and Greek Hebrew, might just as well-I don't know what I was going to say-might just as well not essay to decide the intertangled disputes on the authenticity of Aristotle's Poetics, in their present state, or to supersede Dr. Burney's Tentamen de Metris Eschyli.-I confess that the former member of the above sentence is not preparative, ad modum Scholarum, to the final one; but never mind, it is the last time I shall ever cudgel my brains for a meaning, or you yours,-to find it out.-There's something in that-isn't there? Odds bobs! lo-another digression, I fear! which arises like a stream from a triple fountain-pipe, out of three incidents at my left hand, viz. a dish of strong coffee, a plate of crisp muffins, buttered to a fraction, and a glass of ruby Rosolio,-which is a vulgar-luscious-meretricious liqueur! (there! it's despatched). One table-spoonful of Johnson's fiftyyears-old pale Cogniac is worth a case full of the sickly Italian. Now, clear away these !-and-don't disturb me again till the last thing! when you can just warm me up an oyster pâté. Call the dog away with you! she snores, deuce take her, and puts me out. Now, brother administrators to periodical delight-ye who rifle the fresh dewy (a matter-of-fact fellow would substitute dank) beauties of the Magazine one day before all the rest of the world!-be so kind as to read the next line or two over, till convinced of their rationality. Stand not on the order of your nominations! If I had acquaintance with your names, I would say my little say, and take my leave alphabetically. If I had the requisite judgment, ye should be arranged according to style and respective eminence therein or if my pate had the bump of calculation, (such a bump exists;) the paginary amount of your Jucubrations should determine precedence. Being deficient in all these requisites for a lucidus ordo, I shall trust to circumstances (my usual way), and esteem my disarray un beau désordre, as the French wiseacres have dubbed the surviving lyrics of the Theban Swan. And first, then, for JOHN CLARE; for first doth he stand in the sixth volume. 66 Princely Clare," as Elia would call thee, some three hours after the cloth was drawn-Alas! good Clare, never again shall thou and he engage in those high combats, those wit-fights! Never shall his companionable draught cause thee an after-look of anxiety into the tankard!-no more shall he, pleasantly-malicious, make thy ears tingle, and thy cheeks glow, with the sound of that perplexing constrainment! that conventional gaggingbill!-that Grammar!! till in the bitterness of thy heart thou cursedst Lindley Murray by all the stars.— Not once again shall thy sweetlysimple Doric phrase and accent beget the odious pun. Thou mayest imbibe thy ale in peace, and defy Priscian unchecked,-for Priscian's champion is gone!-Elia is gone!Little didst thou think that evening would be the last, when thou and I, and two or three more, Messer Brunetto, Dugdale Redivivus, T-that anthery Cicero, parted with the humanity-loving Elia beneath the chaste beams of the watery moon, warmed with his hearty cheer-the fragrant steam of his "great plant,"-his savoury conversation, and the genuine good-nature of his cousin Bridget gilding all. There was something solemn in the manner of our clasping palms,-it was first "hands round," then "hands across."-That same party shall never meet again!— But pardon, gracious Spirit! that I thus, but parenthetically, memorize thee-yet a few more lines shall flow to thy most embalmed remembrance. Rest then awhile! One word at parting, John Clare! and if a strange one, as a stranger give it welcome. I have known jovial nights-felt deeply the virtues of the grape and the barleycorn-I have co-operated in "the sweet wicked catches" 'bout the chimes at twelve, yet I say to theevisit London seldom-shutting close thy ears in the abounding company of empty scoffers,-ever holding it in thy inmost soul, that love and perfect trust, not doubt, is the germ of true poetry. Thy hand, friend Clare! others may speak thee fairer, but none wish thec solider welfare than Janus. Near the banks of Thames dwells one like the stream, placid and deep, Messer Brunetto! Many are the be nefits I owe him in common with two instances as compliments. But hands have crowned thee with the wild-wood wreath. Farewell, pleasant Allan Cm! The last green glass over which we nodded to one another, was the last !-Ere Christmas Day, Janus will be even as Elia. Farewell! May thy seasons be ever smooth. Health to thee and her To whom the warble of thy lip is dearest. Mild and tasteful BARRY CORNWALL! old brother dilettante-friend of Elia! Poet of Woman! the most grateful title to thy ears-honeytongued singer of beauty and its mother-night! Come from out thy dreams Let Her smiling hair, Untwisted, wind at length To the wild wind's tricksome care, while thou strikest a dying note in the hand of Weathercock. Adieu! -too sensitive friend! follow thy own blooming road-be thy own mind thy kingdom; and should the envious and the hard blow on thy tender flowers with their foggy breath, doubt not the advent of due guerdon. Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil; Nor in the glistering foil, Set off to the world: nor in broad rumour lies. Relinquish not our art-lest thine own in anger desert thee. Grant me, too, one request at this heavy time, -drop on my grave one melodious tear-my hungry spirit" would suck " another LAST SONG, as rich incense. "What say you, friend?" Janus to Barry Cornwall speaks his last adieu! up I would fain address a valediction to our Mr. Table Talk, "that cunninge master of fens!" he that will thrust you clean through the eye of a needle;-who unlooses the most knotted question, "familiar as my garter." By Saint Nicholas, in mat ters of graphic art and opera dancing, he is villanously heterodox!-a perilous heretic! But I may spare my flickering breath ;-he reads not a word of our Magazine!! - Young THEODORE! young in years, not in power! Our new Ovid!-only more imaginative!-Painter to the visible eye and the inward-commixture of, what the superficial deem, incongruous elements!— Instructive living proof, how close lie the founts of laughter and tears! Thou fermenting brain-oppressed, as yet, by its own riches. Though melancholy would seem to have touched thy heart with her painful (salutary) hand, yet is thy fancy mercurial— undepressed; and sparkles and crackles more from the contact-as the northern lights when they near the frozen Pole. How! is the fit not on? Still is "Lycus" without mate! Who can mate him but thyself? Let not the shallow induce thee to conceal thy depth. Leave "Old Seamen," the strain thou held'st was of a higher mood ;-there are others for your "Sketches from Nature," (as they truly call'em)******** `******_and such smalldeer! As for thy word-gambols, thy humour, thy fantastics, thy curiously-conceited perceptions of similarity in dissimilarity, of coherents in incoherents, they are brilliantly suave, innocuously exhilarating:-but not a step farther, if thou lovest thy proper peace! Read the fine of the eleventh, and the whole of the twelfth chapter of Tristram Shandy; and believe them, dear Theodore! O most truly. For others (not for thee) is the following paragraph thence quoted: "Trust me, this unwary pleasantry of thine will sooner or later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no afterwit can extricate thee out of. In these sallies, too oft I see it happens, that a person laugh. ed at considers himself in the light of a person injured, with all the rights of such a situation belonging to him; and when thou viewest him in that light too, and reckonest up his friends, his family, his kindred, and allies,— and musterest up with them the many recruits which will list under him from a sense of common danger, 'tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got a hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, *See that exquisite lyric, among the minor poems at the end of Marcian Colonna, ("Marcian Colonna is a dainty book.”) 1823. Let my gratitude reach thee in thy learned ease, unseen IDLER, on the prerupt rocks and breezy downs of woody ******* ! Thou who hast taught so many Greek and Roman mouths to utter vigorous and manly English. Some call thee rough! so did the full-styled Rubens leave his decided tints.-The gay-coloured Ampelus is rich as his unctuous pictures. Thy version of Atys* hath the thundering force of some old anvil-clad cavalier's battle charge, Maximilian, Richard the Lion, or Albert the Giant. I love the ardent way in which thou championest those of thy favourites, at whom ignorant scorn hath wrinkled the nose! "Tis a rare vice now-a-days !-more pity! -My bidding hath been potent on thy sprites ere now:-again I essay ! -I call on Apollonius!-see that he answer not in rhyme. But ELIA's ghost is impatient. Yet what can I say of thee more than all know? that thou hadst the gaiety of a boy, with the knowledge of a man;-as gentle a heart as ever sent tears to the eyes.-Marry! the black bile would sometimes slip over his tongue's tip; then would he spit it out, and look more sweetly for the riddance. How wittily would he mistake your meaning, and put in a conceit most seasonably out of season!-His talk without affectation was compressed, like his beloved Elizabethans, even unto obscurity ;like grains of fine gold, his sentences would beat out into whole sheets.I say, "without affectation," for he was not the blind-brained man to censure in others his own vice. Truly "without affectation," for nothing rubbed him the wrong way so much as pretence;-then the sparks flew about!-yet, though he would strip and whip soundly such beggars in velvet rags, the thong never flew in the face of a wise moderation to do her any hurt. He had small mercy on spurious fame; and a caustic observation on the fashion for men of genius (vulgarly so termed) was a standing dish-he contended that several of our minor talents, who now emulate Byron, Coleridge, and • Privately printed. 61 the old Dramatists, had, fifty years As perplexed lovers use ..............no other way they know Farewell to Tobacco. Sir Thomas Brown was a som cronie" of his-so was Burton, In his amorous and old Fuller. vein he dallied with that peerless Duchess of many-folio odour ;-and with the hey-day comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher he induced light dreams. He would deliver critical touches on these like one inspired; but it was good to let him choose his own game:-if another began, even on the acknowledged pets, he was liable to interrupt- or rather append, in a mode difficult to define, whether as misapprehensive or mischievous. One night, at C's, the Mr. above dramatic partners were the temporary subject of chat. **** commended the passion and haughty style of a tragedy (I don't know which of them), but was instantly taken up by Elia; who told him, "That was nothing,-the lyrics were the high things-the lyrics!"-and so having stricken *** with some amaze-he concluded with a brief intense eulogy on the "Little Thief!" He had likewise two perversities -a dislike to all German literature, by which language he was, I believe, scrupulously intact ;-the other was a most vehement assertion of equality between Harrington and + Somewhere in Fuller. Fairfax, as translators-Venial aber rations!-I know of no others. His death was somewhat sudden; yet he was not without wormy forebodings. Some of these he expressed, as you may recollect, Dear Proprietor! at your hospitable table, the of last- I accompanied him home at rather an early hour in the morning, and being benignantly invited to enter, I entered. His smoking materials were ready on the table, -I cannot smoke, and therefore, during the exhaustion of a pipe, I soothed my nerves with a single tumbler of *** and water. He recurred several times to his sensation of approaching death-not gloomily-but as of a retirement from business, - a pleasant journey to a sunnier climate. The serene solemnity of his voice overcame me;-the tears poured thick from their well-heads-I tried to rally myself and him:-but my His pipe had gone out-he held it to the flame of the candle-but in vain. It was empty!-his mind had been wandering. He smiled placidly and knocked out the ashes-" even so silently," said he, "may my fiery spark steal from its vehicle of ashes and clay!' I felt oppressed-many things had contributed lately to break and daunt my once elastic spirits-I rose to go he shook me by the hand,—neither of us spoke-with that I went my way-and I saw him no more! How much is lost to this miserable world-which knew him not while it possessed him!--I knew him—I, who am left to weep.- -Eheu! Elian! Vale! GOOD NIGHT TO ALL. + Janus was here taken too sick-hearted to proceed. He is now ED. |