tiation. Such, for instance, as none of us liking wine or gravy; our utter repugnance to modern fashions in dress; our never wasting time in reading novels; our never going westward of Temple Bar, and our regularly going to afternoon church. But I cannot avoid mentioning that great men bear, at least in one point, a resemblance to great wits: I mean in the shortness of their memories. Bedford-square and a carriage have driven from my poor uncle's sensorium all geographical knowledge of City streets. He regularly asks me whether Limestreet is the second or third turning: affects to place Ironmonger's Hall in Bishopsgate-street; and tells me that, when he goes to receive his dividends at the India House, he constantly commits the error of directing his coachman to Whitechapel. Lord help me again! this from a man who, for the first ten years of his civic existence, threaded every nook and alley in the City, with a black pocket-book full of bills, as Dimsdale and Company's out-door clerk !

66

I yesterday overheard my maiden Aunt Susan giving a hint to some body, who shall be nameless, that Lady Sawyer, notwithstanding her five years abstinence, is certainly as women wish to be who love their lords." I mean to wait with exemplary patience to establish the fact, and to ascertain the sex of the infant. If it prove to be a male, I am of course cut out of the inheritance. In that case, I shall unquestionably throw off the mask, and venture to eat, drink, talk, and think for myself. At the very first uncle-given dinner, after that dénouement, I can assure you, Mr. Editor, that I shall hate parsnips, take two glasses of port wine, tilt the dish for gravy, see Simpson and Co. at least six times, and read every novel in Lane's Circulating List. I am, &c. ROBERT RANKIN.

PETER PINDARICS.

The Handkerchief.

A JUDGE of the Police and Spy

And

(For both are join'd in Eastern nations)
Prowling about with purpose sly,
To list to people's conversations,
pry in every corner cupboard,
According to his dirty calling,
Saw a poor woman passing by,
Who wept and blubber'd,

Like a church spout when rain is falling,
Which strives in vain to vent and utter
The overflowings of the gutter.

Our magistrate thought fit to greet her,
Insisting on the dame's declaring
What caused this monstrous ululation:
When she averr'd her spouse had beat her
Black and blue beyond all bearing,
Without the smallest provocation.

To work the Judge's pen and ink went,
Taking the rogue's address and trade,
And the next morning the delinquent
Was duly into Court convey'd :
When he asserted, that his wife
Was such an advocate of strife,

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子

That she would raise a mighty clangour,

"

And put herself into a pucker,
For trifles that surpass'd belief,
And, for the recent cause of anger,

He swore, point blank, that he had struck her
With nothing but his handkerchief.

The Judge, convinced by this averment,
Dismiss'd the case without a word;"

When in the Court there rose a ferment,oga gift
And the wife's angry voice was heard
"To cheat your Worship is too bad!

My Lord, my Lord! do interpose,

And stop the knave where'er he lingers;
The villain! he forgot to add

That he for ever blows his nose

With his own fingers!"

The Jester condemned to Death.

ONE of the Kings of Scanderoon,
A royal Jester,

Had in his train a gross buffoon,
Who used to pester

The Court with tricks inopportune,
Venting on the highest folks his
Scurvy pleasantries and hoaxes.

It needs some sense to play the fool,
Which wholesome rule

Occurr'd not to our jackanapes,

Who consequently found his freaks
Lead to innumerable scrapes,

And quite as many kicks and tweaks,
Which only seem'd to make him faster
Try the patience of his master,
Some sin at last, beyond all measure,
Incurr'd the desperate displeasure

Of his Serene and raging Highness.
Whether he twitch'd his most revered
And sacred beard,

Or had intruded on the shyness

Of the Seraglio, or let fly

An epigram at royalty,

None knows ;-his sin was an occult one;

But records tell us that the Sultan,

Meaning to terrify the knave,

Exclaim'd-" "Tis time to stop that breath;

Thy doom is seal'd:-presumptuous slave!
Thou stand'st condemn'd to certain death.
Silence, base rebel !—no replying !—
But such is my indulgence still,
That of my own free grace and will,
I leave to thee the mode of dying."

1

SHAKSPEARE'S POEMS.

I OFTEN find a pleasant literary recreation in turning back to those neglected works of great men, that rank but secondary in merit to the performances from which they have derived a lasting reputation. Their earliest works, in which may be traced the unfoldings of future greatness, are to me particularly interesting, and shadow forth to imagination the intervening gradations by which they mounted to eminence. By most readers these are passed over, and in some instances forgotten, in the splendid labours of brighter and more mature genius. Yet if the study of the mind of man in its progressive advances be worthy of particular attention, and no one will affirm that it is not, nothing will better serve to develope its movements than a perusal of this part of our literature. The blaze of glory which encircles the dramatic writings of Shakspeare, has eclipsed his earlier poems, and few have ever read them through; yet they are not without great merit, and some of them are remarkable in that the traces of passages in his more celebrated works may be met with among them. It appears as if the first and last literary labours of Shakspeare had not been dramatic. Some of his sonnets prove (though he must have died in ignorance of the extent of his own great fame, and even without a guess at the lofty situation he was to occupy in the temple of immortality) that he had prophetic feelings that he should be remembered by his writings; for he plainly shews them in several places in those his last published works, written, perhaps, during his retirement at Stratford-on-Avon, when he had ceased to be concerned with the metropolitan theatre. He says in his fifty-fifth sonnet

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, &c.

Venus and Adonis appeared in 1593; his "Rape of Lucrece," in the following year. Romeo and Juliet can only be traced with certainty to the year 1595. These poems were therefore his first productions, and had he not written for the theatre, would have given him no inconsiderable reputation among the writers of his day, though they have been naturally thrown into shade by the dazzling lustre of his dramatic productions.

Johnson says that the dawn of Paradise Lost is to be found in Comus, and it is also certain that Shakspeare's knowledge of the human mind, and his wonderful skill in delineating the workings of passion, are to be clearly discovered in his Venus and Adonis. This poem, we are told, went through six impressions in thirteen years. Its whole cast is in unison with the taste of the time, and was suggested to its author, as some think, by the third book of the Fairy Queen. He calls it himself "the first heir of his invention." The subject forbade any delineation of manners; but the spell by which this poet above all others, commanded the mysterious emotions of the heart to come before him embodied in language, was never more potent than in the description of the love of Venus for her favourite.

This composition is agreeable to the coarseness of manners in the time of Elizabeth, being deficient in that delicacy which has happily been introduced by modern refinement. It is rather for the purpose of directing attention to the links which connect incipient genius with

maturity--the character of primitive attempts with more finished excellencies-to shew how the poet's genius may be traced from its juvenility to manhood, and to display, besides his surprising knowledge of our common nature, the great power of description of the author in his first productions, that I would draw the attention of the reader to this poem. It is not a proper book to be in all hands, and of late years has not been much read; nor can it be so in future, because it is out of keeping with our times, and is on a subject which the most pure pen could scarcely be expected to delineate and escape the censure of conveying indelicate impressions. It is to be perused by the discriminating and curious in literature, rather than by those who seek amusement only.

The story is simple:-Adonis goes to the chase, Venus meets him, and discovers her passion for him, which he resists-he is killed by a boar, and the goddess laments over him. There are a number of those quaint figures and conceits in the poem which appear in his dramatic works. Where Venus solicits a kiss of the youth, he is said to

raise his chin,

Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave;

and of the dimples on Adonis's cheek

Love made those hollows, if himself were slain,

He might be buried in a tomb so simple:

Foreknowing well if there he came to lie,

Why there Love lived, and there he could not die.

The love of the goddess, her fruitless efforts to move the obdurate heart of the youth, her actions, her addresses to him, her solicitations, her ungovernable passion, have never been exceeded in truth and force of description by any poet. There is every where in the picture easy and beautiful drawing. In colouring, the artist knew every rainbow hue in nature, and dispensed all with the prodigality and confidence of a master. It satiates the eye with richness, but it is not overwrought; and, in contemplating it, one is more than ever disposed to wonder by what means the painter could have acquired such a knowledge of the subject and its details, unless he felt himself all which he represents others as feeling, and depicted every separate emotion as it arose in his own bosom. There is great inequality in the poem: some parts are written with carelessness, and are unvaried and formal; others are exquisitely beautiful. It is a work of genius not touched by a hand of critical skill and learning, but left with its sharpness of mould and defects of casting about it, noble in outline, and graceful in proportion.

Some of the descriptive passages are of rare elegance, as that where Venus recommends herself to Adonis, and describes the ethereal nature of love.

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green;
Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell❜d hair,
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.
Love is a spirit all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie,

These forceless flowers, like sturdy trees, support me :

Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky
From morn till night, e'en where I list to sport me.
Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be,
That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee?

The following is almost the "good night" in Romeo and Juliet :

Now let me say "good night," and so say you:

If

you will say so, you shall have a kiss.

"Good night," quoth she, and ere he says adieu !ezedT The honey fee of parting tender'd is.

Is there any thing surpassing the picture of the horse of Adonis to be met with in the English language? The character, temper, and description of the animal, are wonderfully vigorous and spirited. Tə my feeling there is no pen, ancient or modern, that has more happily drawn that noble animal, except Job, whom the Poet doubtless had in his eye. As but few of my readers may recollect this description, I will give it here.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,

And now his woven girts he breaks asunder;

The bearing earth, with his hard hoof he wounds,
Whose hollow womb resounds like Heaven's thunder;
The iron bit he crushes 'tween his teeth,
Controlling what he was controlled with.

His ears up-prick'd, his braided hanging mane
Upon his compass'd crest now stands on end:
His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,
As from a furnace, vapours doth he send :
His eye, which glisters scornfully, like fire,
Shews his hot courage, and his high desire.
Sometimes he trots, as if he told the steps,
With gentle majesty, and modest pride;
Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,

As who should say, "Lo! thus my strength is try'd:
And thus I do to captivate the eye

Of the fair breeder that is standing by."

What recketh he his rider's angry stir,

His flatt' ring holla, or his stand, I say?
What cares he now for curb or pricking spur?
For rich caparisons or trappings gay?
He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.
Look when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed :
So did his horse excel a common one
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.
Round-hoof'd, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide;
Look what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather.

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