tuberant stomach; let no man reckon upon immortality who cannot distinctly feel and reckon his own ribs; for the thinnest bow GOOD LIVING ESSENTIAL TO XCVII.) "Ex tout pour la trippe."-Rabelais. "New shoots the farthest, and the leanest horse (From the New Monthly Magazine. —No. generally wins the race. If I were a publisher, I should invariably fight shy of the "fair round belly with good capon lined," and immediately offer a handsome price to the Living Skeleton for his memoirs. They would have a run, and they would deserve it; for we may be assured that they would exhibit none of the faults pointed out in my motto. All bone, muscle, and nerve, they would be doubly acceptable to a public which has lately been overwhelmed with such a mass of flesh, fat, and flummery. Nothing fat ever yet enlightened the world; for even in a tallow candle the illumination springs from the thin wick. In the mysterious reciprocal action of the mind upon the body, and of the body upon the mind, it is impossible to say how intimately the mere quality of our food, without reference to its quantity, may affect every thing that we write. By longing for some particular viand or fruit, a mother will, through some inscrutable process of nature, indelibly stamp it upon her unborn child; and may not men, by the kind of nutriment upon which they subsist, while teeming with some literary work, communicate a similar impress to the offspring of their brain? Di. versity of diet may even plausibly explain the various characteristics of national litera- wild birds and wild beasts which constitute "Well observe Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight." New Monthly Mag. SIR-I have long regarded the to the revival and dissemination of one of those old women's prejudices, which, as I thought, had been finally consigned by the all the Capulets. How your correspondent succeeded in thus "imposing on your religion" (as the French phrase it), and making you the instrument for propagating his illi beral doctrine, I know not; but I am sure that your indignation will be aroused at his trickery, and that you will, in the language of popular oratory, "fling from you with scorn" the imputation of participating in his arm of "the schoolmaster" to the tomb of abominable sentiments. The doctrine to which I allude, and which it is the business of this letter to impugn, is that "Good Living is the Cause of Bad Writing," a proposition so false, scandalous, and detestable, that if I were not the most charitable of disputants, I should incontinently set down its admission into your pages as the result of a design in the publisher to bring down the price of literary articles in the market, and to place his contributors on the footing of the ordinary writers for those catch-penny publications which are born and die within the twelvemonth. Of this, however, I must in justice acquit him, and at once acknowledge that Mr. Colburn is as little likely to conceive such a plot as you would be to lend yourself to its execution. No, Sir, the sinister design, whatever it may be, rests wholly with the writer of the article; and if he can forgive himself for the printing of it, why all I can say is may Heaven forgive him also. Among all the worn-out crotchets which formed part and parcel of the wisdom of our ancestors, this notion of the necessity for starving the stomach to sharpen the wits, is the most thoroughly contradicted by facts. But facts are stubborn things; and it is not a quotation from Shakspeare (poets, you will excuse me, are not always the very best of philosophers), no, nor a misapplication of a text from Scripture, that will make good the ground against them. The whole argument, indeed, rests upon that common and very obvious sophism, an induction from abuse to use; an inference, because the overloaded stomach of an alderman or a pluralist may oppress his intellects and obfuscate his wit, that therefore a writer must be put on short commons, and "robbed of his fair proportions" of the good things of this world, if he means to shine in his vocation. Notwithstanding the formal protest to the contrary, the whole reasoning of your correspondent sums itself up in this point. But not only is his reasoning inconclusive; his facts themselves are not correct. 66 gies to the sticking-place. How much the practice of eating contributes to the perfection of the intellectuals, appears in the universal usage amongst Englishmen of meeting all their difficulties at the table. Is benevolence to be excited? a public dinner is got up. Is the liberty of the country in danger? men flock to the tavern. Is a joint stock com"Pay-pany to be formed? the matter is naturally enough discussed over haunches of venison and ribs of beef. Are the lights of evangelical Christianity to be forced through the impenetrable skulls of the priest-ridden, pauper, papistical peasants of Ireland? Lord Farnham, with a science which cannot be too much praised, finds his way to their brains through their stomachs, insinuates the thirty-nine articles between the folds of a sandwich, and prepares his "gentle convertites" for grace, by the satisfactory preliminary of an orthodox dinner. ment by the sheet," he says, "has tempted men to scribble by the furlong: they have acquired riches, and money has made them luxurious." Now I ask you, Mr. Editor, did ever mortal man get inordinately rich by writing by the sheet? Did ever any of your most enlightened and valuable correspondents," from A to Z inclusive, die of an apoplexy, or even require an annual bleeding? What! Sir, is it because the periodicals have latterly teemed with articles on gastronomy, and because Ude and Very have become house hold words with "the inditers of good matter," does your correspondent imagine, that these bobadils of the stomach write with knowledge of the subject, and really can distinguish between a soubise and a fricandeau ? Condorcet has well remarked that mankind preserve their errors long after they have recognised the elementary truths necessary for their correction. The physiology of the stomach was not so ill understood even by the Greek physicians, but that the true relation of eating to wit might have been demonstrated to evidence. Aretæus calls the digestive organ, with singular felicity, the "leader or general of our pleasures and pains ;" and shows that all the other functions of the body are well or ill discharged, according as it fares with the great choregus of the microcosm. With this, all experience agrees. The English, as we well know, cannot fight on an empty stomach; but "feel their courage ooze out" at their præcordia, if its egress be not prevented by a superstratum of good beef and pudding in the epigastric region. But if the other organs do not work well, without a good dinner, it is monstrous to suppose that the brain will, which every anatomical tyro can tell you consumes one sixth of the entire blood in the circulation! Voltaire, who ought to understand the subject as well as most people, was of a different opinion. But Voltaire, your correspondent assures us, was a meagre-faced writer; and so, too, were Pope, Cicero, and Demosthenes. To this I answer, that the thinnest people are proverbially the greatest feeders; whereas corpulent persons are often but puny and delicate eaters. As for Lord Byron, who is also quoted against me, no one has sung so divinely as he the praises of lobster-salads and champagne, of hock and soda water. Besides, he avowed himself that he wrote best under the inspiration of brandy; plain beef and mutton, nay, epigrams d'agneau and mulligatawny, not being a diet sufficiently stimulating to screw his mental ener "For modes of faith let zealots fight; But if the proof of the pudding be in the eating, where do we hear such splendid eloquence as at public feasts? Where is wit more brilliant than at the festive board? Where is courage more obtrusively conspicuous than when men are pot-valiant ? Pitt never attacked a question of finance under at least a magnum bonum of port, and the strength of his wine well explains the strength of his measures, and his "vigour beyond the laws." Sheridan's nose also bore ample testimony as to the hippocrene at which he sought his inspiration; and the beef-steaks at Bellamy's may be fairly asserted to influence the votes of the honourable house at least as much as the sarcasm of Brougham, the arithmetic of Hume, or the luminous details and lucid order of Mr. Goulburn. The belly, Petronius tells us, is a master of arts. It is the common centre where all desires spring, to which all our actions tend; and there can be little doubt that those philosophers are right who have made it the seat of the soul. The great end of liberty itself (without which there is no fine writing), is that every man may eat as well as he can. To assert that authors write in the inverse ratio of their payment, is to fly in the face of all political economy, which places the stimulus to industry in the remuneration. Were this otherwise, why should the terms Grub-street and Garreteer be such reproaches in literature? Is it not plainly intended that he, whose poverty reduces him to watery potations, can know little of the facundi calices; and that a beggarly fellow, who lives on cow-heel, cannot possibly produce a line that is worth the reading? What also, in the name of common sense, would be the use of cabinet dinners, if good an eating did not sharpen the wits of his Majesty's trusty cousins and counsellors? or why should Parliament sit at such unseasonable hours, if it were not that questions and dinners might be digested together; and that the nation may have all the benefit of the good things it so liberally supplies to the borough autocrats? If the matter might be decided by authority, the preponderance of examples would be greatly in my favour. Ovid, Horace, and Virgil, all frequented the tables of the great; Cato warmed his virtue with wine; Shakspeare kept up his verve with stolen venison; Steele and Addison wrote their best papers over a bottle; Sir Walter Scott is famed for good housekeeping, and I know authors who love to dine like lords. Even booksellers do their spiriting more gently for good fare, and bid for an author the most spiritedly after dinner. Manes of the immortal Athenæus! look down from your quiet seat at the symposia of the gods, and vindicate the honour of your deipnosophistical philosophy! If "Cervantes wrote his immortal work in prison, if the author of Gil Blas lived in great poverty," what would not their writings have been if they had dined with Beauvilliers and supped with Crockford? And as for Miiton's receiving but ten pounds for his Paradise Lost, that is the best reason I ever heard for that glorious poem being so overcharged with scholastic divinity. I should know "heavy-wit" man at the third line; and I can tell to a nicety when Theodore Hook writes upon claret, and when he is inspired by the over-heating and acrimonious stimulus of Max. Hayley obviously composed upon tea and bread and butter. Dr. Philpots may be nosed a mile off for priestly port and the fat bulls of Basan; and Southey's Quarterly articles are written on an empty stomach, and before his crudities, like the breath of Sir Roger de Coverley's barber, have been "mollified by a breakfast." When time shall serve, I will send for your private perusal a conjectural menu of the New Monthly," and prove to a nicety the influence of diet in style, by showing which of your writers addict themselves to the first course, which betray the strongest relish of game, and whose whipped-syllabub articles are produced by a sedulous study of the works of Gunter. There is much more than a bad pun, Sir, in asserting that certain writers are soup or fish all in their feeding, and there is more "den some person vil tink" in the phrase of a pudding-headed blunderer. It is time, however, to have done. This letter has grown to an unconscionable length, and I shall conclude with simply reducing the argument ad absurdum; If bad pay produces good writing, then that article must be the best which is not paid for at all. Now, every editor knows that gratuitous articles are worth just the price that VOL. I. 2Z their contributors affix on them; or rather that they do so much mischief to the miscellany in which they appear, that they are dearer than the highest priced communication which the most spirited publisher would venture to bid for. I disdain to employ the argumentum ad hominem, or I might ask how the gentleman would like you, Sir, to take him at his word, and reduce the remuneration for his articles to his own tariff? THE THEATRE. (From the London Magazine.-No. X.) "Ower mony masters-ower mony masters; as the toad said to the harrow, when ilka tooth gave it a tug."--SCOTT. 66 MANY and plausible are the reasons assigned for the decline of the dramatic art in England. My own theory on the subjectone singularly obnoxious to the spirit of the times-is, that since actors and actresses have written themselves "the servants of the public," instead of " His Majesty's Servants," they have been good for little: I was about to say for nothing, but the names of Charles Kemble, Young, and Farren, rose in judgment against the word. In the mean time, Ude and late dinners-turnpike acts and early debates-the gradual journey of the metropolis "Westward Ho !"—and the increase and splendour of private entertainments, are alternately assigned by the managers as an apology for their beggarly account of empty boxes," and the equally beggarly condition of their inhabited ones; and at length wearied of catering for reluctant guests-despairing of winning back my Lord Duke and Sir Harry to their Salmi de bécasses and Chambertin, they are forced in their own despite to spread their board with half-raw beef, and heavy pudding, liquified with "the comfortable creature small beer," to recreate the voracious throats of Alderman Gobble in the dress-circle, and honest John Tompkins in the pit; nay! to provide still filthier cates for the obscene maw of the nameless rabble of the two shilling gallery! These, say they, are the veritable and sole remaining patrons of the drama. The evil thus insured is necessarily reciprocal. The scattered remnant of amateurs of the legitimate drama, forming a respectable minority, are driven from their post of observation by the perpetual glare and tumult and flippant coarseness of the modern stage: and the dramatic art is finally abandoned operetta, melo-drama-farces worthy of the suburbs-and worse than all— to Shakspeare's matchless text, wafted "upon a jig to heaven!". And all this because the actors are the servants of the public-of the many headed monster, John Bull: who to loves to welcome "Cherry Ripe" in the midst of a Roman tragedy-who endures the "Hypocrite" only for the sake of Mawworm's blasphemous parody-and insists upon hearing "Kate the curst" scold, in three sharps, to Rodwell's measures. "They do these things better in France," and excellently well in Germany; and those who are inclined to hear Shakspeare genuine, uninterpolated Shakspeare-Shylock without variations, and Parolles without a song, may visit Vienna; and in the classical adjustment of costume, and purity of delivery, believe the days of Clive, Barry, Garrick, and the Kembles come again. I have seen the "Merchant of Venice" and "All's Well that Ends Well," represented there in the very perfection of art; and to audiences so deeply interested, that not a whisper interrupted the performance. But then the boxes were private boxes-the pit was filled with a highly respectable classthe arduous and emulous actors were "His Imperial Majesty's Servants," and His Imperial Majesty himself was an unobtrusive but attentive spectator. On the continent, the higher order of players are literally the king's servants; paid in great part by the king's wages; subdued into decency by the king's presence; and secure, through the king's liberality, of a competence for their old age. A pension waits upon their retirement from the stage, and a prison upon their misconduct while they still tread the boards. Under this excitement of rewards and punishments, no doubles are forced upon the endurance of the yawning public-the stage never "waits," the heroine of the drama does not presume to be "oblivious,"-nor the hero to be "much be-mused in port;" the soubrette does not coquet with the pit, nor play fantastic tricks before high Heaven to provoke the thunders of the gods;-old Capulet's mantle is not put on awry, nor his shoes "unpinked i'the heel;" for be it observed, that none are more truly submissive to the public, than the king's servants. Clarion, the proudest Semiramis that 'ever declaimed from a throne, was sentenced to a week at Fort l'évêque as a penalty for impertinence. It is, unfortunately, an established dogma of modern times, that the English are not a play-going nation-to which it might be added-in England; for throughout France, Italy, and Germany, experience proves them to be the most determined frequenters of the theatre from high to low-from the Scala and St. Carlos, to the Ambigu Comique, or the Leopoldstadt. But there they are not compelled to rise at an earlier hour than usual in order to travel to the play in time for the overture; nor to sit six consecutive hours upon a wooden bench, deafened by the hammering of sticks and iron heels, or cries of "Box-keeper," and "Turn him out." It is not, however, necessary to cross the Is channel in order to note the theatrical propensities of the English nation. Let us examine the audiences collected by Laporte at the English Opera House; or those attracted to the King's Theatre by the performances of Georges, and of Mars. it to be supposed, that the mere fact of listening to a French play is a sufficient attraction to the higher orders of London society? or shall reason prompt us to acknowledge that they are easily and cheerfully congregated by the sight and sound of genuine tragedy, comedy, and farce ?—that an English theatre, established at the west end of the town, upon the system of the Théatre de Madame, at Paris, the performances to be restricted between the hours of eight and eleven, would be eminently successful-that its boxes would be permanently engaged, and creditably filled; and that even royalty itself, when unconstrained by the formalities of bespeaking a play, and calling out the household troops as an escort through St. Giles's, would probably seek a refined relaxation within its walls. At Covent Garden, or Drury Lane, setting the mischiefs of their remote locality aside, a reform of the abuses sanctified by time and custom is altogether impossible. John Kemble, wisely conscious of the advantage he should derive from a more enlightened auditory, extended the proportion of private boxes; and the denizens of the pit and gallery, to whom the subject was manifestly indifferent, since it trenched not upon their interests, resisted the innovation by a branch uproar of the O. P. row. At present the magnitude of the houses-the responsibility of the managers to the proprietors-and the bottomless pits which engulph their common understanding, forbid all hope of amendment. With regard to the authorship of the patent theatres, the instructions of a popular manager to his literary factors is well known: "Remember you are writing for an English pit, which is so stupid a brute, that you must arrest its attention by saying now they are going to do so and so-now they are doing it-now they have done it;' or you never will make your plot sufficiently distinct." And are we to be yoked to the stumbling pace of this stupid brute;-to be assigned un-pit-ied this bitter pittance? Peerage, and Baronetage, and Squirearchy, and Westminster-Hall-to the rescue! 6 But, in sober earnest, what author, even unshackled by managerial counsels, or of the highest individual calibre, would presume to consult his own good sense in treating with an audience? He knows by fatal experience that delicate wit, if pointed with elegance, is not broad enough for the lamp; that an emulation, or even a translation of Scribe's brilliant couplets, would be utterly lost at Covent-Garden, unless he could borrow Garagantua's mouth to render is audible? and even then, its most biting traits would be lost amid the labyrinth of cadences required by the Rossinists of the upper gallery. He knows that delicate sentiments are prohibited at the winter theatres, where the spectators never cry unless they see a qualifying strip of green baize upon the boards, or laugh unless burlesque wigs or waistcoats announce that the dialogue is comical. He knows that honest Bull who weeps at Cato's soliloquy, would witness the parting of Michel et Christine unmoved; nor allow the Femme-Chatte to have earned her title, till she had coursed, and caught, and devoured a mouse before their eyes. Paul Pry's umbrella is worth both the prose and the verse of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme. in his estimation. But how are the claims of those brick and mortar Mammoths (the winter theatres) to be evaded; how is the clamorous roar of the indignant proprietors to be silenced? Alas! if the iron chain of monopoly were indissoluble, what had become of spinning-jennies and steam packets, of patent corkscrews and jointed clogs?—the introduction of all and each of which was injurious to some old-established interest. I doubt, however, whether old Drury or Covent-Garden would lose thirty auditors a-night by the innovation. They would remain in undisturbed possession of the city and the standing army; besides the uncounted multitude of amateurs of Christmas pantomimes, Easter spectacles, Farley and melodrama, Braham and the cantabile edition of Shakspeare. In the meantime an agreeable délassement for the weary hour between coffee and the réveil of Musard and Collinet, would be provided for the polite parishes of St. James, St. George, and St. Mary. Much green tea and much scandal would become superfluous; "the bubbling and loud hissing urn" would no longer make the mournful music of the monotonous drawing-room; cutlets would be unconsciously digested during an interesting catastrophe, and Paris and Abernethy have written in vain; domestic squabbles would be soothed or silenced by the sweet murmurs of Stephens, or the exciting animation of Jones; the Oriental Club and the Traveller's would be thinned as instantaneously as a Newmarket jockey; and the inauspicious query of "How goes the enemy?" would become an obsolete sound between twilight and moonlight at the west end of the metropolis. Scott himself, when undismayed by the terrors of a savage audience, might recant his vow; and, writing for the stage, form a new era in our literature the third effected by his fruitful pen; while Moore and Hope, and the authors of Matilda, Granby, and Pelham, might renew the triumphs of Farquhar and Congreve, and renovate a decayed branch of the dramatic laurel. And as a theatre of this description should especially exclude every thing offensive to decency, to good morals, and good taste, it is to be expected that it would meet with no opposition from the constituted guardians of the interests of the public. THE METEMPSYCHOSIS. A TALE OF A MODERN PYTHAGOREAN. CHAPTER I. A SLIGHT shudder came over me as I was entering the inner-court of the College of Gottingen. It was, however, but momentary; and on recovering from it, I felt both taller, and heavier, and altogether more vigorous than the instant before. Being rather nervous, I did not much mind these feelings, im. puting them to some sudden determination to the brain, or some unusual beating about the heart, which had assailed me suddenly, and as suddenly left me. On proceeding, I met a student coming in the opposite direction. I had never seen him before, but as he passed me by, he nodded, familiarly-"here is a fine day, Wolstang."-"What does this fellow mean?" said I to myself. "He speaks to me with as much ease as if I had been his intimate acquaintance. And he calls me Wolstang-a person to whom I bear no more resemblance than to the man in the moon." I looked after him. for some time, pondering whether I should call him back and demand resolution, he was out of my sight. an explanation; but before I could form any An notice of the circumstance, I went on. Thinking it needless to take any further other student, whom I did not know, now passed me.-" Charming weather, Wolstang."-" Wolstang again!" said I'; "this is insufferable. Hollo, I say! what do you mean?" But at this very moment he entered the library, and either did not hear my voice, or paid no attention to it. As I was standing in a mood between rage and vexation, a batch of collegians came up, talking loud and laughing. Three, with whom I was intimately acquainted, took no notice of me; while two, to whom I was totally unknown, saluted me with "Good morning, Wolstang." One of these latter, after having passed me a few yards, turned round and cried out, "Wolstang, your cap is awry." I did not know what to make of this pre.. posterous conduct. Could it be premeditated? It was hardly possible, or I must have discovered the trick in the countenances of those who addressed me. Could it be that they really mistook me for Wolstang? This was still more incredible, for Wolstang was fully six inches taller, four stones heavier, and ten years older than I. I found myself in a maze |