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Christopher in the Tent.

No. II.-SEPTEMBER, 1819.

We have no wish to inform the public of all the difficulties we had to encounter in bringing out the last Number of our valuable Miscellany.* It was on the evening of the 16th of August that we arrived in Edinburgh from our Tent; and as we had to ship off to London on the 20th, the hurry-skurry and the helter-skelter at the PrintingOffice may be more easily imagined than described. Immediately on stepping out of the Aberdeen coach, we came bob against Mr. Blackwood, who exclaimed, "My gracious! Mr. Editor, this is a fine prank you have been playing us all! The cry for copy is most terrible-dog on it But goodness be praised, here you

are—come away up to Ambrose's."

We soon found ourselves sitting before a sirloin of beef and a pot of porter; and Mr. Ambrose, who saw there was something in the wind more than usual, brought in the Steel Pen, our best japan ink, and a quire of wire-wove. Having travelled much in coaches during the early part of our life, we even now ate our dinner as in fear of the horn; so that in less than quarter of an hour the sirloin was removed with a deep gash on his side, and the empty porter pot rose from the table at a touch. We scarcely took time to wipe our mouths, and fell to, "totis viribus," like a giant refreshed, to the "Twelfth of August," an article which we finished at a sitting, and which we are happy to find has given very great and general satisfaction. Ebony, meanwhile, lost not a moment in running down to the Printing-Office with a packet we had brought from the Tent—and on his return, by way of showing his satisfaction, he whispered mine host to place near our right hand a small bowl of cold punch, which a Glasgow gentleman in the adjacent parlor had been kind enough to manufacture; and we felt it to be no less our duty to ourselves than

* The whole of Blackwood for September, 1819, was devoted to this article relating the sayings and doings of North and his companions in the Tent. There evidently was a number of miscellaneous articles already in type, and, with some ingenuity, these were worked into the narrative,-occasionally, however, without much regard to consistency. The articles so introduced occupied about half of the September number.--M.

It

†This was in the olden days of mail and stage-coach travelling, before railways were. may be here incidentally noticed that railway travelling, as we have it now, did not commence in England, until the 15th September, 1830, when the Liverpool and Manchester railway was opened, with great state.-M.

to Messrs. Blackwood and Ambrose, to take a bumper at the close of every paragraph, which may possibly account for their being somewhat shorter than is usual in our full, free, and flowing style of composition.

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For three days-and we may almost add nights, there was no occasion to say to us sæpe vertas stylum," for we boldly dashed at every thing, from Don Juan to Slack, the Pugilist; and flew in a moment from the Cape-of-Good-Hope to the Pyramids of Egypt.* "My gracious, your versatility is most fearsome," murmured our astonished publisher: 'It will be one of our best Numbers after all." The truth is, that we felt nettled by the remark of Dr. Morris, in his "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," that we only laid plans for others to execute, and were determined to show the physician and all the rest of the world,-first, that we are no sinecurists,—and, secondly, that our seat is not at a Board under Government.

We are not personally known at the Printing-Office, so we hobbled down one midnight along with Ebony to witness the operations. What motion of many twinkling hands among compositors! What display of brawny arms among pressmen! What a stir of printer's-devils! "The Editor's MS. is growing worse and worse every month," said a long sallow-faced stripling, with a page of the Twelfth of August close to his eyes, as if he were going to apply a bandage-"What makes the young lads ay sae sair on Hairy Brougham,|| I wonder," quoth another-"Here's another slap at Macvey," said a third, "that's really too bad." "I would not grudge sitting up all night at another Canto of the Mad Banker of Amsterdam," added a fourth-but not to be tedious, we were pleased to observe, that on the whole a spirit of good humor and alacrity pervaded the Office, and above all, that that vile Jacobinical spirit, unfortunately but too prevalent among persons of their profession, had given way beneath the monthly influence of our principles; and that the inflammatory and seditious lucubrations of the Yellow Dwarf, Examiner,§ Scotsman, and other bawling demagogues, the

* It was even so. Besides the articles already mentioned (page 10), the August number had papers on the opening Cantos of Don Juan, Emigration to the Cape of Good-Hope, the Pyramid of Caphrenes, (opened by Belzoni, in 1818, and found to contain the bones of a cow or bull,) and the conquest, in the prize-ring, of Broughton by Slack, the butcher.--M.

t In Peter's Letters (Vol. ii. p. 225,) we find it thus written: It is not known who the Editor is-I do not see how that secret can ever be divulged, as things now stand-but my friend Wastle tells me that he is an obscure man, almost continually confined to his apartments by rheumatism, whose labors extend to little more than correcting proof-sheets, and drawing up plans, which are mostly executed by other people."-M.

"And I looked, and behold a man clothed in plain apparel stood in the door of his house : and I saw his name, and the number of his name; and his name was as it had been the color of Ebony, and his number was the number of a maiden, when the days of the year of her virginity have expired."-Chaldee Manuscript, Chap. I.. v. 3. In this Oriental prolixity was mention made of Mr. Blackwood. No. 17 Princes-street. Edinburgh.-M.

A bitter attack, "On a late Attempt to White-wash Mr. Brougham" was one of the articles. in Blackwood for August, 1819. There was sarcastic mention, in another paper, on Macvey Napier's dissertation on Lord Bacon.-M.

The Yellow Dwarf was a violent weekly journal, published in London by an ultra-Radical, named Wooler. At the same time, The Examiner was conducted by Leigh Hunt.-M.

1819.]

CARMEN DIABOLICUM.

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fruits of whose doctrines are now being reaped by the deluded people of the north of England, were spoken of with indignation and disgust.

We had slyly ordered a few gallons of punch to be brought down to the office, to give a fillup to the worthy workmen at the close of their labors, and an excellent article might be written-indeed shall be-entitled, "The Humors of a Printing-Office;" but for the present, our readers must rest satisfied with the following song, which we understand was written by a devil not exceeding twelve years, an instance of precocious genius unrivalled in the history of Pandemonium.

CARMEN DIABOLICUM.

Sung in OLIVER & BOYD's Printing-Office,* on the Midnight between the 19th and 20th of August, 1819.

SOLO, BY BOWZY BEELZEBUB.

1.

WHEN the vessel she is ready, all her rigging right and steady,

And the fine folks arranged on the shore,

Then they shove her from the dock with a thunder of a shock,

And the ord'nance salutes with a roar;

But before the hausers slip to give sea-room to the ship,

To propitiate the winds, there is thrown

A flask of generous red, all along the bowsprit shed-
Then God bless her, they cry, and she's gone-

Grand Chorus of Devils.

God bless her-God bless her-she's gone-
With a yo-hee-vo.

2.

SOLO, BY TIPSY THAMMUZ.

Thus when our latest sheet, to make Ebony complete,
Is revised, and thrown off, and stitched in,

And the Editor so staunch is preparing for his launch,

Then he plunges his hand in the Bin.

"Now let every jolly soul lay his ears in the punch bowl,

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And be ready," he cries, with a shout

"That our enemies may know, when they hear our yo-hee-vo

We'll play hellt with them all when we're out."

Grand Chorus of Devils.

“We'll play hell, we'll play hell, when we're out—
With a yo-hee-vo!"

At this time Blackwood was printed by Oliver & Boyd. In 1820. it was transferred to James Ballantyne's Office. where it remained for more than thirty years.-M.

† Pope says, of a fashionable preacher.

And never mentions Hell 'fore ears polite."

This, we think, is excellent advice, both to the Clergy and the Laity, even in less refined society but the reader will bear in mind that this Chorus was written by a devil, and sung by a batch of devils. These local allusions are, therefore, quite in place, and are sanctioned also by the authority of Milton.-C. N.

2*

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CHRISTOPHER IN THE TENT.

[Sept.

Well, out came the Magazine, as usual, on the 20th, when, according to Hogg's celebrated sonnet,

"One breathless hush expectant reigns from shore to shore."

But such is the strong inconsistency of all human desires, that no sooner was the load off our shoulders, than we almost wished it on again, and began to wonder what we should do with ourselves for the next fortnight. It was not mere ennui that beset us, for (since the story will out, it is best we ourselves tell it) during our absence we had suffered a domestic affliction which time may alleviate, but never can wholly cure. For home had now no charms for us-that lofty home once so still and pleasant, fourteen flats nearer heaven than the grovelling ground-floors of ordinary men-and commanding a magnificent view, not only of the whole New Town of Edinburgh, but of the kingdom of Fife in front, to the west far as the towers of Snowdon, and to the east the sail-studded expanse of the noble Frith, and the rich corn-fields of Lothian,

The empire of Edinburgh, to the farthest Bass."

Our housekeeper* had eloped with an English Bagman, who had met the honest woman as she was coming home from market with a couple of herrings in a kail-blade, and had been but too successful in filling her imagination with those romantic notions of love and happiness which that eloquent and accomplished class of men know so well to instil into the too susceptible heart. The following letter was lying on the little tri-clawed table at which we had so often drunk tea together, and occasionally, perhaps, "sterner stuff," and ours, you may be assured, was not a soul to peruse it without tears.

"Best and KindEST OF MASTERS,-Several nights before you read this, my fate will have been indissolubly united with that of Mr. Perkins. I am no love-sick girl, sir, of eighteen-and though I have known Mr. Perkins only a few days, yet I have not entered rashly into this solemn league and covenant. I have observed in him a truly devout and serious spirit, and have no doubt that he will turn out so as to satisfy all my most anxious desires. Our marriage is a marriage of souls —and as our religious principles are to a tittle the same, I trust that, unworthy as we are, some portion of sublunary happiness may be vouchsafed to us. Perkins, it is true, is some years younger than myself, being about thirty-five, but he looks considerably older than that, and has a sobriety and discretion far beyond his years. I know well that there will be much evil-speaking throughout Scot

Mr.

* Of this very extraordinary woman we shall give a short memoir in an early Number, accompanied with specimens of her compositions, both in prose and verse. Her natural talents were great, and her literary attainments by no means contemptible. She was lost to us in the 57th year of her age, a dangerous time of life to a female of cultivated mind, and rather too strict ideas on the subject of religion.-C. N. [An unfulfilled promise.-M.]

It is an ascertained fact, that although a young man rarely, with his own free will, marries an old woman, be she spinster or widow: persons of the female sex are never found to have an antipathy to a marriage with men very much their juniors in age. The fortitude and resignation with which an old maid of forty submits to a matrimonial alliance with a bachelor or widower of twenty-five, are very exemplary.-M.

1819.]

GRIZZY TURNBULL'S ELOPEMENT.

35

land about this matter,-and that the public, censorious on people far my superiors in all things, will not spare poor Grizzy Turnbull-but my heart knoweth its own purity, and the idle gossip of an idle world will soon die away.

"And now, my ever dear master, let me confide to you a secret which I have treasured up in my heart these last twenty years-years, alas! of misery and of happiness, never again to return. SINCE THE FIRST NIGHT I SLEPT BENEATH YOUR ROOF I HAVE LOVED, MADLY LOVED YOU! yes, the confession is made on paper at last-written over and over again, crossed and recrossed in every possible way, as it long has been, by the trembling hand of passion on my heart of hearts! O! my sweet master (surely that word may be allowed to me in our parting hour), for twenty years, come the Martinmas term, have I doted upon thee! yes! I have watched the progress of thy rheumatism with feelings which even thine own matchless pen would fail to analyze! Lord Byron himself could not paint the conflict of passions that turmoiled within my bosom, when, under the guidance of that angel of a man, Dr. Balfour, I rubbed that dear rheumatic leg on the sofa! O! our little tea-drinkings! but in the sweet words of Campbell,

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'Be hushed, my dark spirit, for wisdom condemns,
When the faint and the feeble deplore,

Be firm as a rock of the ocean, that stems

A thousand wild waves on the shore !

Through the scowl of mischance, and the smile of disdain,

Let thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate,

YEA, EVEN THE NAME I HAVE WORSHIPPED IN VAIN,
Shall awake not a throb of remembrance again;
To bear is to conquer our fate!!!'

"Mr. Perkins must now be all in all to me-but though I will cherish him in my bosom, no code of laws, either human or divine, passes sentence of oblivion on vanished hours of innocent enjoyment-and be assured, that if I be ever blessed with a family, my second son (for I must call the first after its grandfather) shall bear the christian and surname of my too, too dear master. But away with delightful dreams, never, perhaps, to be realized! and with such feelings as a newborn infant might avow, I subscribe myself, yours as fit only,

"14th of August,

"Written in the dear little blue parlor."

"GRACE PERKINS.

Had this unexpected blow fallen upon us during the bustle of winter, we could have borne it. But at this solitary season, there was nothing to lighten that load of grief,-in the words of Michael Angelo,

El importune et grave selma,

that absolutely bowed us down to the earth,—a grief the more acute, from the sad conviction, that our inestimable Housekeeper had been partly driven into Mrs. Perkins, by a hopeless and therefore undivulged passion for the Editor of this Magazine. To kill thought and time, we lay in bed till eleven; then ate some muffins from M'Ewan's, "which did coldly furnish up our breakfast-table," and hobbled down the Mound, witless where to go. All was silence and desolation. Not a soul going into the panorama of Algiers; and the long line of

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