66 71 being handsome in the Whigs of Edinburgh, to whose existence he had not scrupled to bear the most honorable testimony. Pray," added the Doctor, "is Mr. Jeffrey a fictitious character? Is Professor Leslie a fictitious character? Nay, to come nearer home, is Mr. Wastle here a fictitious character? I am confident that every candid person will at once reply in the negative. Why, therefore, not admit me to the same privilege? Though fame I slight, nor for her favors call, I come in person, if I come at all." The point being at last conceded to the eloquent physician, Mr. Seward rose from the cask with his usual grace, and threw over to us a letter, written in a large gnostic sprawling hand, on massy hotpressed paper, and enclosed in a franked envelope, with a splash of wax as broad as a china saucer, which he said we were at liberty to read, now that the Cockneys were hunting the Naiads, swearing us at the same time to silence, as from the irascible temper of Tims, who had lately been within an ace of swallowing the Standard-bearer, he could not hope to return to his rooms in Peck-water,* were that illustrious Luddite to discover the nature of his correspondence with old Scribble. TO HARRY SEWARD, ESQ. Bedford Coffee-House, Sept. 1, 1819: I PITY you sincerely, my dear friend, amongst those Scottish savages. You are like Theseus amongst the Centaurs. Buller himself seems to be undergoing a sort of metempsychosis, and his transformation begins at the stomach. He is, probably, by this time, a wolf. As to those two anomalous instances of humanity, those Weaklings of the City, I really expect that they will be devoured in the first dearth of game, and that Tims, being found too meagre even for soup, will be cast as "bones" to those lean and hungry quadrupeds who follow the march of your frightful army. Everything with you seems to wear the same face; from the "imber edax" to the canines themselves. Well, here I am, the victim of leisure and hot weather. I am waiting my uncle's arrival from Paris, and my only consolation is, that I am at least on duty. I struggle through the day in the most pitiable perplexity, laboring from hour to hour to be amused and amusing in vain. I even suspect that I shall infuse a portion of my languor into this my epistle to you. I don't know how the devil the women contrive to get on, but there is a spirit of perversity about them now and then, which supplies the place of animal strength. * Mr. Seward has since condescended to inform us that Peck-water is the name of one of the quadrangles (or, as he terms them, quads) of Christ-Church, Oxford.-C. N. The male performers at the Lyceum have evidently been unable to go through three pieces each night; so the women started (all fillies as for the "Oaks"), and ran over the ground alone. This is a piece of impudence on the part of the petticoats which deserves something more than mere remonstrance. Miss Kelly, to be sure, stands out as a fine concentration of the male species (she is the only approximation to the sex), and "serves you out" with a due portion of talk, in order to do justice to her corporate capacity. Mrs. Chatterly, too, is a pleasant evidence of loquacious frailty; and Miss Stevenson, with only one character to support, has a sort of double-tongued attainment, which she puts forth in a way prepossessingly earnest. We feel convinced, at once, that Mr. Ashe is by no means the only person who can perform a duet on one instrument. I lament, sincerely, that you haven't got your gloves with you; otherwise you might take the conceit out of Mister Price, and abolish Tims altogether, the one for affecting the gentleman, and the other for imitating man at all. Tims!—there is a monosyllabic thinness in the name that stands in the place of the most elaborate comment. It has no weight upon the tongue, and sounds like the essence of nothing. It scarcely amounts to "thin air;" and when one strives to elevate it to the dignity of a word, one feels a consciousness that the attempt is presumptuous and vain. The letters seem scarcely the legitimate offspring of the alphabet. They have, collectively, none of the softness of the vowel, and none of the strength of the consonant: but seem to be at the half-way house between meaning and absurdity. The name (pronounce it) sounds like the passing buzz of a drone. It is like a small and illfavored number in the lottery, which seems predestined to be a blank from the beginning. I see Tims "the shadow" before me; and whenever, for the future, I shall quote the saying of the mighty Julius, I will say, "Aut Cæsar, aut Tims!" And then you tell me of Mister Price. I admire your ingenious note about dandies, but the subject is stale, and I cannot revive it. He seems of the same intellectual stature with his friend, but he has more of the leaven of mortality about him. This seems to be the sole distinction between them-one appears to be a vehicle for want of meaning, and the other cannot claim to be even anything. The utterance of the name of "Price" leaves the lips in a state of suspension, and as it were consideration, which alone gives him claim to some attention. One says, almost mechanically, "Price !"- "What Price?"—any Price :-no Price. The fall is like that of the stocks in stormy times, except that the name is scarcely worth a "speculation." Talking of gloves, as Mr. Aircastle would say, puts me in mind 1819.] THE RING. 73 of the real thing, of which gloves are but the representatives.* Cy Davis has retrieved his fame. He has committed a sort of conquest upon a gentleman from the "Emerald Isle," whose genius was anything but pugilistic. They met at Moulsey; the collision was striking enough, but altogether in favor of Cy. Your friends are wrong about Donelly. He did not "go immediately to Brighton." I saw him at Riddlesdown about three hours after his victory, as it has been pleasantly called (he was within an ace of getting a drubbing), and I heard Shelton invite him very civilly to a renewal of the sport in two or three months' time. "Sir Daniel," however, seemed to have more than enough of conquest, and sported forbearance. He is a heavy, awkward fellow, and beat, by mere accident, Oliver, who is much lighter than himself, and the slowest hitter in the ring. "Mr. Daniel," before the battle, affected to be sorry for poor "Oliver, on account of his family-becase he should bate him so asily!!" But what is all this to you, who, it seems, put forth your Oxford fruit in a foreign land, and reduce the Coliseum to couplets. By-the-by, if Buller should go on blundering at the birds as in the olden time, he will stand a good chance of getting a coup de grace from one or other of your new friends. Perhaps Mr. Odoherty may "do the honors," or the task may be confided to the "shepherd's dog," in one of those snug dells which occur frequently among the mountains. Mr. Odoherty is a pleasant exotic, who would run wild in any soil. Give my compliments to him; and say that, for Dr. Morris, his visage, and his craniology, I profess to entertain the most profound respect. I have scarcely room to say that I am, as usual, yours very sincerely, FREEMAN SCRIBBLE. At the conclusion of this epistle, the Ettrick Shepherd asked Seward, with more asperity than we recollect ever before to have seen him exhibit, "Wha that Scribble ane had in his ee when he tauked o' Scottish savages?" Seward, who had long taken a strong liking to the Shepherd, gave him the most reiterated assurances that there was nothing personal in the remark, but that, on the contrary, it applied to the Editor and all the Contributors indiscriminately-with which satisfactory explanation the Bard seemed quite contented. Nothing could be more delightful than to witness the friendship of those two great men. We had been informed in the morning, by * A promising plant of the Bristol Garden. He was beat by Turner, and it was thought by some, that he fought shy of the Welshman's left-hand--but t'other day, he smashed Bushnel, the little Irish Ajax, like so much crockery-ware. Cy. is a good hitter-but he is fond of having things his own way. and is thought to pay a compliment better than he receives one. But who is perfect ?--C. N. [Cy., or Cyril Davies, was a professional prize-fighter. So was Shelton, and so was Donelly, commonly called "Sir Daniel," on his own report that, after he fought and beat Oliver, in July, 1819, he was invited to meet the Prince Regent, at Brighto where he received the honor of Knighthood !—M.] 4 VOL. I. ; Tickler, that during our absence Hogg and Seward were inseparable. The Shepherd recited to the Oxonian his wild lays of fairy superstition, and his countless traditionary ballads of the olden time -while the Christ-Church man, in return, spouted Eton and Oxford Prize Poems, some of them in Latin, and, it was suspected, one or two even in Greek,-greatly to the illumination, no doubt, of the Pastoral Bard. Hogg, however, frankly informed his gay young friend, "that he could na thole college poetry, it was a' sae desperate stupid. As for the Latin and Greek poems, he liked them weel enough, for it was na necessary for ony body to understand them but for his ain part, he aye wished the English anes to hae just some wee bit inkling o' meaning, and, on that account, he hated worse o' a' them that Seward called by the curious name o' Sir Roger Newdigates.* Deel tak me," quoth the Shepherd, "gin the Sir Rogers binna lang supple idiots o' lines, no worthy being set up in teeps." "Similitude in Dissimilitude" is the principle of friendship as well as, according to Mr. Wordsworth, of poetry-and certainly, while Hogg and Seward resembled each other in frankness, joviality, good humor, generosity, and genius, there is no denying that the shades of difference in their appearance, dress, and manners, were very perceptible. Seward was most importunate on the Shepherd to get him to promise a visit to Oxford, where, with his light sky-blue jacket and white hat, he would electrify the Proctors. Nay, the Englishman went so far as to suggest the propriety of the Shepherd's entering himself at one of the Halls, where gentlemen, by many years his senior, sometimes come to revive the studies of their youth-and "who knows," said Seward, "my dear chum, if the Ettrick Shepherd may not one day or other be the Principal of St. Mary's Hall.” The Shepherd replied with his usual naivete, that he "preferred remaining the Principal of St. Mary's Loch;" at which piece of pleasantry Buller himself, though a severe critic of jokes, condescended to smile, somewhat after the manner of Dr. Hodgson.t We took up a little parcel, which had been forwarded to us from Edinburgh, and found it to contain some very beautiful verses by Mrs. Hemans, on a subject that could not but be profoundly interesting to the soul of every Scotsman. Our readers will remember, that about a year ago, a truly patriotic person signified his intention of giving £1,000 towards the erection of a monument to Sir William Wallace. At the same time, he proposed a prize of £50 to the best Poem on the following subject-"The meeting of Wallace and Bruce *The prize contended for at Oxford, by under-graduates, for the best poem on a given subject, was founded by Sir Roger Newdigate, whose name it bears. Lord Heber, Guenlos, Wilson, and Milman, are about the only true poets who have obtained this prize within the last half century.-M. This was the Rev. Dr. Frodsham Hodgson, then Principal of Brazenose College, Oxford.-M. 1819.] BERZELIUS PENDRAGON. 75 on the Banks of the Carron." This prize was lately adjudged to Mrs. Hemans, whose poetical genius has been for some years well known to the public, by those very beautiful poems, "Greece," and "The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy."-Our pages have already been graced with some of her finest verses-witness that most pathetic Elegy on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, which first appeared in our Miscellany. It was with much pleasure that we lately observed, in that respectable journal, the Edinburgh Monthly Review, a very elegant critique on a new volume of Mrs. Hemans, entitled "Tales and Historic Scenes," with copious extracts; and when we mentioned in the Tent, that Mrs. Hemans had authorized the judges, who awarded to her the prize, to send her poem to us, it is needless to say with what enthusiasm the proposal of reading it aloud was received on all sides, and at its conclusion what thunders of applause crowned the genius of the fair poet. Scotland has her Baillie-Ireland her Tighe-England her Hemans.* We now took up, with great satisfaction, a small packet, the superscription of which was evidently in the hand-writing of our old worthy friend, Dr. Berzelius Pendragon. The Doctor, though now a shining star of the Episcopalian Church, had not been originally destined for holy orders, and for some years bore the commission of surgeon in the 1st regiment of the West-York Militia. On its reduction he naturally enough turned his thoughts to divinity; and having, at the age of fifty, got a curacy worth £80, at least, per annum-he, being a bachelor, may be said to have been in easy, if not affluent circumstances. Just on reaching his grand climacteric he fell into matrimony, and the cares of an infant family ensuing, he very judiciously took boarders and wrote for reviews. The boarders, however, being all north-countrymen, and thence voracious, over-eat the terms; and the reviews paid only £2 2s. per sheet of original matter, where extracts were of no avail. Having heard of our Magazine—as indeed who has not ?-he came down into Scot * Joanna Baillie, author of Plays on the Passions, and Felicia Hemans, the lyric poet, are too well known to require particular notice here. The name of Mrs. Tighe is less known. She was the lovely and accomplished wife of an Irish gentleman, and was herself a daughter of Erin. She wrote a beautiful poem, in the Spenserian stanza, entitled "Psyche," which did not appear until after her death. The touching lyric on "The Grave of a Poetess," was written by Mrs. Hemans, in view of her last resting-place, and one of Moore's Irish Melodies, ("I saw thy Form in Youthful Prime,") was suggested by her early death. There was as much truth as poetry, if all that is related of Mrs. Tighe be true, in the concluding stanza, If souls could always dwell above, Thou ne'er hadst left that sphere; Moore admits that, in the closing lines, he endeavored to imitate that exquisite inscription of Shenstone's, "Heu! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminesse !"-M. |