different notice and I am really astonished at the more than Bentleian acumen of your remark on the reason for the apparent difference of style between the two first lines and the remainder, now you have suggested it to me, I perceive the fact certainly was so: but of myself I should never have suspected it, like the honest citizen who had written from his whole life without knowing it. All I knew was, that I determined to write her a letter-and send it by post-directted to herself. So my mind being prepossessed with the idea of the address "to Miss Beauchamp" &c. The letter itself naturally took the same turn in the commencement. I feel the force of your objection-and still more to the second line than the first: for it is dif ficult to find any other suitable term than Miss to designate at once that the infant is female. I will not lose sight however of the subject altho' I do not engage to produce anything more to my mind—and however inexorable you may be as a creditor, if I do not tender you demand in sterling, you will not reject any passable paper in the present hard times. The lines to Mrs. Aldersey, you shall have with an alteration-but not much of a correction. "And now, my dear Sir, give me leave to address our united best and most sincere regards toward our Mrs. Hastings, whom we presume to be in good health from your saying nothing to the contrary, and from our most earnest desire that she should be so-and to request you to believe me Your much obliged, N. B. HALHED." "Welcome, sweet babe, to our terrestrial sphere! At the time of the Jubilee Mr. Halhed wrote a long song on the occasion, which having found its way into print, became very popular. A copy had, of course, been forwarded in the first instance to Mr. Hastings in a letter from Mr. Halhed. The sage of Daylesford (under date 5th November 1809) says of this loyal effusion: "I cannot tell you how delighted I was with your pot-pourri; I was prepared for another treat of it in a visit to my nephew Woodman in Northamptonshire, where I met with your ballad in a loyal newspaper, said to have been sung at one of the late civic feasts. It was copied with perfect correctness, but ushered in by the Editor, with one of the most insipid of all compositions that call themselves poetry, an ode of a Mr. Fitzgerald. I do not believe that the profanation, wicked as it was, could have been felt so indignantly by you as at was by me." Even Warren Hastings seems to have had a foretaste of Byron's indignation-for he could scarcely in his snuggery at Daylesford have seen the pungent outburst of him, who was then "juvenile and curly:" "Still must I hear-shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl And I not sing, lest haply, Scotch reviews Should dub me scribbler, and dename my muse ?" Early in March, 1810, Mr. Hastings again mounts Pegasus, the result being certain stanzas on the rise and progress of John Company, as following: "From the days of Job Charnock, scarce known on record, To the triumphs of Plassey's redoubtable Lord, The Company traffick'd unheeded: She sent her ships forth, the wide ocean to roam, With rich cargoes well freighted, and brought richer home; By oppression provok'd, she to arms had recourse, And her courage attemper'd with wisdom conspir'd Now the sages in schools of diplomacy bred, That for her, a mere trader, (for what was she more?) That to give up the pen in exchange for the gun; Nay worse, of finance to distribute the drains, So they stripp'd off her robe; but the loss to atone, Lent her armies and fleets for protectors; To diminish her cares, and to lighten their weight, Thus equipp'd, and embrac'd by the beams of the throne, With the guilt of imputed offences defil'd, Though ignoble her birth, yet in death she may boast, Like the sun, when he sets in Orion; This reflection of comfort at least to produce- "MY DEAR HALHED,-I avail myself of the frank of a basket to Mrs. Motte to send you the above. It was composed of shreds and patches between Portman square and Daylesford, and put together since my return. I attribute to this employment that I escaped an accession to my cold. I am sorry to say, that Mrs. Hastings has not yet recovered the effects of her fall. Give our kind regards to Mrs. Halhed, and receive them yourself from Your affectionate WARREN HASTINGS." Mr. Halhed in his reply allows the excellence of the lines, and goes on: "By the way you have answered a question which from long antiquity has been propounded as insoluble "Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes "? But you have shewn us who direct the Directors. I am, however, particularly gratified with the closing lines-not being so fastidious as Elijah about an epigramatic turn, which in truth Ï always chuckle at, and the quill of the goose in contrast with the paw of the lion, would in my opinion furnish an admirable basis for a caricature, or a hieroglyphic, which seem to me to be very much akin. But after all the labours of your life in John's service, and the matchless volumes of prose you have expended as caudle and cordials to prop up a little his vacillating constitution-it falls, I find, to your lot to give him the finishing stroke in verse, and write his elegy!" Mr. Hastings in reply confessed shame at feeling more of the pleasure of vanity in his friend's approbation of his ditty than an intimate consciousness of minor merit should have admitted. "But I have the subject of it ever at heart, and ludicrous as I may treat it, to get rid of reflections of a very different nature, I brood over it walking and sleeping, and cannot repress my astonishment that the rest of the world, those especially whom it most concerns, only sleep upon it. I am so much pleased with your emblem, that I have executed it, like the avatar of Krishna, coming out of a fish, with four arms and a sword, a book and a ship in three hands, the fourth marked with the wheel of sovereignty, the head crowned with a turret and a spire, the body armed, and the breast just emerging from the rib of the pen-but execrably performed-so I do not exhibit it to you. I should like to strike off 26 medals with the two devices, after the manner of Wilkins's remunerating medal, and to present them to the Directors, with two a piece to the chairs or (as that would cost money) to apply some ready made ballad tune to the elegy, and get some good voice to sing it by surprise at one of their official dinners at the London tavern. I think it would sing well: but as neither song normedal would avail to avert the impending catastrophe, I believe it would be best to confine its circulation to the little world of half a dozen inhabitants, who are in the patient habit of listening to such nonsense. If I should not be in at the death, bear witness that I foreboded it." In a poetical description of a storm in the 9th Nov. 1810, which was universal in its ruinous consequences throughout England, Mr. Hastings bewails the destruction of his fine grove of beeches. The storm-fiend is described as commanding the demons of the north to rush forth and destroy :: "Nor paus'd they but with loud and lengthen'd blow With unresisted might, and malice scurvy, Laid the chaste dryads (-O shame!) topsy turvy,-and there they lie." Mr. Hastings then asks his friend in prove, whether the beech tree in its native growth, has a tap root,-his having none. Mr. Halhed in reply confesses that he knows little more of beeches than as far as Tityrus might have instructed him. And then he goes on: * "But I remember formerly (for I once possessed and exercised a little of the locomotive faculty) to have been delighted with the beech groves of Buckinghamshire in taking the lower road to Oxford; but for many years I have only taken a second hand peep at them in Bath. Judge then with what sympathy I enjoy their lying round me in all the majesty of ruin. But, ah! my dear Sir, why disfigure so charming a composition with a line of doggrel ? Why suffer the intention of a couplet in mock-heroic to stand like a posture master among an assemblage of General officers? You must know the scurvy'd distich to which I allude. To go one step farther in animadversion, I take the liberty to hint that I do not perfectly comprehend the period of time described in the poem. The suppressions are undoubtedly of the highest classical authority and the turn exactly after the antique models: but how to adapt it to my homely calender is the question. Your storm is a matter of fact on the 9th of November, and you have fixed it as a storm forever on description. But when does it occur! I take it for granted you place Libra to September, and Scorpio to October, and this I shall let pass as current poetical astronomy. But what is meant by "eight times and eight ?" It puzzles me much, and yet perhaps the obscurity is all in my own noddle. How should I know what a tap-root is? There is generally a small door in an alehouse on which is written "the tap" and where I have hitherto supposed the beer was drawn ; * I so if beeches be liable to the process of bleeding, or tapping, as firs "Through the black Scorpion's range the circling sun, : 'Its owner stray; and crush him, if you will.' * Illegible. |