to notice, at the Cigar posed dying speeches for vulgar maDivan, the person who has made so lefactors, or valentines for boardingungrateful à return for the honour I school misses, is-Mr. Editor, you conferred on him. At first I had an will excuse my warmth-what I will idea of calling him out; but, upon not mention. It is true, that, when reflection, I thought that such a course my late lamented friend, Mr. Thurwould not be wise. I have had some tell, got into trouble, I wrote that ceexperience of your countrymen. A lebrated speech which drew iron few years ago I sent a challenge to tears down Justice Park's cheek ; one of them, and the blood-thirsty but then Mr. T. must not be conruffian accepted it. An I had thought founded with the servum pecus' of he had been valiant, and cunning in murderers. There was a boldness fence, I'd have seen him damned ere and originality in his plan, which eleI'd have challenged him.' In the vates him to the rank of a poet; and pages of The Dublin and London,' the craniologists, moreover, have thought I, in the very spot where he proved that all he did was the result committed the offence, will I gibbet of benevolence and purity of heart. him. 'Good, good; the justice of it As for valentines, I was never guilty pleases; very good.' of more than one, which I send you below, and which Sir John Stevenson is now employed in setting to music.

Sir, there is a malignant mixture of truth and falsehood in the story told by Mr. O'Toole. That I wrote 'Hunt's

TO A GREAT' BEAUTY.
Believe me, my corpulent fair,

I love your fat arms and full face;
Oh! my heart! your eye kindles love there,
And I sink in your charming embrace.

The poor buzzing fly does the same,
While yet inexperienced and callow;
First burns his bright wings in the flame,
And then tumbles into the tallow.

Then, sir, as to my person, Mr.
O'Toole has most wickedly deceived

you

Grace is in all my steps-Heav'n in my eye.'

It is probable that I may not pay quite so much attention to my toilet as your correspondent; but then, sir, I have no looking-glass in my apart. ment. Not that I cannot afford to purchase such a piece of furniture no, thank God! fifty pounds a month from my friend at the Opera Colonnade, and thirty guineas a sheet from the Editor of The Dublin,' would

alone furnish out a tolerable income; but, at once to give the lie to O'Toole's aspersions, such an article would have been fatal to my peace, and I must have prayed to Heaven to make me

the Editors of the Quarterly' and Edinburgh Reviews' proceed, and I should like to see it adopted in your Magazine.

To begin, however, at the beginning. I have one chance of escape from the gallows. I was not born of respectable parents,' or brought up in the strictest principles of religion and piety.' Turn, Mr. Editor, to the Causes Celebres,' or the 'Newgate Calendar' (in which, bythe-by, the most piquant biographies are the productions of my pen), and see if this has not been the parentage and education of all the rascals that were ever born and hanged. I will not mention my father's name, because I never could rightly learn it. Like Jack Cade, I am of an honourable house, for the field is honourable; and there was I born under a hedge.' As I grew up I was distinguished for my parts. I was an adroit pilferer, and a tolerable liar. I acquired a competent share of learning, and, when my education was completed, I was apprenticed by the parish to a baker, under whose roof I had not remained a week before I broke open the till, and de

camped to join a company of strolling players.

Here I was in my element: my fine person, my learning, and my knowledge of the world, secured me the first parts and the best salaries, and, with my heroic struts and sonorous cadences, I frightened the rats from half the barns in the country.

In the theatrical line of life I was acquiring both fame and profit, until my evil genius whispered in my ear

Be ambitious!' I thought that it was degrading my fine talent to be merely giving utterance to the ideas of others, when it might be so much better employed in enlightening the world with my own. From that inauspicious moment I became an author and a beggar. Before, however, venturing to bring my productions before the great world, I tried their power in a more contracted sphere. There was a lovely Columbine in our company, of oriental, alias gipsy, origin, of whom I became deeply enamoured. I remember writing a florid description of her charms, of which the following are the only lines that I can recollect:

:

'Sylph-like her form, yet stately as the pine
That grows upon the mountain-top, and wooes
Heav'ns kisses to its brow; her auburn locks
Fell rich and ripe as the vine's clusters down
Her snowy neck; her forehead, high and tall,
Beneath the shade of those ambrosial curls,
Rose like a throne; broad spread her soft sinooth brows,
And her dark lashes shaded two sweet orbs,

That, black as night, yet brighter than night's queen,
Shower'd noon-tide radiance round.'

These, you will allow, Mr. Editor, are very pretty lines, and such as ought to have won the heart of any woman. Not so thought my fair Columbine, who, not content with preferring the embraces of a corpulent Harlequin, took every opportunity of treating me with derision. My love was changed to hatred, and I thirsted for revenge. The surest way in which to attain it was to offend her vanity, which would be best done by depreciating her charms. But how to do this was a matter of some diffi

culty, after the eulogiums which I had published upon them. Still, when I considered the subject more deeply, I thought that her hair, which I had called auburn, was too much inclining to red; and the expression, which I had admired in her eyes, appeared to be owing to a certain obliquity of vision, which I had never remarked before. I remembered that the poet Simonides, when employed to celebrate certain mules, who had won a race, began his poem thus:

Hail! daughters of the generous horse,
That skims like wind along the course.'

But, finding that his reward was not to be as much as he expected, he

refused to proceed further, saying, with disdain, that he would not write

upon demi-asses. In this spirit I sat time, and produced the following down, with pen in hand, to celebrate portrait:

Miss Columbine's charms a second

'An eye, the emblem of her mind, which hints
Its dark obliquity whene'er she squints;
Of teeth a somewhat uninviting stud,
Looking like bits of green glass set in mud;
A chin, whose length we should undue suppose,
Save for its loving counterpart, her nose,
Whose redness looks as if its tip was scratch'd
By the black beard that's to her chin attach'd
A deaf'ning voice obstrep'rous as a war-gun,
Save when it snuffles through her nasal organ;
A lip for any thing but kisses meet;
And then a breath" by distance made more sweet :"
Locks lank and carroty, yet taught to flow,

In corkscrew ringlets, down that neck of snow. No-not of snow, but saffron hue, which, when Those curls twine round it o'er and o'er again, Resembles most, in colour and in shape, A roll of parchment tied up with red tape.' My lines were handed about, and were universally read, but, contrary to my expectation, excited universal indignation. The men became the partisans of Columbine, on account of her pretty face; and the women sympathized with her, because they reflected that they might themselves be the next sufferers. I was found guilty of wit, and, had I not made my escape abruptly, I should have been burnt for a poet. I made the best of my way to the great city, where I determined at once to astonish the world, and satisfy the cravings of my stomach, by the efforts of my genius. I was tolerably successful at first. I got introduced, at a literary soirée, to a little fat man, who kept a bookseller's shop in Bond Street, and had

married a wife with some eight or ten thousand pounds as her portion, of which the Cockney poets were doing their best to ease him. I had a volume of poems in my head, which only required to be written; and I thought that, by working night and day, I should be able, before this gentleman was ruined, to get some of his money myself. By keeping in bed all the morning to avoid duns, and writing all the night, I managed to make very considerable progress. I remember that one night, after a day in which I had seen nobody, and had enjoyed no other meal than a thin potation of water-gruel, I was finishing a jovial bacchanalian song, of which the last stanza ran thus,

Let old Time beware, for, if he should dare
To intrude 'midst companions so blithe,
We'll lather his chin with the juice of the bin,
And shave off his beard with his sithe;'

when my garret door opened, and in
walked a figure more fearful than
old Time himself-a bailiff, with a
document in his hand which works as
woful a change in the human coun-
tenance as the sithe of that arch
destroyer. I was hurried to the
King's Bench Prison, where the first
person whom I encountered was my
friend the little fat bookseller, who, I
found, had arrived there under cir-
cumstances similar to my own. I was
released from my dungeon by a book-

seller who had purchased Mr. Hunt's biography, and who stood in need of somebody to do the orator's manuscript into English. This, together with revising Nursery Rhymes,' written by ladies who could not spell, and writing Parliamentary orations for gentlemen who could not speak, furnished me with constant employment, and kept the wolf from my door. Still I did not neglect my volume of poems. I copied out my manuscript fair-two pages in a sheet, and sixteen lines in a