Mrs Hemans is a woman of pretty feeling, and writes sweetly ?-Is it not true that Bernard Barton and Allan Cunningham are both of them deserving of commendation ? HOGG, Hear! hear! ODOHERTY. HOGG. The question is not whether these people deserve some praise, but whether they deserve the highest praise—for that is what they get in the quarters I have indicated. And just to bring you up with the curb, my dear, do you · really suppose that any of these names will exist anno eighteen hundred and forty-three? The Forty-Three's a long look-heh, me! we may a' be aneath the moulds by that time. TICKLER, (dejectedly.) The wicked shall cease from troubling HOGG, (ditto.) And their works shall follow them ODOHERTY. Come, come : what's the fun of all this? (Sings.) 1. Soon will sink in starless night: Ere it sink, boys, ere it sink- NORTH. HOGG. ODOHERTY. 2. Ere ye sink, boys, ere ye sink- (Much applause.) Odoherty, Odoherty! I say you are an absolute bar to business. Which of you will give me an article on the last Number of the Quarterly Review? I write in The Quarterly myself now and then, sae, if you please, I would rather it fell to the Captain's hand. Well, I like that notion-as if I had not written in every periodical under the sun, and would not do so if I pleased to-morrow again. Why, open your grey gleamers, you Pig-you should not be quite so obtuse at this time of day, I think Whatna warks do you really contribute till, Captain ? I write politics in the Quarterly-Belles Lettres sometimes for the Edinburgh ; ditto, for the Monthly Review, (particularly the Supplemental Numbers about foreign books.) Divinity for the British Critic—these are pretty regular jobs but I also favour now and then Colbourn, Constable, Waugh, &c. in their Magazines. In point of fact, I write for this or that periodical, according to the state of my stomach or spirits, (which is the same thing,) when I sit down. Am I flat-1 tip my Grandmother a bit of prose. Am I dunned into sournessI cut up some deistical fellow for the Quarterly. Am I yellow about the chops-Do I sport what Crabbe calls VOL. XIII. 3 A HOGG. ODOHERTY. “ The cool contemptuous smile Of clever persons overcharged with bile ;" Why, then, there's nothing for it but stirring up the fire, drawing a cork, and Ebonizing-ainsi va le monde ! NORTH ODOHERTY. So, Principle, Mr Odoherty, is entirely to be laid out of view? Not at all, not for the Bank of England, my dear fellow. But what has Principle to do here ?-no more than Principal B ird, I assure ye. Why, don't we all know that little Cruikshanks did the caricatures of the King for Hone, and those of the Queen for the other party, and who thought the less either of him or his caricatures? Are a man's five fingers not his own property? Dans sa peau mourra le Reynard. So you seriously think yourself entitled to play Whig the one day and Tory the next. “ Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur” a NORTH. ODOHERTY. NORTH. You talk en Suisse. ODOHERTY. HOGG. Ay, and as you know to your cost, old boy, Point d'argent, point de Suisse ! I dinna follow you vera weel, but I'm feared you're making a very shameful story of yourself, Captain Odoherty. NORTH, (aside to Hogg.) HOGG. ODOHERTY. “ This beats York races, Doncaster fair, and Judges come down to hang folks.”. NORTH. Enough! enough !--Buł once more to business, my friends; what say you as to the Quarterly? 'Tis certainly a first-rate Number ; the best they have had these three or four years: but I don't see why you should have an article upon it. I do see it, though. Sir, the Quarterly has done itself immortal honour by “On the Opposition.” I should willingly give something to know who wrote it. TICKLER. NORTH. that paper TICKLER NORTH Why, 'tis well argued and well written ; but after all, your own work had said the same things before, and perhaps as well. No, indeed, sir. We had uttered the same sentiments and opinions; but neither so wisely nor so well: the clear, quiet, masterly exposure in that paper has not often been rivalled. We have had few things so good since Burke's pamphlets. Once more, I would like to know the author's name. HOGG. Can it be Mr Canning ? NORTH. No, no; it has neither his rhetoric nor his oratory: nor has it the air of being written by so old or so high a statesman as Canning. TICKLER. Croker? NORTH. Out again. It wants his rapidity and his vivida vis. Compare it with the Thoughts on Ireland. They, to be sure, were written when he was very young, and the style has the faults of youth, inexperience, and over imitation of Tacitus; but still one may see the pace of the man's mind there; and a very fiery pace it is. ODOHERTY. L I do not think it can be Gifford's own handywork. NORTH. I would not swear that. It has much of the masculine determined energy of Gifford's mind; and if it has none of the bad jokes that used to figure in his diatribes, for bitter bad some of them were; why, such a man may very well be supposed to have discovered his own weak points by this time. Of late, more's the pity, his pen has not been very familiar to us, even in the Review. TICKLER. It will be a great loss to literature when he retires from his Review. I wonder who is to succeed him. NORTH. I wish, with all my heart, he had a successor worthy of himself: a man inspired, like him, in spite of all his defects, with a true and deep reverence for the old spirit of English loyalty and English religion; and, what will be even more difficult to match, imbued with a thorough knowledge of the old and genuine classics of our literature. I fear no young man will do; and I know of no old one likely to buckle to such a labour. Murray should look twice ere he leap; but perhaps Gifford himself may stand it out longer than seems to be generally expected. 1ICKLER. I hope so. After all, the Tories might find it almost as difficult to replace him, as the Whigs would find it to replace our friend Jeffrey. Just so. NORTH. The truth is, that both Gifford and Jeffrey have done many wrong things-the latter many hundreds, perhaps; but take them all in all, they are scholars and gentlemen, and literature must number them among the bene meriti of her republic. Compare them with the fry they have so long kept in the shade. HOGG (testily.) Neither the tane nor the tither has said a word about "The Three Perils." ODOHERTY. Come, that's shabby, however. But cheer up; I will do you in both, ere three months be over, or my name's not Morgan. NORTH. Lord keep us! Does an old stager like the shepherd feel sore upon such points as these? I profess I had no notion of it, or I should have buttered you with the thumb long ago myself. HOGG. Praise is praise, an it be but frae a butcher's calland. NORTH. Elegant, Hogg! How you would squeal if I put the knife in your hide! No jokes on me, my formose puer. HOGG. Dinna gloom that gait. Od! I was na meaning ony offence— TICKLER. Kiss and be friends. But, North, don't you wonder at the Quarterly's taking no notice of the Spanish affairs? I confess I expected a paper on that subject, full of real information; which, indeed, we need not look for in any other quarter. NORTH. Wait a little. I suppose it will keep cool for a little, like that dishing of O'Meara. ODOHERTY. I give up my brother bog-trotter. He is indeed dished. TICKLER. Ay, and yet I am not sure whether it be not Cobbet that has given him the coup-de-grace.-Did you see the Statesman's article? No?-Well, then, Cobbet just says the truth smack out. O'Meara may bother away with paragraphs till Doomsday.-He is a gone man, until he denies the letters printed in the Quarterly. 66 NORTH. Elegant O'Meara," indeed!-But if it be true that he's turned out of the menagerie, I suppose no more need be said of him. I'll tell you what is my opinion. The puff on that fellow in the last Edinburgh Review must now be making my friend Jeffrey feel as sore as Dr Phillpotts' letter itself.—Oh !· sir, these are the sort of rubs that make a man bite the blood out of his nails. Phillpotts' calm, dignified, unanswerable smashing has done them more harm than any thing they had met with these many days, and then on the back of that comes this vile exposée. ODOHERTY. My private opinion is, that O'Meara's book was got up in a great measure as a puff on the Edinburgh Review. The art of puffing has made great progress of late. Devil a book comes out without some dirty buttering in it, either of you, North, or the Edinburgh, or the Quarterly, or of some other periodical the Author wants to conciliate. Witness D'Israeli buttering Gifford.-Lord John Russel buttering Tom Campbell.-O'Meara buttering John Allen ;— and last, not least, Billy Hazlitt buttering you in the Liberal. NORTH. Call you that buttering your friends? A shame on such butter! ODOHERTY. What would you have?-The boys can't write three pages without_mentioning you. If that is not butter enough for you, you must be ill to please. HOGG. The Captain's in the right. An author's aye commended when he's kept beføre the public. That's what gars me pit up with the jokes of some of you chields. ODOHERTY. Ditto. But the fact is, that the Cockneys are mad-they can tell a hawk from a handsaw on other occasions; but whenever the wind is North, due North, 'tis all up with them-out it comes, the absolute slaver of insanity. You have much to answer for. We shall hear of some tragedy among them one of these days. NORTH. Any thing but another Mirandola-say I. HOGG. Hoot, hoot, ye're ower severe now, Mr North. The poor lads had aye eneugh to do to gar the twa ends meet, and now ye've rooked them clean out. If they were stout, braid-backed chields like the Captain and me, it wad be less matter, they could yoke to some other thing; but thae puir whitefaced tea-drinking billies, what's to come o' them ?-I'm wae when I think o't. TICKLER. The parishes of Wapping and Clerkenwell have good actions against North -he must have raised their poor-rates confoundedly. ODOHERTY. Oh, dear!-Slops won't come to so much.-I would contract to corn and water them at sixpence a-head per diem. HOGG. Wull ye put me in the schedule?—Here's my thumb! ODOHERTY. You, you monster, you Cyclops, you Polyphemus! why, you would swallow porridge enough to ruin me in a fortnight: but if you'll part with three grinders to the Odontist's museum, I may give you, as Mrs Walkinshaw says, another interlocutor of the Lord Ordinary. NORTH. Come, come, Hogg, take your revenge in your novel.-I have seen some of the proof sheets, and I assure you I think it will take to a hair. Indeed, my dear fellow, you cannot, if you would, launch any thing that will not have talent enough to swim it out. For my part, I liked the Perils of Man extremely well-rough, coarse pieces, no doubt-but, on the whole, a free rapid narrative, some eminently picturesque descriptions, a great deal of good blunt hu mour, and one or two scenes, which I wonder the play-wrights have not laid paw upon long ere now. Indeed, I think the Devil, the eating Ploughman, the two Princesses, &c. &c. would all do capitally on the stage. You should send a copy to Terry or Murray. Murray, by the way, deserves much credit for his dramatization of Nigel. HOGG. He's a clever lad, Murray. I like him better than ony play-actor they have. -He never gangs beyond Nature, and he never buckles to ought but what he's up to. ODOHERTY. Would all actors and all authors had wit to follow that example!-There is really an immensity of quiet comic humour about Murray-how good is his Jerry Hawthorn! but he did wrong to leave out Almacks in the East, and the Tread-mill-these were absurd sacrifices to the squeamishness of the modern Athens-they were, in fact, the best things in the original piece. NORTH. I hobbled out one night to see the thing, but, although the acting was excellent, with the single exception of the row, the affair struck me as a confoundedly dull one-no incident, no story, no character,—a precious heap of trash assuredly. TICKLER. Well, good acting is a jewel-Murray, with his bluff humour, Calcraft, with his true gentlemanlike lightness, and Jones, with his inimitable knowing grin, made it go down with me sweetly.-What do ye think of Mr Vandenhoff? ODOHERTY. No Vandal-but Young has been here! NORTH. Come, come, nobody starts with being a Young. Rome was not built in a day-link by link the mail is made—we must all creep before we walk. ODOHERTY. You're as great in proverbs as Sancho himself, I swear.-Why don't you write a rational book on them? Nothing worth twopence in that way, since Erasmus's Adagia-all our English books contemptible-poor-imperfectdull-stupid-and devoid of all arrangement. As for D'Israeli, he, as I said in my review of him, knows nothing whatever of the subject; for he quotes, for great rarities, a few of the most hackneyed ones in existence-old Plu tarchs, Joe Millers, and the like. NORTH. I admire no proverbs more than those Dean Swift used to make, (not to repeat.) ODOHERTY. It would be a good thing to revive the manufacture, and apply it to literary topics. NORTH. We shall see what would you think of reviving Cowper's rhyming prose in the mean time? I think you might do that easily, Hogg, or you, Odoherty; either of you have rhymes, God knows, quantum suff. The story's ill plann'd, and the foundation very weak; yet, begin where you please, I rather think you'll not stop-Great authors like these may jump or hop, they may leap over years, in one chapter a score, or more, yet no gap appears, one reads on as before; but if I or any other should follow after that great brother, skipping and hipping, notching and botching, I rather apprehend my very best friend would vote me a Bore. ODOHERTY. You need not feel sore although that should be the case; I make bold, my dear Jamie, to tell ye the truth to your face, there's something so sweet, and so mellow, and so little of the air of being got up, about the style of that right fellow, that whatever he touches pleases every body, male and female, from Grizzy to the Duchess, from the porter to the peer; and, this is what's so queer, all's one whether he describe King Charles, or King Charles's little pet pup, or beer foaming in a night cellar's barrels, or muscat wine sparkling in a |