University of Virginia Library

—The four orders of druids.

—His Lordship, like the Prince of Madagascar, in GLENARVON, loves a quiet life; though he may think it expedient to make a speech, or enter a protest now and then, by way of keeping up a good old family custom.

—A notorious pamphlet, called ‘Vindiciæ Gallicæ, or a Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers.’ This was to please Fox.

—In the hall of Lincoln's Inn. This was to please Pitt. He then accepted a place. This was to please himself.

—At times, indeed, Mr. P*ns**by gives the house a sudden gust that threatens its very hinges. Nobody can guess why. Some will have it, that he now wants to out-Br---m Br---m, as he once wanted to out-Whitbread Whitbread. Be this as it may, his manners are quite altered. Formerly he spoke much and mildly. Now he speaks little and petulantly. He should consult decorum. At all events, he should wear clean boots.

—Every one knows that Mr. Br---m is thrusting himself forward as the successor of Whitbread. One laughs to see the man struggling into conscquence, affecting a high tone, and tremendously protesting that he will probe some bagatelle or other to the inmost quick. No man of four thousand a-year, and Br---m's friend, can hope to remain in peaceable possession of his property, without Br---m's informing the house that he has a friend of four thousand a-year. No acquaintance of note in the house can hope to be called otherwise by him, than his honorable friend. His honorable friend, however, generally returns the compliment by calling him the learned gentleman. Lastly, no adjective, even of the most awful signification, can hope to pass his mouth, without being coupled with the word pretty. Things are pretty terrible, pretty odious, pretty disgusting, and pretty formidable—expressions, in my opinion, pretty ugly.

—

Par. Lost.

This may certainly be termed a blunder. Johnson has remarked others in Milton; such as, ‘What stood, recoiled.’ Yet Johnson himself is not without one. He gave this line to Goldsmith,

If the man could neither stand still, nor move forward, he must, I think, have spun round in one spot. Thus too, Gray says,

Surely what has not an end, cannot have a middle. Pope also says,

— Mr. Br---m, it is said, boasts that he has a voting party of ‘three silent tongues.’ I doubt whether he can command even one tongue. Certainly not his own.

—The whole annals of Parliament cannot furnish so shameful and indecent an attack upon royalty as this ultra-patriot lately made in the house. He had not even the fine ingenuous rashness of youth to plead. No; his was the cold, sallow, grinning premeditation of a Scotch hypercritic. His own party shrank from the tirade in horror; and about twenty of the more moderate amongst them went over, on that question, to the ministers. He recanted afterwards, I must confess; but the pitiful flourish came too late. It was the frightened snail defending itself with its froth, after it had sheathed its horns and shrunk into its shell.

—The kings of Monomotapa.

—This gentleman, on the whole, is one of the most respectable aspirants to the honor of teasing ministers. But he has no talents for a real thorough-going downright demagogue. Besides, plaintive indignation, laborious eloquence, looks of gloom and tones of peevishness, will never recommend his learning. A skull would make rather a forbidding flower-pot. The Speculative Club, too, has spoiled Mr. H*rn*r, even though Dugald Stewart educated him.

—I am informed that the Editor of the Edinburgh Review is really rather a rational man in politics, but that the writers whom he employs sometimes turn out, like other journeymen, and refuse to work any longer, unless he will insert their jacobinical effusions without remorse. One can almost forgive Englishmen who write like Scotch Reviewers, but there is no pardon for Scotch Reviewers who write like Frenchmen.

As to the mere language of the work, it is no more English than the sentiments. Whoever wishes to read sentences with eight or nine contiguous ‘fors, withs, and tos,’—three or four enfeebling ‘would have beens,’ and ‘might have beens,’ —nominative cases made ablatives absolute,—‘him being’ instead of ‘his being,’—‘thereafter,’ ‘eminentest,’ ‘mighty little,’ and ‘standing up for a thing,’—may find all these blossoms of speech, (as I have just now found them) in a ten minutes' survey of the Edinburgh Review.

Whoever desires to see opposite opinions upon politics and poetry, supported in the same work, may consult the Edinburgh Review.

Whoever has a fancy for Teutonic, unvowelled, unpronounceable names, will find plenty of Trojanisches Kreig, Chrimhildren Rache, Kijrie, Stumpfe-Reime, Klingende-Schal-Reime, Strong Bopp and Martin Gumpel, pedantically at his service in the Edinburgh Review.

Whoever hopes to have Louis Capet nick-named (as the Sans Culottes nick-named his brother) Louy Cappy, may hereafter, perhaps, see his wishes realized in the Edinburgh Review.

—People laugh at this man of precedents for aspiring to be speaker; but I think without good ground; for the speaker (by the figure lucus a non lucendo) speaks less than any member in the house.

—The piping sharpness of Mr. W**nn's voice is so oddly contrasted with the guttural rumbling of his brother's, that both gentlemen are called by the members, ‘bubble and squeak.’ Fatal nick-name!—bubble and squeak. By Castor and Pollux, 'tis too bad. What would ancestor Kadrod say to this? What would the great Madox ap Gruffyd Maclor say to this? How the shade of Caractacus would shudder on the Welsh hills, if,

—If this accidental—accidental patriot would speak with—with a little less hesi—hesitation, he might become a patriot of much mischievous—much mischievous garrulity. But the devil—devil of it, is, that the good of his country always sticks—sticks—sticks in his—his throat —always sticks in his throat!

—Poor Billy C*bb*t! his Register has just arrived at a state of stagnation. Let the puddle grow putrid in peace. I shall not disturb its odours.

—Whenever a patriot cannot get on in Pall-Mall, he is sure to get on at St. Stephens's. I think I hear this careering gentleman, as he wheels round his horses from the fray, cry out with an assuring slap on the knee, ‘My Lord, if we don't make a good thing of this, I'll be shot!’ Yet he did not make quite so good a thing of the sinecure question. There he went inhumanly careering against his own family.

—Sir Samuel's family were originally Genevese. Neckar was a Genevese. Rousseau was a Genevese. Dumont, Lord L---nd---ne's tutor, was a Genevese. Voltaire lived at Geneva. Gibbon lived at Geneva. What the plague have mankind done to Geneva, that she should use them so?

—Mr. M*th*n apostasized so abruptly, that he fears to be temperate lest it should be doubted that he is sincere. The old Talents are happy to lay hold of him. Indeed, they pick up with avidity any man who has not yet lost his good name. They keep Messrs. H*rn*r, B*nn*t, W*nn, and M*th*n, as a sort of reserved corps, yet unfleshed in degradation, and ready to march forward on the last emergency of character.

—The bust of Buonaparte—shall I spare him? In good sooth I will. The poorman knew no more about the bust, than Mr. H*bh**se knows about the original. That is a nice young gentleman. Upon my word, his letters from France do him infinite honor. His beginning to cry because Napoleon read a petition, was in the first style of sensibility; and when Napoleon ran away, nothing could cxceed the sweet waspishness of his infantine upbraidings. Dids 'em vex my child? Dids 'em take its nown nown Nemperor away from it? Hushaden, hushaden!

—I remark that people of much labelled linen and critical acumen, are apt to treat public men as they do grammar, by making the second person more worthy than the first.

This sentence being somewhat abstruse, I ought to have translated it into bad English, for the benefit of Mr. W**th**n. Whoever presided over the grammatical department of his pamphlet upon eating, left several little slips in the first six pages. I could never read farther.

—If I asked the worthy Alderman whether he would accede to this opinion, he might say, ‘Yes;’ but if I asked him, whether he would subscribe to it, he would shake his negativing head, and say, ‘Certainly not.’

—It is now the fashion to say, that Ireland is beggared, because she cannot pay the demands made upon her, and because her bankruptcies are so numerous. No supposition can be more false. Her trade (and therefore her capital) is increasing yearly. The value of her exports was,

• In 1809 ................ £ 5,739,843.
• In 1814 ................ 7,139,437.

The vast increase of her imports, both in raw materials for the industrious, and in articles of luxury for the opulent, also proves her increasing prosperity. Since the union, her imports of woollen and cotton cloths have doubled; of carpets, silks, glasses, &c., tripled. Her imports of wine have doubled; those of blankets have increased as ten to one; and likewise those of musical instruments and jewellery. Her present distresses, like England's, have arisen from an impeded circulation, in consequence of excessive, though inevitable loans; and no doubt the effect will cease with the cause.

Neither are we to calculate her deterioration by the number of her bankruptcies. In 1700, when the failures in England were but thirty-eight, the exports amounted but to £ 6,045,432. In 1793, when the bankruptcies were 1304, the exports amounted to £ 20,390,180. In that year of terror, the nation was informed, as usual, how nothing could save her, And yet in 1814 (twenty-three years after), her exports amounted to £ 56,591,514!

—Almost all the Catholic aristocracy have seceded from the turbulent part; who, though they call the loudest for emancipation, are, in reality, the least desirous of it: because they rose into notice on its shoulders, and must sink into insignificance at its termination. But Englishmen, in general, from their personal ignorance of the Sister Island, have an idea that all Catholics are hostile to the Constitution. I wish such men, instead of going over to Waterloo, and bringing back sanguinary keepsakes, would visit Ireland, and import a little knowledge of the Irish people. The fact is, whenever an Englishman does perform the exploit of a trip to the Emerald Isle, he finds himself treated with peculiar respect and hospitality. He begins to regret having insured his life, and he ventures to unload his pistols. If he does not eat more pudding, at least he laughs at more wit than he ever did before, and even learns to laugh in the right place. Nay, he undertakes to grow witty himself, and his efforts are treated with polite encouragement. In short, finding himself much courted and quite lively, the good gentleman begins to fancy the place a paradise; and at length, when his business is concluded (for all this time he never neglected his business), he returns reluctantly home to the bosom of his family, who stare in astonishment, not unmixed with terror, at the sprightliness of his deportment, and the unintelligibility of his puns.