264

BOSWELL.-HAZLITT.

of the Club. Moderate as were his talents, he was hand-inglove with Burke, and Langton, and Beauclerk, and Percy, and the rest. He of Table-Talk has never risen higher than the lowest circle of the Press-gang-Reporters fight shy-and the Editors of Sunday newspapers turn up their noses at the smell of his approach.

North. Jemmy had a sycophantish, but a sincere admiration of the genius, erudition, and virtue of Ursa-Major, and in recording the noble growlings of the Great Bear, thought not of his own Scotch snivel. Billy hates and envies all that he pretends to love and venerate, for the best of reasons, because his eulogiums on others are libels on himself.

Tickler. And, pray, who may N. the ninny be, whom he takes for his Samuel Johnson?

North. A wasp called Nash.1

Tickler. How can Mr Campbell prostitute his pages so?

North. Indolence — indolence. The indolence of a man of genius, deepened by disgust, and getting rid of a loathsome dunce by admitting him within the sheets of the Magazine, just as a delicate boarding-school Miss has been known, in the impulse of pure horror, to marry a monster from Munster, in order to escape blindfold from his odious addresses !

Tickler. I like the Monthly much, since its incorporation with the European. Its fun and frolic is often capital; and, with a little more weighty matter, it will have success. It is free from bitterness and ill-nature. Gall is corrosive, and, like canker at the root of a flower, spoils the colour of the blossoms, and soon snaps the stalk. No man will ever be a satirist who has not a good heart. I like the Monthly much.

North. The London often contains striking articles. That Cantab was no small-beer in his bouncing. The Traveller on the Continent is terse, lively, and observant, and the Foreigner who writes about Greece must amuse the public. The editor has been frequently fortunate in his correspondents-then why so fretful in his temper, and discontented with the lieges?

Shepherd. What gars the cretur keep yaumer-yaumerin— yaumerin, as if he had aye the toothache, or a pain in his lug?

1 For "Nash" we must read Northcote the painter, whose conversations were reported by Hazlitt in the New Monthly Magazine, and afterwards published in a volume.

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW.-JEFFREY.

265

Canna he clear himsel o' bile by a gran' emetic, keep his bowels open wi' peels, and wi' an unjaundiced ee look abroad over the glorious warks o' nature and o' art, till the sowl begins to burn within him (for he has a sowl), and generous sentiments come skelpin alang, thick and three-fauld, like bees out o' a bike, with stings, it is true, but stings keepit for severe occasions-happier far to murmur in shade and sunshine amang the honey-dew, harmless as birds or butterflies, and leaving wasps and hornets to extract poison from the very flowers, distilling by the power of piercing proboscis, the odours and the balm o' paradise frae earth's common weeds!

Tickler. Confound me, if, with all my Toryism, which, were I bled to death, would glitter like a pearl of price in my last heart's drop-I do not take in the Westminster Review, instead of paying fourpence a night for it to a Circulating Library. In the ring, they hit hard, and go right up to their man's head.

Shepherd. They're dour dowgs!

Tickler. Every party in the land should have its organ.
North. Even though it should be but a hand one.

Shepherd. Ye're baith nae better than twa auld Leeberals. What for did the Westminster sneer at me? Because I'm ane o' the principal writers in Blackwood! Puir, puir spite. Then what a confusion o' ideas to be angry at me for what I say at Awmrose's! Mayna a man say what he likes in a preevat party? But it was just the same way in the Embro'.

Tickler. You squabashed Jeffrey, James, in that famous letter anent the Jacobite Relics.1

Shepherd. Ay, that I did, like the red arm o'a hizzie wi' a beetle champing rumbledethumps. But it wasna Mr Jaffrey himsel, yon. I hae a great affection and respect for Mr Jaffrey; but why should a real man o' letters like him-" a man of morals and of manners too," a man proud, and justly proud, o' the rank in literature that his genius has won him—

1 "I never saw the Shepherd," says Mr Lockhart, "so elated as he was on the appearance of a very severe article on this book (the Jacobite Relics) in the Edinburgh Review; for, to his exquisite delight, the hostile critic (Jeffrey) selected for exceptive encomium one 'old Jacobite strain,' viz., 'Donald M'Gillivray,' which Hogg had fabricated the year before. Scott, too, enjoyed the joke almost as much as the Shepherd."-Life of Scott, vol. vi. p. 37, second edition. Hogg exposed the blunder in the letter referred to in the text.

why should he suffer ony o' his yelpin curs to bite the heels o' the Shepherd-perhaps hound him on wi' his ain gleg vice and ee-when I was daunerin amang the braes, wushin ill to nae leevin thing, and laith to tramp even on the dewy daisies aneath my feet?

North. By heavens, ignobly done!

Shepherd. However, ye may knock out the brains o' a mangy mongrel, wi' a stick or a stane, without ony ill-will to the master that aughts1 him; and I'm sure that gin Mr Jaffrey comes ever ridin ower into Yarrow, by the Grey Meer's Tail, or straught through Peebles, he shanna want a warm welcome at Mount Benger frae me and the mistress-cocky-leeky, or some hare-soop, a rump o' corned beef, and a muirfowl hen, a rice puddin, and a platefu' o' pancakes.

Tickler. 'Pon my soul, James, I should like vastly to be of the party-an admirable selection! What an absurd old beldame is Madame Genlis, in the last number of the Quarterly! Have you read her Memoirs, James?

Shepherd. Me read her Memoirs !-no me indeed! But I have read the article on the slut, French and a'. There can be nae doubt but that she would marry yet! Hoo the auld lass wad stan' paintin her shrivelled cheeks at a plate-glass mirror, wi' a frame o' naked Cupids! Hoo she wad try to tosh up the rizzered haddies o' her breest, and wi' paddins round out her hainches! Hoo she wad smirk, and simper and leer wi' her bleered rheumy een at the marriage ceremony before a Papish Priest !—and wha wad venture to say that she wadna enterteen expectations and howps o' fa'in into the family-way on the wrang side o' aughty? Think ye she wad tak to the nursin, and show undue partiality to her first-born ower a' the ither childer ?

North. Old age-especially the old age of a lady—should be treated with respect-with reverence. I cannot approve

of the tone of your interrogations, James.

Shepherd. Yes, Mr North-old age ought indeed to be treated with respect and reverence. That's a God's truth. The ancient grandame, seated at the ingle amang her children's children, wi' the Bible open on her knees, and lookin 1 Aughts-owns.

2 She was governess to King Louis Philippe in his childhood, and died in 1830, aged 84. 3 Tosh up-display to best advantage. 4 Rizzered haddies-haddocks dried in the sun.

HER MEMOIRS AND MORALS.

267

solemn, almost severe, with her dim eyes, through specs shaded by grey hairs, now and then brichtening up her faded countenance wi' a saintly smile, as she saftly lets fa' her shrivelled hand on the golden head o' some wee bit hafflin imp sittin cowerin by her knee, and, half in love half in fear, opening not his rosy lips-Such an aged woman as that-for leddy I shall not ca' her-is indeed an object of respect and reverence; and beats there a heart within human bosom that would not rejoice, wi' holy awe, to lay the homage of its blessing at her feet?-But

North. Beautiful, James !—Tickler, is not that beautiful? Shepherd. I was thinking just then, sirs, o' my ain mother. North. You needed not to have said so, my dear Shepherd. Shepherd. But to think o' an auld, bedizzened, painted hag o' a French harridan ripin1 the ribs o' her wasted carcass wi' the poker o' vanity, to wauken a spark in the dead ashes o' her wonted fires, and tryin a' the secrets o' memory and imagination to kindle a glow in the chitterin skeleton

North. Tickler, what imagery!

Shepherd. To hear her gloating ower sins she can no longer commit-nay, ower the sins o' them that are flesh and bluid nae mair, but part o' the moulderin corruption o' catacombs and cemetaries;-to see the unconscious confusion in which the images o' virtue and vice come waverin thegither afore her een, frae the lang-ago history o' them that, in life, were her ain kith and kin

Tickler. Stop, James !-stop, I beseech you!

Shepherd. To hearken till her drivellin, in the same dotage o' undistinguishing heartlessness, o' chaste matrons that filled the secret drawers in their cabinets wi' love-letters, no frae their ain husbands, but frae princes, and peers, and counts, and gentlemen, and a' sorts o' riff-raff, as plain as pike-staffs ettlin at adultery;-o' nae less chaste maidens blushin in the dark, in boudoirs, in the grup o' unprincipled paramours, let lowse 2 upon them by their verra ain fathers and mothers, and, after years o' sic perilous rampaugin wi' young sodgers, walin3 out ane at last for her man, only to plant horns on his head, and lose a haud on the legitimacy o' ony ane o' her subsequent children except the first, and him mair than apocryphal;-o' limmers, that flang their chastity with open hand 1 Ripin-poking. 3 Walin-choosing.

2 Lowse-loose.

268

THE HAMILTONIAN SYSTEM.

frae them like chaff, and, rolling along in flunky-flanked eckipages by the Boulevards o' Paris, gloried in the blaze o' their iniquity

North. I must positively shut your mouth, James.—You will burst a blood-vessel in your righteous indignation. That's right, empty your tumbler.

Tickler. She had many good points about her, nevertheless, James. You are too stern a moralist. Her petits soupers were very piquant of old; and the worst thing I knew about Madame Genlis was her snub nose, which, like a piece of weeping Parmesan, had generally a drop at the end of it. To me she was never lovable.

Shepherd. I could hae fa'en in love mysel wi' Madam de Stawl, and, had she visited Scotland, I should have done my best to be with her un homme à bonnes fortunes.

Tickler. Why, Hogg, you pronounce French like a native. Idiom perfect too!

Shepherd. I took half-a-dozen lessons frae Hamilton; for I had a fancy for his system on account o' the absence o' grammar, which is waur than plague, pestilence, or famine.

Tickler. Do you think, James, you could teach Mr Hamilton Ettrick as expeditiously as he has taught you French?

Shepherd. Ou ay. I'll undertake to teach him Ettrick in twal lessons, and the four volumes of Dr Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary-with three thousand additional words that I intend publishing in a Supplement forbye.

North. There is power in what is called, most absurdly and ignorantly, the Hamiltonian System; but Hamilton himself has shown the white feather before a manly challenger, and stands discomfited and dished.

Shepherd. He's a bauld fellow that Mackay o' the High School. The Hielan bluid o' him was a' in a low, and he wad hae foughten on to the last gasp. I'm nae great scholar, but I love speerit.

Tickler. After all his blustering, Jupiter Tonans ought not to have declined the combat with the Titan. Hamilton might have praised his own system, without so contemptuously treating every modification of every other, and, without doubt, he was himself the challenger. So that the big words 1 Madame de Stael-Holstein, daughter of M. Necker the celebrated French financier. Born in 1766; died in 1817.