Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

nes.

nerable. We doubt if any churchman, if any man that ever either read or spoke a single sermon, could have discussed these matters in a tone so likely to meet the feelings of the general reader. Considering the high standards according to which everything is tried by this far-seeing Rhadamanthus, we assuredly think that our hair-brained countryman, Mr Irving, has good reason to be proud of the admission which has been made as to his talents; and we would fain hope that he is not yet so far gone in selfconceit, as to shut his eyes upon all the good and kind hints that his betters have thought fit to bestow upon him. Of the second article, it is sufficient to say, that we recognize in it the exquisite literature, and the flowing pen, of the translator of Aristophanes, and that it will probably operate as a complete quietus upon the very inferior scribe whom the Edinburgh Review has been suffering to insult the manes of DemostheThe article on French Comedy is, we cannot doubt, the work of Mr Chevenix, since, if there be any other man in England so thoroughly as he is doctus utriusque linguæ, the chances certainly appear infinitesimally small, that that person should also possess the wit and the eloquence, and the strong original conceptions, of this remarkable man. We cannot speak positively as to the author of the paper on Mr Faux's Memorable Days. It is done, like all the Quarterly's papers on such books, with infinite labour and skill; but surely, surely it is rather too much of a joke to treat such a work as this with so much gravity. To affect to consider a stupid, bilious, ignorant, indelicate, gross-minded, and foul-mouthed old fusty of a Zummerzetshire clodhopper, as a person whose ipse dixit the whole society and statesmanship of that great country,-ay, that English country, are to be judged and condemned!! This is the solitary effervescence of the old bigot gall of the Quarterly. The papers on Central India and on Bornou, are distinguished by the same merits, and by the total absence of these defects. They are both of them most valuable contributions to the stock of public knowledge, and every way worthy of Mr Barrow.

upon

The Essay on the Ecclesiastical Revenues of England is another production of great labour; and the conclusions to which it leads are such, that we have been infinitely rejoiced in seeing them established beyond all future cavil. We speak of the conclusions to which this paper leads in respect to the Church of England; for, as to the very different, and certainly the more difficult question about the Protestant Church of Ireland, the writer has passed it over altogether for the present; a defect which we would fain see filled up by the same pen on some early occasion. We assure him, in case he has not seen it, that Dr Doyle's letter to Lord Wellesley is the most insidious attack which has ever yet been made against the Protestant establishment of Ireland, and an answer it must have. The reviewer, by the way, does not know so much as he thinks he does of Scotland. It is very true, that the Scotch clergymen are individually paid very little below the average rate among the clergymen of the Church of England; but the Quarterly author entirely loses sight of the fact, that the Church of Scotland is proportionably the much cheaper establishment of the two, for this reason, and for this alone, that she has proportionably a much smaller number of livings. The proportion between the 10,000 parishes in England, and the 948 parishes in Scotland, is not what we would expect from the comparative amount of population in the two countries. We mention this merely to set the Reviewer right as to a matter of detail. As to the principle of the thing, our opinion is, that the parishes in Scotland are too large and too few; that they ought to be subdivided both in the towns and in the country; and consequently, that the expense of the Church establish

ment of Scotland ought to be increased, not diminished. It is entirely, or almost entirely, owing to the extent of the parishes, that any dissenters have thriven in Scotland; for the people quit their own church only when it is too far off for their pedestrian powers, or when they do not like the pulpit eloquence of the parish priest; which last would be very seldom a reason for abandoning The Kirk herself, if the fastidious Presbyterian had two or three other parish priests not very far off, whose sermons he might choose among without one farthing of cost. It always appears to us, that it must be highly disgusting to pay so much per annum to a dissenting minister, if one could possibly avoid it. The luxury is dearly bought; and WE, for ONE, should always stretch a point to keep ourselves free from its indulgence.

We think we have now particularized all the articles except the very peppery ones on Lord Johnny Russell's tragedy, and M. le Duc de Rovigo. These two Liberals are well dished. His lordship will not, we guess, be in a hurry with any more attempts to trip up the heels of Schiller and Alfieri. Mr Gifford himself has, we think, been the executioner here. The exit of Savary appears to have been accomplished under the auspices of his able ally, Mr Croker. But what, in the name of wonder, does Croker, or whoever the writer is, see in old Talleyrand, to make him gulp the whole of his ante-revolutionary bile the moment that archapostate appears upon the stage? It seems very true, that the ex-bishop stands clear as to the Duke of Enghien's death; but what avails this? Thurtell himself does not seem to have murdered many people; and we are quite sure he did not murder either Johnny Keats or Begbie. As for M. Savary, we conclude the rip is sewed up for ever and a day.

We beg pardon; we observe that we have overlooked the article on superstition. It is probably Southey's, but the doctor has shone brighter of yore. Somebody has been bamming him a little about Norna: she has been dead more than ten years.

As to the paper on the negroes, we need not interfere with our correspondent, who has so warmly lauded it. Our own opinion is, that the papers we ourselves have published upon this subject, have effectually set things to rest, so far as rational beings are concerned. The pieces of evidence from the private letters of clergymen in the colonies, were, however, well timed; and, altogether, we have no doubt, such a paper as this was wanted for the benefit of certain classes of readers. If, in spite of all that has been done, the clamours of the Macaulay faction are again raised within the walls of Parliament, we have very humbly to submit, that the first and most obvious duty of the House of Commons will be, to insist upon being furnished with data before they go into any decision; nay, before they listen to one word more of discussion. As to facts, the two parties are completely at issue. Why fight about minute points of law, before the facts of the case to which they must be applied have been ascertained in so far as we have the means of ascertaining them? Why not comply with the petitions which these ill-starred colonists have, it appears, been eternally reiterating during the last two years? Why not send out, since that is all they ask, some of their enemies themselves to be their judges? If Mr Brougham goes out, we trust he will shew himself the same good fellow which we all found him here in Scotland last summer; and if our jolly friend does make the tour of the region of rum and turtle in that temper, we have no doubt the results will be highly beneficial to the country, and highly injurious to the Whigs. But" paucas palabras," quoth Nym.

C. N.

ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS, &c.*

THIS is a very pretty little precocious performance, and proves young Master Hunt to be a promising plant of the Cockney nursery-ground. "Heigh Johnny Nonny," as his papa called him in short metre some four or five years ago, cannot, we think, have done much more than finished his digits. Now, such a copy of verses as this is most creditable to a boy of ten years, and this small smart smattering satirist of an air-haparent, as he is pronounced in Cockaigne, really seems to smack of his sire, almost as racily as that michievous urchin the Duke of Reichstadt does of Napoleon the Great.

Joking apart, this is one of the cleverest puerile productions that have been published of late years by fond and doting fathers. The author writes like a scholar and a schoolboy, and at whatever academy he may be receiving his education, we suspect it would puzzle the Pedant who for years has whipped his posteriors, to pen such a capital and crack copy of long jinglers. Master Hunt, no doubt, apes his daddy, and the Cockney-chick crows so like the old cock, that, but for a certain ludicrous tenuity in the stutter of his unformed scraigh, we could at times have believed that we absolutely heard the old bantam. His comb and wattles, too, are distinctly visible; the germ of a spur is noticeable upon either feathered leggikin; he drops a wing, too, with a swaling and graceful amorousness-quite "with such an air" when any smooth pullet picks up a worm near his turned-out toes; and if you only so much as hold out your foraging-cap at him, why the fierce little fumbling fellow attacks it tooth and nail, as jealous as an Othello, and then goes vapouring off in sidelong triumph, cackling as at an ovation.

Now, although the talent of Master Hunt be considerable, we think few parents will approve of the direction which his father has given it, and that little sympathy will be felt for that man who employs his son-a mere lad-a boy-child-infant indeed, almost it may be said-to wreak that vengeance on his enemies, which

his own acknowledged imbecility and impotence is incapable of inflicting. The sight is not a pleasant one-we had nearly said it is disgusting, for although filial piety is always interesting, not so such paternal solicitude. Had Leigh Hunt, the Papa, boldly advanced on any great emergency, at the peril of his life and crown, to snatch the legitimate issue of his own loins from the shrivelled hands of some blear-eyed beldam, into whose small cabbage-garden Maximilian had headed a forlorn hope, good and well, and beautiful; but not so, when a stalwart and cankered carle like Mr Gifford, with his quarter-staff, belabours the shoulders of his Majesty, and sire shoves son between himself and the Pounder, retreating into the inmost recesses of his own palace. This, we say, is not only to the widest extent unfatherly, but, which is much worse, unkingly,-such pusillanimity involves forfeiture of the Crown, and from this hour we declare Leigh dethroned, and the boy-bard of UltraCrepidarius King of Cockaigne.

Master Hunt being in Tooke's Pantheon, has called in the Heathen Mythology to the aid of his father and king, and the following passage is equal, we think, to anything in "Rimini."

"I wonder,' said Mercury,-putting his head

One rosy-faced morning from Venus's bed,

I wonder, my dear Cytherea,-don't you?

What can have become of that rogue of a shoe.

I've search'd every corner to make myself certain,

And lifted, I'm sure, every possible curtain, And how I'm to manage, by Jove, I don't know,

For manage I must, and to earth I must

go,

'Tis now a whole week since I lost it;

and here,

Like a dove whom your urchin has crippled, my dear,

Have I loiter'd, and flutter'd, and look'd

in those eyes,

While Juno keeps venting her crabbed surprise;

Ultra-Crepidarius; a Satire on William Gifford. John Hunt. 1823. + See Dr Jamieson.

By Leigh Hunt. London.

And Apollo, with all that fine faith in his air,

Asks me daily accounts of Rousseau and Voltaire,

And Jove (whom it's awkward to risk such a thing with)

Has not enough thunder to frighten a king with.

So there then-now don't look so kind, I beseech you,

Or else I shall stay a week longer, you witch you

I can't ask the gods; but I'll search once again

For this fugitive shoe, and if still it's in vain,

I must try to make something a while of sheer leather,

And match with a mortal my fair widow'd feather.'

"So saying, the God put a leg out of bed, And summon'd his winged cap on to his head;

And the widow in question flew smack round his foot,

And up he was getting to end his pursuit, When Venus said softly (so softly that he Turned about on his elbow)-" What! go without me?"

We had just scored the above for quotation, when who should come clanking and clattering into our study but ODoherty. Clutching the pamphlet into his sinewy and hairy fist, he exclaimed, " By the powers, is not he a jewel of an ould one?" We stared, as the adjutant informed us, that Ultra-Crepidarius" was not written by Leigh Hunt's son, but by his grandfather! an extremely old man, indeed-a most unconscionable annuitant, who had carried longevity to the most scurvy excess-a paralytic of ninety-six-the Methuselah on the list of decayed authors, who had been absolutely twice married, before Mr Fitzgerald, of all those literary societies, was born. What a change came over the spirit of our dream! The very passage which we had admired as the production of a brisk boy, became odious as the drivelling of a toothless dotard. We certainly disapproved of so much knowingness in the love verses of "Johnny Nonny;" but look at them, fair and gentle reader, and tell us by return of post, what you think of the gloating and glowering of the superannuated Zachariah Hunt. What a gross, vulgar, leering old dog it is! Was ever the couch of the celestials

so profaned before! One thinks of some aged cur, with mangy back, glazed eye-balls dropping rheum, and with most disconsolate mazzard muzzling among the fleas of his abominable loins, by some accident lying upon the bed where Love and Beauty are embracing, and embraced.

The Adjutant is a good trotter, and credulity. Why, what do you think, we, good easy man, the very soul of when we tell you, after all, that this confounded Ultra-Crepidarius" is written neither by King Leigh's son, as we conjectured, nor yet by his grandfather, (the theory of the Ensign,) but, by all that is vernacular and idiomatic,-by HIMSELF.

Now this is a quite different guess sort of a matter, so let us follow the royal bard. Venus, he tells us, had been reading the new Eloisa, (in bed with Mercury,) to the manifest danger of setting fire to the dimity curtains; and "having prodigiously felt and admired it," sent down one of Mercury's shoes to the village of Ashburton, to order such another pair to be made for herself by a famous cobbler there, with which she proposed forthwith to pay a visit to Rousseau. What a natural, graceful, and beautiful fancy! Pope and Belinda, hide your dishonoured heads! Hark to the song of the nightingale !

"She had sent down to earth this same

shoe with an errand,

To get a new pair at Ashburton for her, and

Not think of returning without what it went for,

Unless by its master especially sent for. The shoe made a scrape, and concluding

[blocks in formation]

Cochin-China, who would not hasten, to use your own subduing words, "To take due steps for expressing Her sense of such very well-worded caressing?"

Is there a widow in all the land of Lud who would not fling her loathsome weeds away at sight of your proportions,

"And having prodigiously felt and admired it,

Could not but say so to him who inspired it ?"

But let us go on with the thread of this fairy satire. Mercury and Venus are still in bed, for our fair readers will please look back to our introduction, and they will see that "the god put a leg out of bed," but had not been seen to put on his inexpressibles. What godlike and goddesslike love-whispering!

"I know not precisely how much of this matter

Was mention'd, when Mercury sparkled round at her;

But Venus proposed, that as one shoe was fled,

Her good easy virtue should help him in

stead.

'You know, love,' said she, ''tis as light

as a feather:

And so I'll be guide, and we'll go down together.'

We have all read of Iris arching her vivid flight, in one glorious sweep, from heaven to earth,-we have all seen her do this, with the black raincloud at her back, and fronting her beauty at the enamoured Sun. But what is she, a solitary phenomenon, in comparison with the Venus of Leigh Hunt, and her Joe, the two-winged, one-shoed Mercury?

"I leave you to fancy how little he check'd her:

They chalk'd out their journey, got up, took their nectar;

And then, with his arm round her waist,

and his eyes Looking thanks upon hers, came away from the skies.

I cannot, I own, say he came much the faster,

How earnest soever he look'd and embraced her;

But never before, though a God of much

[blocks in formation]

The last time we ever saw a picture of such a couple, a cull and a trull, was about a fortnight ago. We were sitting in a snug little sylvan palace, up to the door of which winded a serpentine gravel walk, shaded with laurels, and other ever-greens. This little sylvan palace was but an adjunct to a very commodious dwelling-house, in which resided a large family. Thither, ever and anon, would one or other of the inmates repair for meditation; and on the humble wall opposite to where we sat, was the picture, battered on with batter, which so strongly resembled the passage now before us. It represented Roger and Dolly coming down a ladder from the top of a haystack; and their air and attitude, as they descended together from heaven to earth, are so shadowed forth in the above description, that, but for his absence in a foreign land, we could have sworn that Mr Hunt had sat on that seat during the hour of inspiration, and that the poet had painted from that very print.-But the thing is impossible.

Well, well, be it so; but Venus and Mercury arrive at Ashburton, and there a shoe, yes, a shoe, nearly trips the goddess-but not Mercury's sandal, which is nowhere to be found. Not to keep the reader any longer in suspense, this shoe is Mr Gifford, Editor of the Quarterly Review-Mercury proves to be no less a personage than Mr Leigh Hunt, Editor of the Examiner Newspaper; and Venus, that identical char-woman, who washed, for so many years, the foul linen and who only ceased to do so of the Knights of the Round Table, "" when Rowland brave, and Oliver, and every Paladin and Peer," proposed striking off a penny on every pair of dirty drawers, twopence on every dozen of sweaty socks, and would allow not a single stiver for stains on the celebrated yellow breeches.

There is nothing that Mr Hunt is so fond of as being a heathen god. More than once he has sported Jupiter Tonans, but his thunder was wretched, and his lightning very poor. His Appollar was not much better, but it was summat. He was shooting (with bow and arrow) at an old signboard, once the property of Mother Red-cap; and once, during the course of a forenoon, he sent his missile through the left sparkler of the old landlady; on which achievement he

« ZurückWeiter »