SCENE IV. Scene-Sir Frederick's Lodging. Enter DUFOY and CLARK. Clark. I wonder Sir Frederick stays out so late. Dufoy. Dis is noting; six, seven o'clock in the morning is ver good hour. Clark. I hope he does not use these hours often. Dufoy. Some six, seven time a veek; no oftiner. Dufoy. Matré Clark, to divertise you, I vill tell you, how I did get be acquainted vid dis Bedlam Matré. About two, tree year ago me had for my convenience discharge myself from attending (Enter a foot boy) as Matré D'ostel to a person of condition in Parie; it hapen after de dispatch of my little affairé. Foot B. That is, after h'ad spent his money, Sir. Dufoy. Jan foutré de lacque; me vil have vip and de belle vor your breeck, rogue. Foot B. Sir, in a word, he was a Jack-pudding to a mountebank, and turned off for want of wit: my master picked him up before a puppet-show, mumbling a half-penny custard, to send him with a letter to the post. Dufoy. Morbleu, see, see de insolence of de foot boy English, bogre, rascale, you lie, begar I vill cutté your troaté. [Exit Foot Boy. Clark. He's a rogue; on with your story, Monsieur. Dufoy. Matré Clark, I am your ver humble serviteur; but begar me have no patience to be abusé. As I did say, after de dispatché of my affairé, von day being idele, vich does producé the mellanchollique, I did valké over de new bridge in Parie, and to divertise de time, and my more serious toughté, me did look to see de marrioneté, and de jack-pudding, vich did play hundred pretty trické; time de collation vas come; and vor I had no company, I was unvilling to go to de Cabareté, but did buy a darriolé, littel custardé vich did satisfie my appetite ver vel in dis time young Monsieur de Grandvil (a jentelman of ver great quality, van dat vas my ver good friendé, and has done me : ver great and insignal faveure) come by in his caroche vid dis Sir Frolick, who did pention at the same academy, to learn de language, de bon mine, de great horse, and many oder trické. Monsieur seeing me did make de bowe and did becken me to come to him: he did tellé me dat de Englis jentelman had de lettre vor de posté, and did entreate me (if I had de opportunity) to see de lettre deliveré: he did tellé me too, it vold be ver great obligation de memory of de faveurs I had received from his famelyé, beside de inclination I naturally have to servé de strangeré, made me returné de complemen vid ver great civility, and so I did take de lettre and see it deliveré. Sir Frolick perceiving (by de management of dis affairé) dat I vas man d'esprit, and of vitté, did entreaté me to be his serviteur; me did take d'affection to his personé, and was contenté to live vid him, to counsel and advise him. You see now de lie of de bougre de lacque Englishe, morbleu. Evidence. When I was at Malta, there happened a drunken squabble on the road between Valette and St. Antonio, between a party of soldiers and another of sailors. They were brought before me on the next morning, and the great effect which their intoxication had produced on their memory, and the little or no effect on their courage in giving evidence, may be seen by the following specimen. The soldiers swore that the sailors were the first aggressors, and had assaulted them with the following words: your eyes! &c. who stops the line of march there?" The sailors with equal vehemence and unanimity averred, that the soldiers were the first aggressors, and had burst in on them calling out "Heave to, you lubbers! or we'll run you down." 66 Force of Habit. An Emir had bought a left eye of a glass eye-maker, supposing that he would be able to see with it. The man begged him to give it a little time: he could not expect that it would see all at once as well as the right eye, which had been for so many years in the habit of it. Phoenix. The phoenix lives a thousand years, a secular bird of ages;" and there is never more than one at a time in the world. Yet Plutarch very gravely informs us, that the brain of the phoenix is a pleasant bit, but apt to occasion the head-ache. By the by, there are few styles that are not fit for something. I have often wished to see Claudian's splendid poem on the Phoenix translated into English verse in the elaborate rhyme and gorgeous diction of Darwin. Indeed Claudian throughout would translate better than any of the ancients. Memory and Recollection. Beasts and babies remember, that is, recognize: man alone recollects. This distinction was made by Aristotle. Aliquid ex Nihilo. In answer to the nihil e nihilo of the atheists, and their near relations, the anima-mundi men, a humourist pointed to a white blank in a rude wood-cut, which very ingeniously served for the head of hair in one of the figures. Beards. "There is a female saint, whom the Jesuit Sautel, in his Annus Sacer Poeticus, has celebrated for her beard—a mark of divine favour* bestowed upon her for her prayers."—R. S. * Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixere! What! can nothing be one's own? This is the more vexatious, for at the age of eighteen I lost a . . . for the following epigram 1 Two or three words are cut away here, as also in the verses, for which we have suggested a substitute in a parenthesis. on my godmother's beard, which she had the barbarity to revenge by striking me out of her will: "So great the charms of Mrs. Monday, "Nor vainly she address'd her prayer, "Still persevere ! to love be callous! Henry More's Song of the Soul. “There is* perhaps no other poem in existence, which has so little that is good in it, if it has anything good."-R. S. * 27 Dec., 1819. Mr. (J. H.) Frere, of all men eminently piλokaλos, of the most exquisite taste, observed this very day to me how very grossly Southey had wronged this poem. I cannot understand in what mood Southey could have been: it is so unlike him.-C. MS. "He soon begins to imitate John Bunyan in his nomenclature;—but oh! what an imitation of that old king of the tinkers!" -R. S. *False, cruelly false! Again and again I puzzle myself to guess in what most un-Southeyan mood Southey could have been, when he thought and wrote the above !—And the phrase, old king of the Tinkers! applied to the author of the inimitable Pilgrim's Progress, that model of beautiful, pure, and harmonious English, no less than of still higher merits, outrages my moral taste.-C. MS. "The following* extract is the best specimen that can be given of the strain of feeling, which Henry More could express in no better language than an inharmonious imitation of Spenser's, barbarized by the extremes of carelessness the most licentious, and erudition the most pedantic."-R. S. * After so very sharp a censure, of the justice of which the following extract is to be the proof, who would have expected a series of stanzas for the greater part at least so chaste in language, and easy in versification? Southey must have wearied himself out with the poem, till the mist from its swamps and stagnants had spread over its green and flowery plots and bowers.-C. MS. The Stigmata. "In intolerant and barbarous bigotry, indeed, the writer is only surpassed by the Eclectic reviewer, who affirms that 'thousands of unhappy spirits and thousands yet to increase their number, will everlastingly look back with unutterable anguish on the nights and days on which Shakspere * ministered to their guilty delights.'"-R. S. *"Churlish Priest! A blessed angel shall my sweet Shakspere be, Brevity of the Greek and English Compared.1 As an instance of compression and brevity in narration, unattainable in any language but the Greek, the following distich was quoted : χρυσὸν ἀνὴρ εὑρὼν, ἔλιπε βρόχον· αὐτὰρ ὁ χρυσὸν, 1 One of H. N. Coleridge's additions. |