"A graver orator, Sir, would better become so great an action, as to welcome our great and most gratious soveraine; and a bashfull silence were a boye's best eloquence. But seeing wee read, that in the salutations of that Romane Cæsar, a sillie pye, amongst the rest, cried, Ave Cæsar, to: Pardon mee, Sir, your M. owne old parret, to put furth a few words, as witnesses of the fervent affections of your most faithfull subjects in these parts, who all by my tongue, as birds of one cage, crye with mee, Ave Cæsar, Welcome most gratious Kinge." When Master Williame had made an end of speaking, another good thousand hexameters were produced in the shape of a Carmen Panegyricum. At Hamilton, Sir William Mure, younger of Rowallan, presented a copy of English verses, which, in despite of their quaintness and classical affecta» tion, (which, it would appear, were characteristic of the times,) possess no mean degree of poetical merit. We quote the following stanzas as a speci Hart-rooted rancor, envy borne in hell, And maid devyded Albion all bee one." At Sanquhar, and Drumlanrig, his Majesty was also greeted in Latin poems; and, returning by Dumfries to his English dominions, Mr James Halyday, in the name of the town, scattered the flowers of rhetoric on the King's head, with a most lavish hand. To the "Muses Welcome to King James, on his return to Scotland," are appended the "Planctus, et Vota Musarum in Augustissimi Monarchæ Jacobi, Magna Britanniæ, Franciæ, et Hibernia Regis, &c. Recessu è Scotia in Angliam, Augusti 4, Anno 1617, Ως ευκόλως πιπίωσιν ὡι λαμπραὶ τυχαι Edinburgi, Excudebat Andreas Hart, Anno 1618." It is a collection of Latin poems, equally honourable to the loyal feelings, and to the erudition of our ancestors, but of which our limits preclude us from exhibiting any specimen. But we must make an end. What we have said and quoted is sufficient here and in Dublin, that it may be as to convince our cotemporaries, both difficult to imitate the expressions of the loyalty of King James's time, as it was at the Coronation of George IV., to find patterns for the dresses of that age. When his Majesty visits Scotland, we shall be quite content if the memorials which will probably be compiled of the event, convey to posterity spethe taste, and learning, not only of the cimens, as honourable, of the genius, universities, but of the merchants, and other civil citizens, as the curious and amusing volume to which we have referred. REMARKS ON BISHOP CORBET'S POEMS. We are really the only samples of wit extant, since poor Sheridan departed, and Canning's Hyppocrene's grown somewhat drowthy; but mighty as our powers may be, we cannot profess to keep the world laughing for ever without some assistance. Our teeth have lost their original whiteness. from being too much exposed from over-grinning; though some will have this to be the due consequences of sex agenary decay. 'Tis a foul aspersion : We have grown old "In jokes, not years, If we be wrinkled, 'tis not from age, but risibility. There are two deep trenches (almost) cut in our visage "from mouth to either ear," all through one simple gentleman the King of the Cockneys; and the other inhabitants of that smoky land have all left their marks in our features. We can stand it no longer, for they grow more ridiculous, and we more witty every day. Therefore, we intend, for the future, laughing by proxy; and if the gentle reader know of a wide-mouthed, shrewd, idle fellow of an acquaintance, let him be shipped instantaneously in the City of Edinburgh Steam-Boat, under cover, to Christopher North, Esq. He shall be grinner-general of Auld Reekie, and fugleman to the whole world. For when Christopher or his deputy laughs, who shall be grave? But seriously, the world is growing very dull. There is not a joke stirring. Even the two giant wits of the sister isle, Norbury and O'Doherty, have become chap-foundered. The Ensign has lost all his powers, since he forswore whisky, and grew good. And his brother-wit has been taken with what the sages of Stephen's Green denominate the teasy weasy. The Irish bar has so much changed for the worse, that Charles Philipps himself has betaken his youth and eloquence to Westminster, and English jurors have been lately so bepreached out of bullism by him, as to give upwards of sixpence damages for a broken head. To be sure, the Templars plead very justly in de fence of their dullness, that they laugh too much over Blackwood, and have not leisure for original wit. They may mean this as a compliment, but we don't take it as such. We reckon upon such ascendancy as a matter of course, and entreat our worthy young friends, in return, not to be cast down by the excellence of what they can never come in competition with; and warn them, what a reproach it is to be grave with such ridiculous personages cocked up before 'em, as Lawyer Scarlett, and Attorney Brougham. Physic is no better than law, and has grown as stupid as an inauguration essay. From the top to the bottom of the profession-from Sir Henry Halford, down to Gale Jones and Dr Drumgoole, it is stale, flat, unprofNo; not always unprofitable. But for the church to acquiesce in the general torpor-the profession of Sterne and Swift-it is a bad sign;" there's something rotten in the state of Denmark." You know us, my worthy public, for a fellow of open arms. We love you all, as in duty bound, by the laws of reciprocal affection; and therefore beg of VOL. X. you, when we do give you, or any set of you, a box on the ear, to think nothing of it. Suppose us over our third bottle at Oman's, acting the editor over his mahogany, argufying for the bare life, (the more the nonsense, the greater the spunk, as the Adjutant says,) and putting forth our gouty foot foremost to shew our magnanimity. We are at this moment deeply engaged in a dispute, (we have in full perfection that female faculty of writing and speaking at the same time) about the superior intellectuality of the profession. Our opponent waxes angry, (a general trick of our opponents) and has flung at our head Burke's pic ture of Grenville, and his eulogium on bar-education. "Bar that!" exclaim we. This was too much ;-the superexcellent pun upset him, like a Congreve rocket; and so pleased are we with the victory, and the instrument of it, that we intend shipping a cargo of our worst and most spareable puns on board the next whaler, that we may vie with Sir William, and "leap mast high" at contributing to the slaughter of the monsters of the deep. But independent of this ruse, we had the best of the argument. We maintained, that with respect to the subject matter of study, the professions could not be compared. As to heresies, what so contemptible as Whiggism? With many more sage proofs and vinous reasoning, till we came to issue upon wit and humour, and the tendency of the different modes of life to produce it. The advocate for the pre-eminence of medical wit overpowered us at first with a large catalogue of names we had never heard of-wicked wags of decayed magazines and provincial towns, "Now breaking a jest, and now setting a bone." He was marvellously obstreperous-we heard him out-and turned him out; then fell to ourselves, tooth and nailsurplice against long robe. We came at last to something like a compromise, allowing supereminence to the law in stray jests and Joe Millerisms, while, in supporting a continuous and original vein of humour, we maintained the superiour vis comica of divinity, and clinched our proof by an overwhelming lot of names, for any of which we were not much indebted to the present age. Our divines, however learned, sage, and exemplary they may be, are M sadly deficient in fun, and have no longer the humour they used to have. This change may be for the better, we hope so, considering it was ourselves who had the chief hand in producing it. We have out-witted the whole world, and there is no use in attempting humour, if it be not equal to Blackwood, which is "a moral impossible." Therefore we are not surprised at the clerics having degenerated in this quality from their predecessors, and we fear there is no hope of seeing a humorous account of the coronation feast issue from the bench of Bishops. It was otherwise of old, as thou shalt know, my public, when you come to it. We trust, that we have thus far satisfactorily illustrated the genius and writings of Bishop Corbet,-proved the anachronisms of his biographers, the negligence of his editors, and the malice of his enemies; and thrown that light upon his real character, of which he has been so long and so unjustly deprived. Mr Octavius Gilchrist, who last edited this reverend poet-but we must not weigh down our buoyant publication with squabbles about editors and editions. To make a long story short, Dr Corbet, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, was present in Windsor, not at a coronation feast, but something very like it, seemingly an installation of the Garter, about two hundred years ago, and has left a humorous account of it in a poetic epistle to the Lord Mordaunt. Our readers may judge for themselves, what little alteration two centuries have made in royal feasts and beef-eaters. "To this good sport rode I, as being allow'd To thrust, and to be trode on by my place." The Bishop proceeds: he must have made a slight mistake of Windsor for Westminster, and of the 17th for the 19th century. "Imagine now the scene lies in the Hall, And now the favourites of the Clerk o' the Check, They who lived in the Hall five hours at least, And look so like the hangings they stand near, "So to the Hall made I, with little care Will move them, now they're deaf in their new coats; Wherefore on run I, afresh they fall, and show Peace for the Lord's sake, Nicholas, lest they take us, And now I breathe, my lord, and have the time To tell the causes, and confess the crime; I was in black-a scholar straight they guess'd: I spake them fair, desired to see the Hall, And gave By which I learn, it is a main offence, So near the Clerk o' the Check to utter sense," &c. "Much more good service was committed yet, To dine, who all their rudness hath requited," &c. "But as it stands, the persons and the cause He that will please the guard, and not provoke For at all feasts and masques the doom hath been, The author of "The Specimens of British Poets," has summarily given the merits of this author, saying merely, "that he has left some good strokes of humour against the Puritans." In our opinion, the only bad things he has left, are those little ballads against the Puritans; the wittiest of his poems, his Journey to France, quoted by that author of the Specimen, is a satire on the Roman Catholics, which, as it has appeared there, 'we need not give. The “Iter Boreale" abounds in humour. Inns, hosts, and hostess, have always been fruitful sources of merriment to travelling wits. "To the inn we came, where our best cheer Or dislike aught, my lord's grace answers all; "The shot was easy, and what concerns us more, And on the morrow, when he brought us nigh Hear him-See ye yond' woods? there Richard lay The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell; Which I might guess by's mustering up the ghosts, But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing For when he would have said, King Richard died, And even for conscience-sake, unspurr'd, unbeaten, He proceeds to Warwick, apropos to which reverend place, we may make mention of sundry complaints received by us from thence, of some cockneys, who visited it about two months ago in a one-horse chay, and spoiled the trees in the greenery, by engraving on them Arry and Mariar, and plucking laurels, for what end we dare not conjecture. But to our Bishop. "No other hindrance now, but we may pass Bosworth Field. |