Puslapio vaizdai
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With a plain good woman, neither blue-stocking nor snarler,
Who had no objection to draw a cup from the barrel, or
Do any little turn about her neat back-parlour,

And thought it a long journey to Richmond-hill or Marlow,
Like an old Cockney, &c.

With a warm house, into which came neither belles nor beaux,

But worthy men of substance, in comfortable trunk-hose,

Who considered the Pope, the Pretender, and Monsieur as their foes, But bore good will and amite to all mankind but those,

Like an old Cockney, &c.

With an old cupboard full of decent old books,

A great oak-boarded BIBLE, you might know it by its looks,

With an old Hollinshed fastened with copper hooks,

And Jane Shore, and the Children of the Wood, and such old ditties in

the nooks,

Like an old Cockney, &c.

With an old fashion, when Sunday was come,

To walk to church with his prayer-book between his finger and his thumb,
But when service was over he had good roast beef and plum-
Pudding,-whereof every merry apprentice had some,

Like an old Cockney, &c.

With a good fashion, after dinner was done,

To drink a glass of Arrack-punch made by his wife or his son,
Whereof each filled a bumper that did almost overrun,

And then drunk to the King's health-jollily every one,

Like an old Cockney, &c.

But, in different times, more's the pity, different manners we find,-
This old man's descendant is to foppish courses inclined,
And, with newspapers and tavern-speeches, so corrupted is his mind,
That, not to speak the thing harshly, he is fit to be joined

With the new Cockneys of King Leigh's,
Cand King Leigh's new Cockneys.

Like a green Cockney, who dwells by Hampstead in a Box,
Whence he looks down on Pope, and Dryden, William Pitt, and Charles

Fox,

And writes Essays, which he swears are better than Addison's or Locke's,
And filthy obscene sonnets withal, for which he should be set in the stocks,
Like a new Cockney of King Leigh's,
Land King Leigh's new Cockney.]

Who, amidst a vile raffish company, is always giving of himself airs,
Thrumming upon a crazy spinnet, with fingers like a bear's;
Laughing at all decent people who go to church and
But don't consort with kept-madams, washer-women,
Like a new Cockney, &c.

say their prayers, and stage-players,

Who thinketh himself a Homer, and placeth above Aristotle
A stuck painter, whose nose ten dozen swandrops do mottle;
Who would think it no harm the whole bench of Bishops to throttle;
And drinks green gooseberry wash out of a Champagne bottle,

Like a new Cockney, &c.

Who hangs his parlour with smutty prints, and makes a mighty fuss too, About a painted book-case topp'd with his own down-looking busto, And jabbers all day long about Brio and Gusto,

And rails against Lord Wellington, Crib, Gas, and Little Puss too,

Like a new Cockney, &c.

Whose mental vision squints so Morgan-like, so abominably oblique,
That he dares to publish translations from Italian and Greek,
Though of these he knows nothing; and even in English is sorely to seek,
Rhyming rhymes which all abhor, except little Jeffrey's little critique.

Like a new Cockney, &c.

Now may Hazlitt, and Hunt, and Jeffrey, and M'Intosh, and Brougham, Hold their tongues from henceforth ever, and their proper stations resume; For, not one of them will write a history or poem till the crack of doom, That any gentleman or lady would not hate to see in their room,

Like a new Cockney, &c.

If Hazlitt writes any more Stable-Talk he shall certainly be feruled— If Hunt reaches forth his sceptre, his crown shall be peril'd

If Jeffrey ever struts again, the Black Dwarf shall strut his heraldAnd if Sir Jemmy talks of Histories, I'll dedicate my History of Gerald To spotless Brougham and princely Leigh,

And King Leigh's new Cockneys.

SONG II.

Cobbett's Complaint. A Dirge.

To the Tune of "O Hone, O Hone.”

Now let no eyes be dry, O Hone, O Hone! Now let all lament and cry,

O Hone, O Hone! For Ca--ro-line is dead, And with her our

hopes are fled, For by her we all were fed, O Hone, O Hone!

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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, IN BLANK VERSE, BY BLAIZE FUTZTRAVESTY,

ESQ.

Droæmium,

Dedicatory, Panegyrical, and Discursive,

TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ. formerly the Veiled Conductor, but now the bare-faced and much-stared-at Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, Health, Wealth, and Good Spirits;

CHRISTOPHER, Cock of the North, Prince of Periodicals, and Monarch of Magazinists, I dedicate to you the spoils of my first incursion into the territories of verse; and, at the same time, take the opportunity, too often let slip by pusillanimous dedicators, of praising you point-blank to your face. Man of monthly appearance in print, you have so changed the frame of the features of the universal literary countenance, and have put so much more meaning and expression into it, that the world of letters is not at all what it was indeed it is no longer a republic, it is become an absolute monarchy, and you are the Despot of it. You have established a standard measure for the bulk of works; and authors are everywhere bringing in their Winchester bushels, to have them gauged and conformed to your decree; but, zooks, you will allow few or none of them to put forth a bushel of their stuff at a time-condensation is the VOL. X.

word with you-and you insist on their winnowing away their husks, and so compressing into a quart-pottle what looked a big and bulky heap, and fit to fill a gallon. You will banish, I believe, the publication of separate treatises from the land. By the authority of your dictatorship, put in force against the stiff-necked, or where that is uncalled for, through the fascination of your example with the milder-natured, there is an end put at last to the infliction of all longwinded tractates upon us. All discussions henceforth are, I foresee, to come within the compass of a few hours' reading; and, indeed, most of the viri clariss. are now convinced that a Magazine (or, more correctly, THE MAGAZINE) is your only commodious vehicle for delivering and ensuring the perusal of their lucubrations de quovis omnium scibilium-from Cookery up to the Law of Contingent Remainders, Isoperimetrical Problems, or the worldA A

wide difference between Objectivity and Subjectivity, or, indeed, any other like pleasant topic for fifteen minutes' pick-tooth chit-chat.

By the bye, touching the one I have put at the foot of the scale, Mr Murray having now established his claim to the best Cookery-book going, (not going, however, while Mrs Rundell's injunction lasted,) and the said Mr Murray having heretofore, foolishly, as I think, kneaded it up into one solid substance, a regular-made fat 12mo. with title page, and tail-piece, and index, if not actually the puff-paste of Mr Murray himself, yet at least the dresser and rolling-pin were put in requisition under his specific direction for compounding it; having, as I said, unadvisedly sent it forth with too many good things, and too much of them, in one huge platter, he will, under your presiding auspices, find it his interest, I trow, to carve down the materials of his feast, and send them up to the snow-white monthly-spread table-cloth of Maga, in the form of entremêts, not over-much at once, but prettily dished and garnished by some of the tasteful traiteurs, who have demonstrated their excellence in your employ. This is the only way, indeed, to make many other things go down, as well as the ingredients of cookery. Metaphysics, which used to lumber into the world in all the solidity (not to say stolidity) of a 4to phenomenon of four or five hundred pages assigned to every mooted point, have had their day of triumphant humbug. Dissertations in that line, (according to the tenor of your conditional Veto), can no more shew their noses, unless they be content to shrink into the dimensions of a five or six page essay; and so the misty matter is settled without any more prosing about it and about it. But in other subjects, a good deal of the gift of long-windedness is contracted, particularly in the belles lettres or æsthetics, (if Mr C. will have it so), and here your voice is equally potent. Why, the Bowles and Byron controversy would have gone on for ever and a day, if you had not caught that interloper, Jeremy Bentham, and, after having slashed and carbonaded him, offered him up as an expiatory victim to the Goddess of Critical Discord.

That you are qualified for the high office which you assume, is on all hands agreed, and particularly by your skill in languages. Here, indeed, you are great-you have a whole jangling bunch of these keys of knowledge. It is not necessary to advert particularly to those in which you excel-an exception proves the rule

let me object then, that you do not speak the Timbucton tongue with urbane elegance. I presume your instructor was not familiarly admitted to Court, while he lived under the sway of King Woollo, and there alone the conversational tone of good breeding is readily acquired. However, with this exception, and the fault lies at the door of your instructor, (indeed it is difficult to get a good master of that tongue), you are highly accomplished in all-perhaps we may say you are most au fait in the Chaldee and Amharic, and certainly Mr Belzoni is greatly obliged by your reading to him at sight the copies of the hieroglyphics he brought home. Of politics I say nothing, the Radicals are eradicated, and the Whigs at a nonplus,-let him who would assign the degree of merit due to you in this business, reckon how far the sun's rays penetrate into infinite space.

In matters of wit and humour, all are taking the tone from, you-one good and clear example is as well as a thousand. Hear, then, how contagious you are, facetious Christopher, and marvel. You are followed by your seniors. All the world knows that you have indelibly fixed the name of The Cockney School upon a certain captious breed of sentimentalists in the Strand, and ruralists in the Rotten Row ; and have moreover sported the same sort of wit in classing others as belonging to the Leg of Mutton School, and others not contemplated by Bell or Lancaster. Now, in good sooth, this thy jocundity hath so bewitched Sylvanus Urban, that, in last month's Gentleman's, that "awfully ancient old square-toes," leaving his ordinary talk of graves, and worms, and epitaphs,” hath tried his hand in the same way, and hath conferred the appellation of the Jessamy School on a sect, in which Mr Hamilton, with his Garden of Florence, is the chief aspirant. Did you think the old boy had it in him at his time of day? For remember, he began his

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course of editorship on 1st of January, 1731, O.S.; and, from this, we may give a good guess at his state of senility. He was, there is no doubt of it, constitutionally staid and saturnine, and therefore better adapted to much of the mechanical, and eke the discretionary business of an Editor at 25, than you are, Christopher, (be it said 1 without offence,) even at this present writing; seeing as how he never got into a scrape, or roused any heartburnings, in near a century's supervision; while you, at your sober time of life, when you ought to be more prudent, can hardly repress the flashes and fiery out-breaks of your volcanic genius. Let him, then, have begun at 25, this brings him out to be at least 115 years old. Now, really, to make a convert of such an antediluvian, and to inspirit him with such near approaches to rejuvenescence, merely by the force of your bouncing animal spirits, is indeed somewhat to boast of.

But poetry, sweet poetry, is your forte. I have little to mention about that which you have written yourself, although it be greatly more than the world wots of. Let the Reading Public, when they are struck with wonder at the beauty of any anonymous bijou, or when they have puzzled their brains, and teazed one another, all to no purpose, in inquiring after the bodily owner of some likely, but imaginary name, affixed to a successful tale in verse, romance, idyll, ballad, or drama-which seeming author is not to be found under that deceptive appellation, from the Lizard Point, to John o' Groat's-Let them, I say, in defect of claimant for the laurel wreath, which the brows of the inditer thereof are entitled to, pay the tribute of their admiration to Christopher North -they will not often be in the wrong. Who wrote the Pursuits of Literature? A fig for Mr Mathias he has never owned it, from A. D. 1792, down to this present 1821, being the first year after bissextile. Who wrote the Loves of the Triangles? Some whippersnapper replies, "Undoubtedly Canning, or Frere, or it was a joint concern of that witty set;" and if the hearer is contented-be it so-but, say, it is a secret still. Who wrote the Rejected Addresses? Who wrote Whis tlecraft? It was very cunning in the booksellers to put Sir Walter Scott's name to the Bridal of Triermain, after

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that exposed and parentless bantling had been nursed up by public applause, to a good measure of health and chubbiness, because it set the sale a-going again-but did Sir Walter write it? I doubt it; for he, honest man, is busy enough at Abbotsford, and little likely to trouble his brains with book-vending manoeuvres; and I question if it has ever reached his ears, that this pretty imitation of him is now actually exposed to sale as goods of his genuine manufacture, It is confessed, that the Nithsdale and Galloway Songs are not all old; there are many modern ballads, surpassing the ancient perhaps, in that admirable Garland-Now, who wrote them? Does somebody say Allan Cunningham? Pooh, he has enough to do chipping marble at Chantrey's, without making rhymes to the clink of his hammer. Who wrote the Poetic Mirror? Who wrote Ellen Fitzarthur? Who wrote Henry Schultze, and others, divers and sundry, of various sorts and sizes? I do not pretend, Christopher, that you are positively the progenitor of all and every of these, but I confess my suspicions, that you are the writer of most of them, for I know it is not your way to be jealous of your own fame, provided that what you launch into the world has answered its end, in amusing or instructing your contemporaries, either by setting afloat the sacred fount of sympathetic tears, or by suppling those muscles about the jaws, which experience dilatation during mirth. I say then, that, provided whichever of these ends you may have intended, be answered, you let the gossips father the brat on whomsoever they please; and ascribe it to somebody or other they certainly will. Well, well, however sublime, picturesque, harmonious, spirited, humorous, or witty a poet you may be yourself, the gist of my present panegyric does not lie in that it is, that you are the fosterer of the art in others. Like Falstaff, you are not only witty yourself, but the cause of wit in others; and, what he was not, you are poetical also, and the cause of poetry in others. Which genius of the present day is not indebted to you for encouragement, when he has done well-for direction, when he is sliding unawares into a wrong course-and for reproof, when he has quite deviated from good taste? Even your sharpnesses have been

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