Exceptions 'gainst the fair were coarse and shocking I've seen in breeches many a true blue Blue Stocking stands, in my vocabulary, I like to see young people smart and airy, Can't they discourse about ball, rout, or play, I talked of roses, zephyrs, gurgling brooks, On Una that made sunshine in the shade, From the poem itself we quote the following stanzas, without any remarks, convinced that their simple elegance and unaffected grace stand in no need of the critics recommendation. I rose this morning about half past nine, And little balls of butter dished in water, And having thus my ballast stow'd on board, Down Prince's Street I once or twice paraded, And gazed upon these same eternal faces; Those beardless beaux and bearded belles, those faded And flashy silks, surtouts, pelisses, laces; Those crowds of clerks, astride on hackneys jaded, Dreaming enthusiasts who indulge vain Prancing and capering with notorial grace; whimsies, That they might pass in Bond Street or St I saw equestrian and pedestrian vanish clanish, To club at Waters' for a mutton-chop; Myself resolved for once my cares to banish, And give the Cerberus of thought a sop, Got Jack's, and Sam's, and Dick's, and Tom's consent, And o'er the Mound to Billy Young's we went. I am not nice, I care not what I dine on, Burst 'neath the shelter of that leafy screen; pear, Repose, ye weary travellers, on the green, Horace and Milton, Dante, Burns, and Schiller, Dined at a tavern-when they had "the siller." And ne'er did poet, epical or tragical, At Florence, London, Weimar, Rome, Maybole, See time's dark lanthern glow with hues more magical Than I have witnessed in the Coffin-hole. Let blank verse hero, or Spenserian rhymer, and porter. And O, my pipe, though in these Dandy days I for a moment interrupt my lays (I smoke.) Pipe! whether plain in fashion of Frey-herr, mer, Or snowy clay of Gowda, light and pure. newer, Puff, every brother, as it likes him best, Pipe! when I stuff into thee my canaster, Curling with balmy circles near my nose, A true Havannah, smooth, and moist, and But then the smoke's too near the eye by far, down ; And if your leaf have got a straw within it, I have no doubt a long excursive hooker If once in the half hour a puff he brings. I rather follow in my smoking trim Who, while the evening air is warm and dim, ECHO, IN TWO POETICAL DIALOGUES. [The two following classical jeux d'esprit are extracted from the works of the Rev Francis Wrangham (3 vols 8vo. Baldwin & Co. London, 1816), one of the most accom plished of our living English scholars, and distinguished at the university of Cambridge as the successful competitor of the celebrated Tweddell. We intend, in an early Number, to offer some remarks on that class of writers of which we consider him an honourable representative. EDITOR.] Dialogue I. Παντοίων στομάτων λαλον εικονα, ποιμέσιν ἡδυ CAN ECHO speak the tongue of every country? ECHO. Try. Te virginem si fortè poscam erotica? Ma si ti sopra il futuro questionerò? Et puis-je te parler sur des choses passées ? Die mihi quæso virum, vitiis cui tot bona parta: Whom once Sir Sidney drove with shame from Acre. What are the arms with which he now fights Britons? Quid nobis iterat tanto hic jactator hiatu? Ερώ ταχα. He did. Scapin. All undone. But what, if he should chance to meet our navy? Atqui, ceu Xerxes, nostris fugere actus ab oris- Dialogue II. -Quæ nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui potuit. Væ! A few. Agreed-Hurra! ECHO. Eccomi! AGAIN I call; sweet Maid, come echo me. Τις δε τόσην αυτοις ενέπνευσ ̓ Υπατε θρησκείαν ; Aliquid mali molitur in nos consilî: Cumque illo miles Batavus conjurat amicè. Where would his Brest fleet in our empire land? Quisnam illum à Scotis manet exitus, auspice Moirâ? How best shall we 'scape this invasion's alarm? Furem ego contundam, qui te rapere audet, agelle: Rev. ix. 11. * Of gall. Agns. All agree. Rot 'em, I say. En Ecosse. Deuce a bit! Apollyon! LETTER FROM GLASGOW. Buck's Head, April 10, 1818. MR EDITOR, I BEG leave to offer a few observations on the second letter of Dr Nicol Jarvie, which has lately made so much noise in this city. The doctor is a wag, and possesses a genuine vein of humour, which, under good management, could not fail of amusing the public. But, like too many wits of the present day, he wants discretion. Instead of giving his powers fair play on some subject of general interest, he has let himself down by certain personalities which it is quite impossible to defend or justify. Some silly people would fain consider these personalities gross and insulting. That is by no means the case. But they are, what Dr Nicol Jarvie perhaps does not suspect them to be, very childish, or rather, to use an expressive Scots word, "unco bairnly." There is also some indelicacy in printing at full length the christian and surnames of worthy citizens who walk about the coffee-room here, without thinking of you or your Magazine. Nobody can like this sort of notoriety; and for my own part, I fully expect some day or other to plump upon my own name in some dark corner of your Work, and to find myself publicly celebrated for qualities, which I would rather were admired by a more limited circle. Your Miscellany is very much read and admired here; do not therefore, good Mr Editor, alarm your subscribers in this way. If you and your correspondents must write about us folks in Glasgow," give us a local habitation," but if you please "no name." Believe me that there is a great deal of veracity in these observations. A question, I understand, has arisen, how far this mode of writing is actionable, and it is rumoured in the coffeeroom, that one of the much-injured gentlemen mentioned in Dr Jarvie's letter, intends to sue the Publisher for damages in the Jury Court. Many parties of ladies and gentlemen have already been formed to attend the court on the great day of trial, and we hear that a public breakfast is to be given to the spirited prosecutor, who comes forward to vindicate the rights of private citizens against the licentiousness of the press. This ebullition of feeling may serve to shew you on what dangerous ground you are treading, and points out the propriety of an apology. If you are wise, you will forthwise publish some such palinode as the following: "It having been incautiously asserted in this Magazine, on the authority of Dr Nicol Jarvie, tertius, of the Saltmarket, Glasgow, that Mr- (here insert the learned gentleman's name) is fond of a good dinner, and tells witty stories; the Editor begs his pardon for having been duped into the belief and circulation of such unfounded calumnies." Some such manly apology as this would, I am confident, sooth that gentleman's wounded sensibilities, and restore him to that peace of mind which, previously to the publication of your last Number, he apparently enjoyed. I believe that all the other gentleinen jocosely, but coarsely, quoted by the doctor, though somewhat flurried and flustered at first, as they might well be, now laugh at the whole affair as an absurdity, and feel much more for VOL. III. their friend than for themselves. One of them with whom I supped last night, said it was ridiculous to cry out for a mere toothach. I have now, Mr Editor, protested generally against all personalities whatever of this nature; but you will allow me to add, that in this particular case, Dr Nicol Jarvie's offence is of an aggravated kind. Had he been jocose upon a man of wit, and humour, and sarcasm-some formidable punster-some mason-lodge orator-some everlasting strutter of the Trongate― some attitudinarian of the Tontinesome demigod in the misty heaven of the Dirty Shirt (once a celebrated club in this city), his sallies would have been enjoyed by the whole of our "reading population." But to fall foul of the modest-the retiring-the unassuming-the courter of the shade the bashful and the shamefaced! with rude hands to grasp the leaves of the sensitive plant! To withdraw the veil, as it were, from the blushing bride! this, Mr Editor, was indeed coarse, unfeeling, and unmanly, and therefore, sir, be not surprised, though the days of chivalry are gone, that a courteous knight like myself issues forth from the bar of the Buck's head, Paynim to break a lance with the " vile," who hath insulted modesty, innocence, and beauty. Witty, Mr Editor, as you may think yourself and friends, more especially the redoubtable Dr Nicol Jarvie, tertius, beware of retaliation. Though in this instance the injured person may want talents to defend himself, yet we have other wits among us to avenge his wrongs. Duncan Whip is "bang up to the mark,"-Helvidius Priscus may rise up against you, flushed with victory over Scott, Chalmers, Malthus, Bentham, and Jeffrey, and armed like Samson of old,-the Editors of the Glasgow Chronicle will harness themselves for the battle, with their famous prentice at their head,—and to secure your discomfiture, who knows but JAMES GRAHAME, ESQ. ADVOCATE, HIMSELF, will barbarously scribble you to death, and enshroud you in a winding-sheet of his own pamphlets. Mr Editor, however fond of personalitics you learned folks in Edinburgh may be, instructed as you have been in that kind of lore, by 57 Numbers of the Edinburgh Review, unquestion, H ably the most scurrilous Periodical of the day, such writings have, at all times, been most offensive to the better taste of the citizens of Glasgow. Of this take the following example. Last summer, your excellent townswoman, Mrs Grant, author of so many admirable works, paid a visit to a gentleman's family in this neighbourhood. All who know her, and I am proud to be of that number, love her for her gentle and unassuming private character, as much as they admire the strength and originality of her genius. Soon as it was known that this lady was in our vicinity, "some unfeeling clown" began to abuse her in the Glasgow Chronicle, and to drag her, day after day, before the public, in all the wanton insolence of ignorant brutality. When the Editors of that paper were requested, in the most gentle terms, to desist from such unprovoked attacks, they printed in their volumes the request itself, as they received it, and then went on more grossly than ever insulting a lady! Though we pretend to no great delicacacy of feeling in this good town, yet, believe me, that a Glasgow merchant has his heart in its right place; and we all, learned (will you allow me to use the word?) and unlearned, flung these odious Chronicles from our hands with loathing and disgust. I recollect, however, that there was one person, even here in our Glasgow coffee-room, who seemed to delight in the dirty dulness of the Chronicle. I think I see him sitting in his accustomed chair, with all becoming stateliness and pomposity, like a great gander that seats himself on a heap of addled eggs, during the absence of his mate who has laid them, and keeps stretching out his long neck, gaping and hissing towards every passer-by, as if they cared for him, and the sniffling silliness of his sedentary occupation. It is persons of this stamp who are most clamorous when attacked themselves; and I have no doubt, that if the hero of whom I now speak, and who kept daily rubbing his elbows with the very itch of chuckling enjoyment, extending his chest, and leaning back his broad, rosy, grinning face over the vile insults heaped upon a respectable lady,-I say, Mr Editor, that such a creature, if retorted upon himself with the mere threatening of castigation, would retreat with loud gabble and uplifted wings, like the gander aforesaid, when some impatient pedestrian turns round suddenly on the "feathered fool," and sends him waddling back, on his great splay-feet, into the dirty puddle of the village pool, to solace himself with his yellow billed paramour. Had Dr Jarvie attacked such a person as this-good and well. But is it so? Mr Editor, I have done. I may say of you what Cowper the poet said of England, "with all thy faults I love thee still!" and I may add, as Burns the poet said to the devil, "gif ye wad tak a thought and mend," that you might yet get over all the little peccadillos of yourself and the doctor, and firmly establish yourself in the good graces of the people of this city, who (though I say it that should not say it) are as warm-hearted, upright, and intelligent a set of citizens as any in the kingdom. MUNGO. SONNET TO JOHN CARNEGIE, ESQ. [We have received from Mr John Carnegie of Glasgow, a poem, entitled, "Largo's Vale." It is, we fear, rather long for to find room for it soon. insertion in our Magazine, though we hope publish with much pleasure the following Meanwhile we beautiful Sonnet, from a distinguished pen, to the Bard of the Largs. EDITOR.] SWEET Bard of Largo's Vale! yet once again Strike that wild harp of thine, and to the gale, Casting the volume of its melody, The Zephyrs on their wings shall waft the strain, And the whole world shall ring with Largo's Vale. Carnegie! Yes, the Muse, on bended knee, REMARKS ON THE PETIT VOLUME" OF MONS. SAY." * OUR duty to more recent and indigenous productions has led us to procrastinate, for a few months, our "Petit Volume, contenant quelquesapperçus des Hommes et de la Société." A Paris. 1817. 18mo, pp. 176. |