November 16.

Si son exécrable mémoireParvient à la postérité,C’est que le crime, aussi bien que la gloire,Conduit àl’immortalité.[499]

Elia says, in the “New Monthly Magazine,”—“The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last possible moment, during the whole of which intervening period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up in his desk—and was not this well worth all the money? Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during two or three months? ‘Crede quod habes, et habes,’ and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing along Cheapside saw the figures 1069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window of a Lottery office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this discovery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to walk round St. Paul’s, that he might consider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to his wife and family; out upon repassing the shop, he observed that the number was altered to 10,069; and, upon inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his ticket was blank, and had only been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually calmed his agitation; but he always speaks of himself as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten minutes’ walk round St. Paul’s was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. A prize thus obtained has moreover this special advantage;—it is beyond the reach of fate, it cannot be squandered, bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it, friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up; it bears a charmed life, and none of woman-born can break its integrity, even by the dissipation of a single fraction. Show me the property in these perilous times that is equally compact and impregnable. We can no longer become enriched for a quarter of an hour; we can no longer succeed in such splendid failures; all our chances of making such a miss have vanished with the Last of the Lotteries.

“Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact; and sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical configurations and mysterious stimulants to Lottery adventure, will be disfurnished of its figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of numbers.

“And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its pristine glory when the Lottery professors shall have abandoned its cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last, who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art; who cajoled and decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of their advertisements, by devices of endless variety and cunning; who baited their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost stories, crim-cons, bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy and sorrow to catch newspaper-gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be encouraged? Verily, the abolitionists have much to answer for!”

Here, at last, ends the notices respecting the Lottery, of which much has been said, because of all depraving institutions it had the largest share in debasing society while it existed: and because, after all, perhaps, the monster is “only scotched, not killed.”

[429]See vol. i. col. 1486.[430]Morning Herald, Sept. 3, 1817.[431]Maitland’s London.[432]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1778.[433]Stow, in his Annals.[434]Ibid.[435]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1798.[436]Anderson’s History of Commerce.[437]Malcolm’s Manners.[438]“Whereas some give out that they could never receive their books after they were drawn in the first lottery, the author declares, and it will be attested, that of seven hundred prizes that were drawn, there were not six remaining Prizes that suffered with his in the fire; for the drawing being on the 10th of May, 1665, the office did then continue open for the delivery of the same (though the contagion much raged) until the latter end of July following; and opened again, to attend the delivery, in April, 1666, whither persons repaired daily for their prizes, and continued open until the fire.”[439]Gentleman’s Magazine.[440]Malcolm’s Manners.[441]Anderson.[442]Malcolm.[443]Ibid.[444]Anderson.[445]Spectator, No. 191.[446]Sunday, October 22, 1826.[447]The Times, November 3, 1826.[448]Mr. Smeeton in theExaminer.[449]Malcolm.[450]Smollett.[451]Gentleman’s Magazine.[452]Lounger’s Common Place Book.[453]Smollett.[454]Gentleman’s Magazine.[455]Anderson.[456]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731.[457]Gentleman’s Magazine.[458]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1739.[459]The Champion, January 10, 1740.[460]Gentleman’s Magazine.[461]Ibid.[462]Maitland. Gentleman’s Magazine.[463]Universal Magazine.[464]Gentleman’s Magazine.[465]Ibid.[466]Smollett. Gentleman’s Magazine.[467]Gentleman’s Magazine.[468]In the Universal Magazine for December.[469]Universal Magazine.[470]Memoir of Holland in Universal Magazine.[471]Gentleman’s Magazine.[472]Ibid.[473]Universal Magazine.[474]Gentleman’s Magazine.[475]Ibid.[476]Ibid.[477]Ibid.[478]Anderson.[479]Universal Magazine.[480]Town and Country Magazine.[481]Universal Magazine.[482]Report of Committee of House of Commons on Lotteries, 1808.[483]Report of Police Committee of House of Commons 1816.[484]The price of a Sixteenth in the present Lottery.[485]Communicated by J. J. A. F. from a Calcutta newspaper of Sept. 3, 1818.[486]Charity and Patriotism.[487]This and other of the bills quoted are lent by our correspondent, J. J. A. F. from his Lottery Collections.[488]Seeante.[489]The day the royal assent was given to the last Lottery act.[490]Baker’s Chronicle.[491]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.[492]A few interesting Anecdotes, &c. 18mo. 1810.[493]Beckmann.[494]Fosbroke, Ency. of Antiquities.[495]Beckmann.[496]Ibid.[497]Private Life of Louis XIV.[498]Beckmann.[499]Ibid.

[429]See vol. i. col. 1486.

[430]Morning Herald, Sept. 3, 1817.

[431]Maitland’s London.

[432]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1778.

[433]Stow, in his Annals.

[434]Ibid.

[435]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1798.

[436]Anderson’s History of Commerce.

[437]Malcolm’s Manners.

[438]“Whereas some give out that they could never receive their books after they were drawn in the first lottery, the author declares, and it will be attested, that of seven hundred prizes that were drawn, there were not six remaining Prizes that suffered with his in the fire; for the drawing being on the 10th of May, 1665, the office did then continue open for the delivery of the same (though the contagion much raged) until the latter end of July following; and opened again, to attend the delivery, in April, 1666, whither persons repaired daily for their prizes, and continued open until the fire.”

[439]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[440]Malcolm’s Manners.

[441]Anderson.

[442]Malcolm.

[443]Ibid.

[444]Anderson.

[445]Spectator, No. 191.

[446]Sunday, October 22, 1826.

[447]The Times, November 3, 1826.

[448]Mr. Smeeton in theExaminer.

[449]Malcolm.

[450]Smollett.

[451]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[452]Lounger’s Common Place Book.

[453]Smollett.

[454]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[455]Anderson.

[456]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731.

[457]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[458]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1739.

[459]The Champion, January 10, 1740.

[460]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[461]Ibid.

[462]Maitland. Gentleman’s Magazine.

[463]Universal Magazine.

[464]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[465]Ibid.

[466]Smollett. Gentleman’s Magazine.

[467]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[468]In the Universal Magazine for December.

[469]Universal Magazine.

[470]Memoir of Holland in Universal Magazine.

[471]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[472]Ibid.

[473]Universal Magazine.

[474]Gentleman’s Magazine.

[475]Ibid.

[476]Ibid.

[477]Ibid.

[478]Anderson.

[479]Universal Magazine.

[480]Town and Country Magazine.

[481]Universal Magazine.

[482]Report of Committee of House of Commons on Lotteries, 1808.

[483]Report of Police Committee of House of Commons 1816.

[484]The price of a Sixteenth in the present Lottery.

[485]Communicated by J. J. A. F. from a Calcutta newspaper of Sept. 3, 1818.

[486]Charity and Patriotism.

[487]This and other of the bills quoted are lent by our correspondent, J. J. A. F. from his Lottery Collections.

[488]Seeante.

[489]The day the royal assent was given to the last Lottery act.

[490]Baker’s Chronicle.

[491]Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[492]A few interesting Anecdotes, &c. 18mo. 1810.

[493]Beckmann.

[494]Fosbroke, Ency. of Antiquities.

[495]Beckmann.

[496]Ibid.

[497]Private Life of Louis XIV.

[498]Beckmann.

[499]Ibid.

On the night of this day in 1823, about half past nine o’clock, Dr. T. Forster observed a very remarkable and brilliant phenomenon about the moon. It was a coloured discoid halo, consisting of six several concentric circles; the nearest to the moon, or the first disk around her, being dull white, then followed circles of orange, violet, crimson, green, and vermillion; the latter, or outermost, subtending in its diameter an angle of above ten degrees. This phenomenon was evidently produced by a refraction in the white mist of a stratus, which prevailed through the night, but it varied in its colours, as well as in its brilliancy, at differenttimes.[500]

Mean Temperature 43·00.

The company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins in the hollow of the wild mountain, were not greater objects of wonder to Rip Van Winkle, than forty original designs by Mr. Hood will be to the reader who looks for the first time at this gentleman’s “Whims andOddities.”[501]

All the world knows, or ought to know, that among persons called literary there are a few peculiarlylittery; who master an article through confusion of head and materials, and, having achieved the setting of their thoughts and places “to rights,” celebrate the important victory by the triumph of a short repose. At such a minute, after my last toilsome adventure in the “Lottery,” sitting in my little room before the fire, and looking into it with the comfortable knowledge that the large table behind me was “free from all incumbrances,” I yearned for a recreative dip into something new, when Mr. Hood’s volume, in a parcel bearing the superscription of a kind hand, was put into mine. It came in the very nick; and, as I amused myself, I resolved to be thenceforth, and therefrom, as agreeable as possible to my readers.

On the title-page of Mr. Hood’s book is this motto, “O Cicero! Cicero! if to pun be a crime, ’tis a crime I have learned of thee: O Bias! Bias! if to pun be a crime, by thy example I was biassed!—Scriblerus.”

The first engraving that opened on me was of

A Dream.

In this figure, “a medley of human faces, wherein certain features belong in common to different visages,—the eyebrow of one, for instance, forming the mouth of another,”—Mr. Hood has successfully “tried to typify a common characteristic of dreams; namely, the entanglement of divers ideas, to the waking mind distinct or incongruous, but, by the confusion ofsleep, inseparably ravelled up, and knotted into Gordian intricacies. For, as the equivocal feature, in the emblem, belongs indifferently to either countenance, but is appropriated by the head that happens to be presently the object of contemplation; so, in a dream, two separate notions will mutually involve some convertible incident, that becomes, by turns, a symptom of both in general, or of either in particular. Thus are begotten the most extravagant associations of thoughts and images,—unnatural connections, like those marriages of forbidden relationships, where mothers become cousins to their own sons or daughters, and quite as bewildering as such genealogical embarrassments.”

As an illustration of this kind of dream, the author relates a dismal one, “which originated in the failure of his first and last attempt as a dramatic writer;” and another, wherein the preliminaries were pleasant, and the conclusion was whimsical. “It occurred,” says Mr. Hood, “when I was on the eve of marriage; a season, when, if lovers sleep sparingly, they dream profusely. A very brief slumber sufficed to carry me in the night-coach to Bognor. It had been concerted, between Honoria and myself, that we should pass the honeymoon at some such place upon the coast. The purpose of my solitary journey was to procure an appropriate dwelling, and which, we had agreed, should be a little pleasant house, with an indispensable look out upon the sea. I chose one, accordingly; a pretty villa, with bow-windows, and a prospect delightfully marine. The ocean murmur sounded incessantly from the beach. A decent, elderly body, in decayed sables, undertook, on her part, to promote the comforts of the occupants by every suitable attention, and, as she assured me, at a very reasonable rate. So far, the nocturnal faculty had served me truly. A day-dream could not have proceeded more orderly; but, alas, just here, when the dwelling was selected, the sea view secured, the rent agreed upon, when every thing was plausible, consistent, and rational, the incoherent fancy crept in and confounded all,—by marrying me to the old woman of the house!”

Because it never happened that Mr. Hood in his dreams fancied himself deprived of any sense, he was greatly puzzled by thisquestion,—

“How does aBLINDman dream?”

“I mean” says Mr. H. “a person with the opaque crystal from his birth. He is defective in that very faculty which, of all others, is most active in those night-passages, thence emphatically called Visions. He has had no acquaintance with external images; and has, therefore, none of those transparent pictures that, like the slides of a magic-lantern, pass before the mind’s eye, and are projected by the inward spiritual light upon the utter blank. His imagination must be like an imperfect kaleidoscope, totally unfurnished with those parti-coloured fragments, whereof the complete instrument makes such interminable combinations. It is difficult to conceive such a man’s dream.

“Is it, a still benighted wandering,—a pitch-dark night progress, made known to him by the consciousness of the remaining senses? Is he still pulled through the universal blank, by an invisible power, as it were, at the nether end of the string?—regaled, sometimes, with celestial voluntaries, and unknown mysterious fragrances, answering to our more romantic flights; at other times, with homely voices, and more familiar odours; here, of rank smelling cheeses, there, of pungent pickles or aromatic drugs, hinting his progress through a metropolitan street. Does he over again enjoy the grateful roundness of those substantial droppings from the invisible passenger,—palpable deposits of an abstract benevolence,—or, in his nightmares, suffer anew those painful concussions and corporeal buffetings, from that (to him) obscure evil principle, the Parish Beadle?

“This question I am happily enabled to resolve, through the information of the oldest of those blind Tobits that stand in fresco against Bunhill-wall; the same who made that notable comparison, of scarlet, to the sound of a trumpet. As I understood him, harmony, with the gravel-blind, is prismatic as well as chromatic. To use his own illustration, a wall-eyed man has apalettein his ear as well as in his mouth. Some stone-blinds, indeed, dull dogs without anyearfor colour, profess to distinguish the different hues and shades by the touch; butthat, he said, was a slovenly, uncertain method, and in the chief article, of paintings, not allowed to be exercised.

“On my expressing some natural surprise at the aptitude of his celebrated comparison,—a miraculous close likening, to my mind, of the known to the unknown,—he told me, the instance was nothing,for the least discriminative among them could distinguish the scarlet colour of the mail guards’ liveries, by the sound of their horns: but there were others, so acute their faculty! that they could tell the very features and complexion of their relatives and familiars, by the mere tone of their voices. I was much gratified with this explanation; for I confess, hitherto, I was always extremely puzzled by that narrative in the ‘Tatler,’ of a young gentleman’s behaviour after the operation of couching, and especially at the wonderful promptness with which he distinguished his father from his mother,—his mistress from her maid. But it appears, that the blind are not so blind as they have been esteemed in the vulgar notion. What they cannot get one way they obtain in another: they, in fact, realize what the author of Hudibras has ridiculed as a fiction, for they set up

————communities of senses,To chop and change intelligences,As Rosicrucian VirtuosisCansee with ears—and hear with noses.”

Never having tried opium, and therefore without experience of “such magnificent visions” as are described by its eloquent historian, “I have never,” says Mr. Hood, “been buried for ages under pyramids; and yet, methinks, have suffered agonies as intense ashiscould be, from the common-place inflictions. For example, a night spent in the counting of interminable numbers,—an inquisitorial penance,—everlasting tedium,—the mind’s treadmill.”

That “theinnocent—sleep,” is an exceptionable position. What happy man, with a happy wife by his side, and the first, sweet, restless plague and pledge of their happiness by hers, has not been awakened to a sense of his felicity, by a weak, yet shrill and spirit-stirring “la-a, la-a, la-a, la-a, la-a-a, la-a-a—a,” of some secret sorrow, “for ever telling, yet untold.”

Happy the man whose only careAfewpaternalachingsare.

Gentle reader of the Benedictine order! I presume not to anticipate the pleasure thou wilt derive from contemplating thyself engaged in a domestic exercise, suited to the occasion,—pacing thy bed-room at “the heavy middle of the night,” holding thelittle“innocent”

Fondly lock’d induty’sarms;

its dear eyes provokingly open to the light of the chamber-lantern; thine own closed by drowsiness, yet kept unsealed by affection; thy lips arranged for the piano of carminative sounds—“quivering to the young-eyedcherubim”—

Oh! slumber my darlingThy sire is a knight—

—thy “darling” ceasing its “sweet voice,” to offer more decisively by its looks, “I would out-night you.” Brother Benedict! there is an engraving of thee, and thine, in the book I speak of, mottoed, “Son of the sleepless!”

Let me extract anothercut, seemingly a portrait of thealarming“hope of the family,” after thou hast for some few years tried, perchance, “theLockesystem; which, after all,” according to Mr. Hood, “is but acanalsystem for raising the babe-mind to unnaturallevels”—

“My son, sir.”

At about the age of “My son, sir,” boys seek to satisfy their curiosity, and gratify their taste. It is thespelling-time of young experience, and they are extremely diligent. Their senses are fresh and undepraved, and covetous of the simplest pleasures.

Every town in England, and every village, with inhabitants and wealth sufficient to consume a hogshead of “brown moist” within a reasonable time, exhibits an empty sugar cask in the open street; it is every little grocer’s pride, and every poor boy’sdelight:—

“O! there’s nothing half so sweet in life!”

“Gentle reader, read the motto! read the motto!” Look at theengraving; “showit to your children, and to your children’s children,” and ask them what theythink. If you desire an immediate living example to illustrate professor Malthus’s principle, that “population always comes up to the mean of subsistence,” set out a sugar cask, and there will be a swarm of boys about it, from no one knows whither, in ten minutes. The first takes possession of the inside, and is “monarch of all he surveys.” Like the throne, it is an envied, and an unquiet possession. From the emulous, on all sides, he receives vain addresses and remonstrances, and against their threatening hands is obliged to keep a sharp look out; but his greatest enemy, and for whom he keeps a sharp lookover, is the grocer’s man. A glimpse of that arch-foe “frightens him from his impropriety” in a twinkling; unless, indeed, from the nearness of the adversary he fail to escape, when, for certain, his companions leave him “alone in his glory,” and then he knows for a truth, that “after sweet comes sour.” The boy there, straddling like the “Great Harry,” has had his wicked will of the barrel to satiety, and therefore vacates his place in favour of him of the hat, on whose nether end “time hath written strange defeatures.” It is not so certain, that the fine, fat, little fellow, with his hands on the edge of the tub, and the ends of his toes on the ground, will ascend the side, as that he who stoops in front is enjoying the choicest pickings of the prize. The others are mere common feeders, or gluttons, who go for quantity;heis the epicure of theparty—

He seeks but little here belowBut seeks that littlegood;

and, of foretaste, he takes his place at the bung-hole, where the sugar crystallizes, and there revels in particles of the finest candies. “I pity the poor child,” says Mr. Hood, “that is learned in alpha beta, but ignorant of top and taw”—and I pity every poor child who only knows that a sugar tub is sweet, and is ignorant of the sweetest of its sweets. There are as many different pickings in it as there arecutsin a shoulder of mutton, or Mr. Hood’s book. My authority for this information is an acute, pale-faced, sickly, printer’s boy, an adapt in lickerish things, who declared the fact the morning after he had been to see Mr. Mathews, by affirming, with enthusiasm, “I’ve tried it, I’ve analyzed it, and I know it.”

“Ah! little think the gay, licentious proud,”

who spend their money on bulls-eyes and hard-bake, which are modern inventions, of the delicacies within a grocer’s plain,upright and downright, good, old, natural, brown sugartub—

“O! there’s nothing half so sweet in life.”

Mr. Hood introduces another “sweet pleasure,” with another equally aptquotation:—

Cupid“Tell me, my heart, can this be Love?”

“Tell me, my heart, can this be Love?”

This figure of “The Popular Cupid,” Mr. Hood copied, “by permission, from a lady’s Valentine;” and he says, “in the romantic mythology it is the image of the divinity of Love.” He inquires, “Is this he, that, in the mind’s eye of the poetess, drifts adown theGanges—

Pillow’d in a lotus flow’r,Gather’d in a summer hour,Floatsheo’er the mountain wave,Which would be a tall ship’s grave?

—Does Belinda believe that such a substantial Sagittarius lies ambushed in her perilous blue eye?—I can believe in his dwelling alone in the heart—seeing that he must occupy it to repletion: in his constancy—because he looks sedentary, and not apt to roam: that he is given to melt—from his great pinguitude: that he burneth with a flame—for so all fat burneth: and hath languishings—like other bodies of his tonnage: that he sighs—from his size. I dispute not his kneeling at ladies’ feet—since it is the posture of elephants—nor his promise, that the homage shall remain eternal. I doubt not of his dying—being of a corpulent habit, and a short neck: of his blindness—with that inflated pig’s cheek. But, for his lodging in Belinda’s blue eye, my whole faith is heretic—for she hath never astyin it.”

Mr. Hood, doubtless, desires that the world should know his “Whims and Oddities” through his own work; its notice here, therefore, while it affords a winter evening’s half hour entertainment, is not to mar his hopes. But it is impossible to close its merry-making leaves without shadowing forth a little more of the volume.

It ought to be observed, that the prints just presented are from engravings in Mr. Hood’s book, of which there are forty drawn by his own pencil; and, that he attaches a motto to each, so antithetical, as to constitute the volume a pocket portfolio of designs to excite risibility. Forexample:—

He tells a story of his “Aunt Shakerly,” a lady of enormous bulk, who placed Mr. Hood’s baby cousin in the nursing-chair while she took in the news, and then, in her eagerness to read the accidents and offences, unthinkingly sat, with the gravity of a coroner’s inquest, in the aforesaid chair, and thereby unconsciously suppressed “an article of intelligence”—an occurrence which there is little reason to doubt appeared among the “horribles,” in the favourite department of her paper, the next morning. The engraving that pictures this is mottoed, “The Spoiled Child!”

Mr. Hood institutes “A Complaint against Greatness,” through “an unhappy candidate for the show at Sadler’s repository,” described in the following item of the catalogue—“The reverend Mr. Farmer, a four years’ old Durham ox, fed by himself, upon oil-cake and mangel-wurzel.” The complainant, however, says, “I resemble that worthy agricultural vicar only in my fat living.”

This being the season when these condemned animals come up from the country to the metropolis, it seems a fit time to hear the complainant’s description of his journey. “Wearisome and painful was my pilgrim-like progress to this place, by short and tremulous steppings—like the digit’s march upon a dial. My owner, jealous of my fat, procured a crippled drover, with a withered limb, for my conductor; but evenhehurried me beyond my breath. The drawling hearse left me labouring behind; the ponderous fly-waggon passed me like a bird upon the road, so tediously slow is my pace. It just sufficeth, oh, ye thrice happy oysters! that have no locomotive faculty at all, to distinguish that I am not at rest. Wherever the grass grew by the way-side, how it tempted my natural longings—the cool brook flowed at my very foot, but this short, thick neck forbade me to eat or drink; nothing but my redundant dewlap is likely ever to graze on the ground!—If stalls and troughs were not extant, I must perish. Nature has given to the elephant a long, flexible tube, or trunk, so that he can feed his mouth, as it were, by his nose: but is man able to furnish me with such an implement? Or would he not still withhold it, lest I should prefer the green herb, my natural, delicious diet, and reject his rank, unsavoury condiments?—What beast, with free will, but would repair to the sweet meadow for itspasture”—

Verily, it is humane thus to lecture man from the mouth of an animal, whose species is annually deformed for butcherly pride, and the loathing of the table—“to see the prize-steak loaded with that rank, yellow abomination, might wean a man from carnivorous habits for ever.” The supplicant for our compassion adds, in behalf of himself and his dumb-fellow creatures, “It may seem presumption in a brute to question the human wisdom; but truly, I can perceive no beneficial ends worthy to be set off against our sufferings. There must be, methinks, a nearer (and a better) way of augmenting the perquisites of the kitchen-wench and the fire-man.” There is an admirable cut of the over-fed petitioner, breathing “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!” The figure of the crippled drover is excellent.

Mr. Hood devises a romantic adventure that befel a herd of these animals of the common class, and a little wooden, white-painted house on four wheels, to which a sedentary citizen and his wife had retired to spend their days, “impaled” by the wayside on Hounslow-heath,where—

Having had some quarters of school breeding,They turn’d themselves, like other folks, to reading;But setting out where others nigh have done,And being ripen’d in the seventh stage,The childhood of old age,Began as other children have begun,—Not with the pastorals of Mr. Pope,Or Bard of Hope,Or Paley, ethical, or learned Porson,—But spelt, on sabbaths, in St. Mark, or John,And then relax’d themselves with Whittington,Or Valentine and Orson—But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con,And being easily melted, in their dotage,Slobber’d,—and keptReading,—and weptOver the White Cat, in their wooden cottage.Thus reading on—the longerThey read, of course, their childish faith grew strongerIn gnomes, and hags, and elves, and giant grim,—If talking trees and birds reveal’d to him,She saw the flight of fairyland’s fly-waggons,And magic-fishes swimIn puddle ponds, and took old crows for dragons,—Both were quite drunk from the enchanted flaggons;When as it fell upon a summer’s day.As the old man sat a feedingOn the old babe-reading,Beside his open street-and-parlour door,A hideous roarProclaim’d a drove of beasts was coming by the way.Long-horned, and short, of many a different breed,Tall, tawny brutes, from famous Lincoln-levels,Or Durham feed;With some of those unquiet, black, dwarf devils,From nether side of Tweed,Or Firth of Forth;Looking half wild with joy to leave the North,—With dusty hides, all mobbing on together,—When,—whether from a fly’s malicious commentUpon his tender flank, from which he shrank;Or whetherOnly in some enthusiastic moment,—However, one brown monster, in a frisk,Giving his tail a perpendicular whisk,Kick’d out a passage thro’ the beastly rabble;And after a pas seul,—or, if you will, aHorn-pipe, before the basket-maker’s villa,Leapt o’er the tiny pale,—Back’d his beef-steaks against the wooden gable,And thrust his brawny bell-rope of a tailRight o’er the page,Wherein the sageJust then was spelling some romantic fable.The old man, half a scholar, half a dunce,Could not peruse, who could?—two tales at once;And being huff’dAt what he knew was none of Riquet’s tuft;Bang’d-to the door,But most unluckily enclosed a morselOf the intruding tail, and all the tassel:—The monster gave a roar,And bolting off with speed, increased by pain,The little house became a coach once more,And, like Macheath, “took to the road” again!

Thus reading on—the longerThey read, of course, their childish faith grew strongerIn gnomes, and hags, and elves, and giant grim,—If talking trees and birds reveal’d to him,She saw the flight of fairyland’s fly-waggons,And magic-fishes swimIn puddle ponds, and took old crows for dragons,—Both were quite drunk from the enchanted flaggons;When as it fell upon a summer’s day.As the old man sat a feedingOn the old babe-reading,Beside his open street-and-parlour door,A hideous roarProclaim’d a drove of beasts was coming by the way.

Long-horned, and short, of many a different breed,Tall, tawny brutes, from famous Lincoln-levels,Or Durham feed;With some of those unquiet, black, dwarf devils,From nether side of Tweed,Or Firth of Forth;Looking half wild with joy to leave the North,—With dusty hides, all mobbing on together,—When,—whether from a fly’s malicious commentUpon his tender flank, from which he shrank;Or whetherOnly in some enthusiastic moment,—However, one brown monster, in a frisk,Giving his tail a perpendicular whisk,Kick’d out a passage thro’ the beastly rabble;And after a pas seul,—or, if you will, aHorn-pipe, before the basket-maker’s villa,Leapt o’er the tiny pale,—Back’d his beef-steaks against the wooden gable,And thrust his brawny bell-rope of a tailRight o’er the page,Wherein the sageJust then was spelling some romantic fable.

The old man, half a scholar, half a dunce,Could not peruse, who could?—two tales at once;And being huff’dAt what he knew was none of Riquet’s tuft;Bang’d-to the door,But most unluckily enclosed a morselOf the intruding tail, and all the tassel:—The monster gave a roar,And bolting off with speed, increased by pain,The little house became a coach once more,And, like Macheath, “took to the road” again!

When this happened the old man’s wife was absent,

Getting up some household herbs for supper,Thoughtful of Cinderella, in the tale,And quaintly wonderinghowmagic shiftsCould o’er a common pumpkin so prevail,To turn it to a coach;

nor did she turn round, till house and spouse had turned a corner out of sight.

The change was quite amazing;It made her senses stagger for a minute,The riddle’s explication seem’d to harden;But soon her superannuatednousExplained the horrid mystery;—and raisingHer hand to heaven, with the cabbage in it,On which she meant to sup,—“Well! thisisfairy work! I’ll bet a farden,Little prince Silverwings has ketch’d me up,And set me down in some one else’s garden!”

Here ends the “fairy tale” of Hounslow-heath.

“She is far from the land!” is a motto to an engraving of alandlady, frightened by voyaging in a Thames wherry, opposite St. Paul’s. Her after alarms at sea are concludedpleasantly:—

“We were off Flamborough-head. A heavy swell, the consequence of some recent storm to the eastward, was rolling right before the wind upon the land:—and, once under the shadow of the bluff promontory, we should lose all the advantage of a saving westerly breeze. Even the seamen looked anxious: but the passengers, (save one,) were in despair. They were, already, bones of contention, in their own misgivings, to the myriads of cormorants and waterfowl inhabiting that stupendous cliff. Miss Oliver alone was sanguine. She was all nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles; her cheeriness increased in proportion with our dreariness. Even the dismal pitching of the vessel could not disturb her unseasonable levity;—it was like a lightening before death—but, at length, the mystery was explained. She had springs of comfort that we knew not of. Not brandy, for that we shared in common; nor supplications, for those we had all applied to; but her ears, being jealously vigilant of whatever passed between the mariners, she had overheard from the captain,—and it had all the sound, to her, of a comfortable promise,—that ‘if the wind held, we should certainlygo on shore.’”

The popular ballad of “Sally Brown and Ben the Carpenter,” which first appeared in the “London Magazine,” is inserted in this volume. “I have never been vainer of any verses,” says Mr. Hood, “than of my part in the following ballad. The lamented Emery, drest as Tom Tug, sang it at his last mortal benefit at Covent-garden; and, ever since, it has been a great favourite with the watermen of the Thames, who time their oars to it, as the wherrymen of Venice time theirs to the lines of Tasso. With the watermen, it went naturally to Vauxhall: and, over land, to Sadler’s-wells. The guards, not the mail coach but the life guards, picked it out from a fluttering hundred of others, all going to one air, against the dead wall at Knightsbridge. Cheap printers of Shoe-lane and Cow-cross, (all pirates!) disputed about the copyright, and published their own editions; and, in the mean time, the authors, to have made bread of their song, (it was poor old Homer’s hard ancient case!) must have sung it about the streets. Such is the lot of literature! the profits of ‘Sally Brown’ were divided by the ballad-mongers: it has cost, but has never brought me, a halfpenny.”

A “Recipe for Civilisation,” in Hudibrasticlines, is waggishly ascribed to the “pen of Dr. Kitchiner—as if, in the ingredients of versification, he had been assisted by hisButler.” It is accompanied by a whimsical whole length of “the Cook’s Oracle,” adjusting musical notes on the bars of a gridiron, a ludicrous allusion to the good-humoured Doctor’s diversified attainments in science and popularity.

From an odd poem, attributed to an odd personage, “The Last Man,” two verses are selected, as an example of feelings which the punning on the title-page seemed to haveproscribed:—

Back to Index Next