courts like anither Canning. Southey writes prose better than Wudsworth, a thousand and a thousand times. Wha's that glowering at me in the corner? Wha are ye, my lad?

MR VIVIAN JOYEUSE.

I am something of a non-descript.

THE SHEPHERD.

An Englisher-an Englisher-I've a gleg lug for the deealicks. You're frae the South-but nae Cockney. You're ower weel-spoken and ower weelfaured. Are ye married?

MR JOYEUSE.

I fear that I am. I am fresh from Gretna.

THE SHEPHERD.

Never mind-Never mind-You're a likely laddie and hae a blink in thae eyne o' yours that shews smeddum. What are all the people in England doing just the now?

MR JOYEUSE.

All reading No. II. of Knight's Quarterly Magazine.

NORTH.

A very pleasant miscellany. Tickler, you have seen the work. Mr Joyeuse, your very good health, and success to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. (General breeze.)

THE SHEPHERD.

Did onybody ever see siccan a blush? Before you hae been a contributor for a year, you'll hae lost a' power of reddening in the face. You may as weel try then to blush wi' the palm o' your hand.

TICKLER.

Mullion, who knows everything and everybody, brought Mr Joyeuse to South-side, and I have only to hope that his fair bride will not read him a curtain lecture to-night, when she hears where he has been, among the madcaps.

THE SHEPHERD.

Curtain lecture! We are a' ower gude contributors to be fashed wi' ony daft nonsense o' that sort. Na-na-But what's this Quarterly Magazine ?—I never heard tell o't.

NORTH.

Why, I will speak for Mr Joyeuse. It is a gentlemanly miscellany-got together by a clan of young scholars, who look upon the world with a cheerful eye, and all its ongoings with a spirit of hopeful kindness. I cannot but envy them their gay juvenile temper, so free from gall and spite; and am pleased to the heart's core with their elegant accomplishments. Their egotism is the joyous freedom of exulting life; and they see all things in a glow of enthusiasm which makes ordinary objects beautiful, and beauty still more beauteous. Do you wish for my advice, my young friend?

MR JOYEUSE.

Upon honour, Sir Christopher, I am quite overpowered. Forgive me, when I confess that I had my misgivings on entering your presence. But they are all vanished. Believe me that I value most highly the expression of your good-will and friendly sentiments towards myself and coadjutors.

NORTH.

Love freedom-continue, I ought to say, to love it; and prove your love, by defending all the old sacred institutions of this great land. Keep aloof from all association with base ignorance, and presumption, and imposture. Let all your sentiments be kind, generous, and manly, and your opinions will be safe, for the heart and the head are the only members of the Holy Alliance, and woe unto all men when they are not in union. Give us some more of your classical learning-more of the sparkling treasures of your scholarship, for in that all our best miscellanies are somewhat deficient, (mine own not excepted,) and you may here lead the way. Are you not Etonians, Wykeamists, Oxonians, and Cantabs, and in the finished grace of manhood? Don't forget your classics.

THE SHEPHERD.

Dinna mind a single word that Mr North says about classics, Mr Joyous. Gin ye introduce Latin and Greek into your Magazine, you'll clean spoil't.

There's naething like a general interest taken in the classics throughout the kintra; and I whiles jalouse that some praise Homer and Horace, and Polydore Virgil, and "the rest," that ken but little about them, and couldna read the crabbed Greek letters aff-hand without stuttering.

THE OPIUM-EATER.

All the magazines of the day are deficient; first, in classical literature, secondly, in political economy, and thirdly, in psychology.

Tuts, tuts.

THE SHEPHERD.

TICKLER.

Mr Joyeuse, I agree with North in strenuously recommending you and your friends to give us classical dissertations, notes, notices, conjectures, imitations, translations, and what not. Confound the Cockneys! they will be prating on such points-and have smuggled their accursed pronunciation into Olympus. There is County Tims proceeding, step by step, from Robert Bruce to Jupiter Tonans; and addressing DianAR as familiarly as he would a nymph of Covent-Garden, coming to redeem two silver tea-spoons. There was John Keats enacting ApollAR, because he believed that personage to have been, like himself, an apothecary, and sickening, because the public was impatient of his drugs. There is Barry, quite beside himself with the spectacle of Deucalion and Psyche peopling the earth anew by chucking stones over their shoulders, -in my humble opinion, I confess, a most miserable pastime ;-and there is King Leigh absolutely enlisting Mars into the Hampstead heavy dragoons, and employing him as his own ORDERly.

THE SHEPHERD.

Capital, Mr Tickler, capital. I aye like you when you are wutty. Gang on-let me clap you on the back-slash awa at the Cockneys, for they are a squad I scunner at; and oh! man, but you hae in troth put them down wi' a vengeance!

TICKLER.

Hazlitt is the most loathsome, Hunt the most ludicrous. Pygmalion is so brutified and besotted now, that he walks out into the public street, enters a bookseller's shop, mounts a stool, and represents Priapus in Ludgate Hill. King Leigh would not do this for the world. From such enormities he is preserved, partly by a sort of not unamiable fastidiousness, but chiefly by a passionate admiration of his yellow breeches, in which he feels himself satisfied with his own divine perfections. I do not dislike Leigh Hunt by any manner of means. By the way, Mr Joyeuse, there are some good stanzas about him, in Knight-for example

They'll say I sha'nt believe 'em-but they'll say,
That Leigh's become what once he most abhorr'd,
Has thrown his independence all away,

And dubb'd himself toad-eater to a lord;
And though, of course, you'll hit as hard as they,
I fear you'll find it difficult to ward

Their poison'd arrows off-you'd best come back,
Before the Cockney kingdom goes to wrack.
The Examiner's grown dull as well as dirty,
The Indicator's sick, the Liberal dead-
I hear its readers were some six-and-thirty;
But really 'twas too stupid to be read.

"Tis plain your present partnership has hurt ye:
Poor brother John "looks up, and is not fed,”
For scarce a soul will purchase, or get through one,

E'en of his shilling budgets of Don Juan.

NORTH.

Do you quote from memory? I remember a good stanza in Don Juan about

John Keats, Hazlitt's Apollo, and Apothecary.

John Keats who was killed off by one critique,

Just as he really promised something great,

If not intelligible-without Greek,

Contrived to talk about the gods of late,

Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! his was an untoward fate;
"Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.

TICKLER.

Exactly so. Now, what a pretty fellow is the publisher of Don Juan? John Keats was the especial friend of himself and brother; and they both raved like bedlamites against all who were at all sharp upon the poor apothecary. But what will not the base love of filthy lucre !—Alas! his lordship is driven to degradation. And who but this crew would become parties to a libel on their own best-beloved dead friend?

THE SHEPHERD.

There's nae answering questions like these. The puir devil must be dumb. A crabbed discontented creature o' a neebour o❜' ours takes in the Examiner ; and I see they are aye yammering and compleening upon you lads here, but canna speak out. They are a' tongue-tied, and can only girn, girn, girn. Blackwood here, and Blackwood there, but nothing made out or specified. Bandy-legged Baldy Dinmont himsel allows they are just like a parcel o' weans frighted at their dominie, when Christopher appears, and lose a' power to bar the maister out, when they see the taws ance mair, and begin dinglan in their doups in the very fiver o' an imaginary skelping.

NORTH.

It is all very true, my dear Shepherd. I often think that our weak points have never yet been attacked, for is it not singular that no impression has ever yet been made on any part of our whole line? Good gracious! only think on our shameful violation of truth! Why, that of itself, if properly exposed, and held out to universal detestation, would materially diminish our sale in this great matter-of-fact age and country. Who, like us, have polluted the sources of history?

THE SHEPHERD.

Hush, hush!-We dinna ken Mr Joyous weel aneuch yet to lippen to him. Perhaps he'll betray the sacred confidence o' private freenship! Isna that the way they word it?"

MR JOYEUSE.

I shall make no rash promises. My reply to the Shepherd shall be in a quotation. Byron loquitur.

They err'd, as aged men will do; but by

And by we'll talk of that; and if we don't,
"Twill be because our notion is not high

Of politicians, and their double front,
Who live by lies, yet dare not boldly lie:-
Now, what I love in women is, they won't,
Or can't do otherwise, than lie; but do it
So well, the very truth seems falsehood to it.
And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but

The truth in masquerade; and I defy
Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put
A fact without some leven of a lie.
The very shadow of true truth would shut
Up annals, revelations, poesy,
And prophecy-except it should be dated
Some years before the incidents related.

NORTH.

Well, well, we stand excused like our neighbours, the rest of the human race. But what say you to our gross inconsistency, in raising a mortal one day to the skies, and another pulling him an angel down? In one article you are so saluted in the nose with the bagpipe of our praise, "that you cannot contain, you ninny, for affection ;" and at p. 36, you find yourself so vilified, vituperated, tarred and feathered, that you are afraid even to run for it, and would fain hide yourself for a month in a dark closet. Who can defend this?

TICKLER.

I can. The fault is not with us, but it lies in the constitution of human naVOL. XIV. 3 Q

ture. For, to-day, a given man is acute, sensible, enlightened, eloquent, and so forth. We praise and pet him accordingly-smooth him down the back along with the hair-give him a sop-tell him he is a clever dog, and call him Trusty, or Help, or Neptune, or Jupiter. The very next day we see the same given man in a totally different predicament, that is to say, utterly senseless, worse than senseless, raving. What do we do then? We either eye him askance, and not wishing to be bitten, and to die of the hydrophobia, make the best of our way home, or to Ambrose's, without saying a word; or we take a sapling and drub him off; or if the worst come to the worst, we shoot him dead upon the spot. Call you this inconsistency. Not it indeed. Shall I illustrate our conduct by examples?

NORTH.

There is no occasion for that at present. But what do you say to our COARSENESS?

THE SHEPHERD.

Ay, ay, Mr Tickler, what do you say to your coorseness?

TICKLER.

In the meantime, James, read that, and you will know what I say about yours. (Gives him a critique on the Three Perils.) But as to the occasional coarsenesses to be found in Maga, I am, from the very bottom (no coarseness in that, I hope,) of my heart, sorry to see them, and much sorrier to think that I should myself have written too many of them. They must be disgusting occasionally to delicate minds; nay, even to minds not delicate. And I verily believe, that to Englishmen in general, this is our very greatest fault. With sincere sorrow, if not contrition, do I, for one, confess my fault; and should I ever write any more for the Magazine, I hope to keep myself within the limits of decorum. Intense wit will season intense coarseness; but then I am at times very coarse indeed, without being witty at all; and am convinced, that some passages in my letters, although these are on the whole popular, and deservedly so, have been read by not a few whom I would be most unwilling to offend, with sentiments of the deepest and most unalloyed disgust.

MR JOYEUSE.

Not at all, Mr Tickler-not at all. Believe it not, my dear sir. Coarse you may occasionally be, but you are always witty.

THE OPIUM EATER.

I have always admired Mr Tickler's letters, there is such a boundless overflow of rejoicing fancies; and what if one particular expression, or sentence, even paragraph, be what is called coarse-(of coarseness as a specific, definite, and determinate quality of thought, I have no clear idea,) it is lost, swallowed up, and driven along in the ever-flowing tide; and he who should be drowned in trying to pick it up, could never, in my opinion, be a fit subject for resuscitation, but would deserve to be scouted not only by the humane, but by the Humane Society. If I were permitted to say freely what are your greatest faults, I should say that

Enter Mr AMBROSE, just in the nick of time.

MR AMBROSE.

Gentlemen, supper's on the table.

Mr Joyeuse, lend me your arm.

NORTH.

(Exeunt, followed by the Opium Eater, Tickler, the Shepherd, and Mullion.)

SCENE II.-Blue Parlour.

TICKLER.

Now for the goose.-A ten-pounder. All our geese are swans. There, saw ye ever a bosom sliced more dexterously?-Off go the legs-smack goes the back into shivers-so much for the doup. Reach me over the apple sauce. Mullion, give us the old pun upon the sage. Who chuses goose?

MULLION.

I'll trouble you for the breast and legs, wi' a squash o' the apple crowdy. Ambrose, bread and potatoes, and a pot of porter.

THE OPIUM EATER.

Mr Ambrose, be so good as bring me coffee.

SHEPHERD.

Coffee!!-What the deevil are you gaun to do wi' coffee at this time o night, man? Wha ever soops upon coffee? Come here, Mr Ambrose, tak him ower this trencher o' het kidneys, I never hae touched them.

TICKLER.

Is your pullet tender, Kit? There be vulgar souls who prefer barn-door fowl to pheasants, mutton to venison, and cider to champagne. So there be who prefer curduroy to cassimere breeches, and the "Blue and Yellow" to green-gowned Maga. To such souls, your smooth-shining transparent grape is not so sweet as your small red hairy gooseberry. The brutes cannot dine without potatoes to their fish

THE SHEPHERD.

What say ye, Mr Tickler? wadna you eat potatoes to sawmont? I thought ye had kent better than to place gentility on sick like gruns. At the Duke's, every one did just as he liked best himsell, and tell't the flunkies to take their plates to ilka dish that pleased their e'e, without ony restraint. But ye haena been muckle in hee life these last fifty years.

TICKLER,

My dear Mullion, I beseech you not to draw your knife through your mouth in that most dangerous fashion; you'll never stop till ye cut it from ear to ear. For the sake of our common humanity, use your fork.

THE SHEPHERD.

Never mind him, Mullion-he's speaking havers. I hae used my knife that way ever since I was fed upon flesh, and I never cut my mouth to any serious extent, above a score times in my life.

(Mr AMBROSE sets down a silver coffee-pot, and a plate of muffins, before the Opium-Eater.)

THE OPIUM EATER.

I believe, Mr Hogg, that it has been ascertained by medical men, through an experience of some thousand years, that no eater of hot and heavy suppers ever yet saw his grand climacteric. I do not mention this as any argument against hot and heavy suppers, except to those persons who are desirous of attaining a tolerable old age. You, probably, have made up your mind to die before that period; in which case, not to eat hot and heavy suppers, if you like them, would truly be most unreasonable, and not to be expected from a man of your acknowledged intelligence and understanding. I beg now to return your kidneys, with an assurance that I have not touched them, and they still seem to retain a considerable portion of animal heat.

THE SHEPHERD.

I dinna ken what's the matter wi' me the night, but I'm no half so hungry as I expeckit. Thae muffins look gaeing inviting; the coffee comes gurgling out wi' a brown sappy sound. I wonder whare Mr Ambrose got that ream. A spider might crawl on't. I wush, sir, you would gie us a single cup, and a wheen muffins. (The Opium Eater benignantly complics.)

NORTH.

Pray, Tickler, what sort of an eater do you suppose Barry Cornwall?

TICKLER.

The merry-thought of a chick-three tea-spoonfulls of peas, the eighth part of a French roll, a sprig of cauliflower, and an almost imperceptible dew of parsley and butter, would, I think, dine the author of "The Deluge." By the way, there is something surely not a little absurd, in the notion of a person undertaking the " Flood," whom the slightest shower would drive under a balcony, or into a hackney-coach. I have no doubt that he carried "The Deluge" in his pocket to Colburn, under an umbrella.

NORTH.

My dear Tickler, you cannot answer the very simplest question without running into your usual personalities. What does Byron dine on, think ye?