5.

Every shot that we fire, as it peals through the air,
I consider a kind of a greeting-

There is naught of forgetfulness, here, John! nor there-
Taste your flask to our blythe winter-meeting!

Mr. Seward said he had never sung a single stave in his life, and called on Buller of Brazennose, to confirm his statement; but he said, that since the example of simple recitative had been set, he should not hesitate to favor us with a copy of verses which he had written last year for Sir Roger Newdyate's prize-subject, the Coliseum. verses had not indeed gained the prize, but flattering testimony had been borne to their merit by his tutor, Mr. Goodenough,* and many other exquisite judges.

THE COLISEUM.

Ye circling walls, whose melancholy bound,

In lonely echoes, whisper all around!

Ye towers antique, whose shapeless shadows tell

Of Roman glory the forlorn farewell!

Dark o'er the sod with heroes' dust commix'd

Ye frown in monumental silence fix'd!

Ah! could a voice to your faint forms be given

By some supernal sympathy of heaven,
Deep were the descant of departed years,

And marble groans would blend with nature's tears !
The pensive pilgrim bending by the shrine,
Where all is mortal, and yet half divine,
Would mix a sigh as plaintive as your own,
O'er the dim relics of the splendors gone,
Mix with the sobbings of the wind-stirred trees,
Whose roots are in th' imperial palaces!
See! or does fancy, from her fetters freed,
With airy visions the fond eyeballs feed-
Airy, yet bright, as they which lore sublime
Drew to the enthusiast of the elder time,
In rich redundance of imparted light,
All radiant, rushing on the Augur's sight,

And mocking with their glare the temple's mystic night
Majestic dreams of Rome's primeval day.

Oh list and answer! Oh! &c.

His

Unfortunately as Mr. Seward warmed in his recitation, he began to speak with such extreme volubility, that to have taken down his words accurately, would have required nothing less than the presence of that PRINCE OF STENOGRAPHERS, MR. JOHN DOW HIMSELF.t So that we hope that Mr. Seward will yield to the solicitations of the Contributors, and give his poem to the world. The next we knocked down was Dr. Scott, who, in compliance with Bailie Jarvie's earnest request, favored us with the following ballad of his own composition, at present the most popular ditty in the west of Scotland!

* Son of Dr. Goodenough, Bishop of Carlisle.-M.

+ Dow as the for many years after, the best short-hand writer in Edinburgh.--M.

1819.]

PUNCH, THE PEACEMAKER.

THE MEMORY OF SANDY FERGUSON.

27

Written, Composed, and Sung, by James Scott, Esq., of Millar-street, Glasgow.

1.

If e'er at Peggy Jardine's it was your luck to dwell,

It is odds but ye knew Sandy Ferguson well;

If you opened but your window, you could not choose but see

The lemons in his window shining one, two, three.

2.

Ochon! for Sandy Ferguson! the lemons still are there—
The jargonelle and pippin and the carvy-seed so fair;
But in spite of figs and oranges, and stalks of sugar candy,
I turn not in-I stagger by-ochon! ochon for Sandy.

3.

A wee wee chap upon the bowl, then I pray you to put in,
And to leave a drop of heeltap I'd hold it for a sin;
For though sad it be and silent-yet a bumper it must be
That ye fill unto the kind ghost of Sandy with me.

4.

There were prouder on the mart-there were gayer on the mall,
There were louder at the What-you-please, and wittier at the Stall-
But I will give my heart's blood, though every drop were brandy,
If either Stall or What-you-please knew such a heart as Sandy!

5.

Then fill ye up your bumpers, friends, and join your hands around,
And drink your measure heartily, that sorrow may be drowned;
For what avails our sorrow, friends, the best of beings maun die,
And here's a woeful proof of that-the Memory of Sandy!

There is nothing more worthy of observation and praise in the character of that precious fluid, punch, than its power of amalgamation. Under its benign influence the most conflicting qualities. become reconciled; and a party of weak, strong, sweet, and sour people, form, like the "charmed drink" which they imbibe, one safe and agreeable whole. This cannot be authorizedly predicted of any other liquid comprehended within the range of our wide experience. We had seen Thracian quarrels around all sorts of "Pocula," except punch-bowls; but there seems to be a divine air breathed from the surface of a circle of china, or even of stone or wood, when a waveless well of punch sleeps within, that soothes every ruder feeling into peace, and awakens in the soul all the finer emotions of sensibility and friendship. We are satisfied, that if punch were the universal tipple of Europe, there would be no more war-especially if all the Continental States were to employ a judicious intermixture of Lime-juice. In our Tent had been assembled for several hours men of different countries, education, and pursuits; and who shall

pretend to know all the infinite varieties of principle and opinion that must have been collected within that narrow circumference ? Yet all was perfect harmony-the Shepherd sat down with the Dentist-and the Cockney may be said to have played in the Editor's den.

Politics had been drowned in punch; and the following list of toasts, which were all received with boundless acclamations during the evening, will show that we looked only to SPORTING CHARACTERS, "And left all meaner things

To low ambition and the pride of kings."

We should think very meanly of ourselves were we to attempt to impose on public credulity, by asserting that we have a perfectly distinct recollection of the latter part of the evening. We do, however, clearly remember that Kempferhausen who had most heroically endured a gnawing tooth-ache for many hours, finally submitted his jaw to the algebraical hand of Dr. Scott, who was not long of extracting the square root-and that the ingenious German having soon after incautiously gone into the open air to admire the moon, returned to his seat with one cheek whose magnitude was well entitled to hold the other in derision, and whose colors were, indeed, truly prismatical. Such a face has rarely been seen-and we may say to Dr. Scott of his patient, in the words of his great namesake,

"Alas! the mother that him bore
Had scarcely known her child."

Of this subject Dr. Morris made on the spot a most spirited

* "Immediately after his victory over Oliver, Donelly set off in a chariot and four to Brighton, where he was knighted by a Prince Regent. He is therefore, now, Sir Daniel Donelly."-Irish Paper. Donelly was a strong, hard-fisted Irishman, a carpenter by trade, who had fought with Oliver, an English pugilist, in July, 1819, and beaten him On returning to Dublin, Donelly opened a public-house, and used to relate, to gaping and admiring auditors, how the Prince Regent had sent for him, after the fight, and knighted him. A couple of years' hard drinking finished him, and he died in February, 1820,-his immediate cause of illness being thirty-seven tumblers of punch taken in one sitting! Maginn, in Blackwood for May, 1820, gave a "Luctus for the death of Sir Dan. Donelly," in which learning and wit were largely employed and well blended.-M.

1819.]

THE FINISH.

29

sketch, which he intends to finish in oil, and present to us, that when Kempferhausen returns to the Continent, we, his Scottish friends, may still retain the image of one of our most enthusiastic contributors. We have likewise a confused but delightful remembrance of the whole party assembled at the Tent door, (while the domestics were removing the furniture and preparing beds) in solemn contemplation of the starry heavens. Never before did we so feel the genius of Burns as when looking at our old friend the moon and her horns. "Whether she had three or four, We could na tell."

The Shepherd most vehemently asserted that he saw the cometand began spouting some obscure and opaque verses to her as extemporaneous, which were, however, instantly detected by the tenacious memory of Tickler to have been written in 1811, when the pastoral bard was flirting with the long tail of the celestial beauty of that year. It was in vain for him to appeal to a late number of Constable's Magazine, which no mortal had seen, and which the Shepherd himself was forced to acknowledge had a sad trick of trying*

"To mak auld claes Appear amaist as well as new !"

After this, there surely must have been a match at hop-step-andjump between Tickler and Dr. Scott-unless, indeed, it were on our part all a dream. Yet we cannot get rid of the impression on our minds, that we saw the latter making most surprising bounds among the heather, and coming down with "a thud" posterior to each essay —while the former cleared the ground like one of those gigantic shadowy figures that are seen stalking across the hills at sunset. There was also a very anxious search among the heather for Peter's man John, and Wastle's man Thomas, who were nowhere to be found—and though the whole party, at one time, agreed that they heard a snore from a jungle of brackens, we tried in vain to start the game. We afterwards discovered that the sound must have proceeded from one of the numerous Highlanders stretched in their plaids in each direction around the Tent; for our two gentlemen had, under the auspices of the Thane's gillies, paid a nocturnal visit to a Still at work no great way off, from which it was not till a decent hour after sunrise that they groped their way back to the encampment. The last thing we recollect before going to bed, was Odoherty's selling to Mr. Tims, for £45, his gun, which we have good reason to know he had purchased at the General Agency Office,

*The letter from Hogg, a copy of which is given in the present edition, will show that even up to the last year of his life, he was addicted to this "sad trick.”—M.

Edinburgh, for £4, 4s.; but we must also add, to the credit of the Adjutant, that with his accustomed generosity he returned £5 of the purchase-money. A general anxiety also prevailed among the party, before bundling in, to send presents of birds to some of our chief absent Contributors; but it appeared that we had, "gentle and simple," devoured upwards of sixty brace, and none but the Editor's pack remained, which was judicially retained for the relish at breakfast.

We have no room, now, to describe our feelings on awaking in the morning. For some minutes we could not form even the most distant conjecture where or among whom we were; but as the mist gradually rose up from our brain, and freed our memory from obfuscation, there came upon us a pleasant dawning of the truth; and on beholding the bold nose and piercing eyes of Tickler looking out from below an old worsted stocking tastefully wreathed into a nightcap, with a long tail swaggering behind-and the fine Spanish face of the Standard-bearer enjoying a magnificent yawn under a veteran foraging-cap-we were at once let in to a perfect knowledge of our situation, and we all then sprung from our heather-bed together, just as John of Sky blew up his pipes to

'Hey! Johnnie Coup, are ye waking yet?

Or are your drums a-beating yet?

If ye were waking, I would wait

To gang to the Grouse i' the morning.”