MR NORTH, ON EARLY RISING. I HOPE that you are not an early riser. If you are, throw this letter into the fire-if not, insert it. But I beg your pardon; it is impossible that you can be an early riser; and, if I thought so, I must be the most impertinent man in the world; whereas, it is universally known that I am politeness and urbanity themselves. Well then, pray what is this virtue of early rising, that one hears so much about? Let us consider it, in the first place, according to the seasons of the year-secondly, according to peoples' professionand thirdly, according to their cha racter. Let us begin with Spring-say the month of March. You rise early in the month of March, about five o' clock. It is somewhat darkish-at least your eyes, I will not say open, but part. ly so, out of a country gentleman's house worth five thousand a-year. It is now aquarter past five, and a fine sharp, blustering morning, just like the season. In going down stairs, the ice not ha ving been altogether melted by the night's rain, whack you come upon your posteriors, with your toes pointing up to heaven, your hands pressed against the globe, and your whole body bob, bob, bobbing, one step after ano ther, till you come to a full stop or period, in a circle of gravel. On get ting up and shaking yourself, you involuntarily look up to the windows to see if any eye is upon you-and per haps you dimly discern, through the blind mist of an intolerable headache, the old housekeeper in a flannel nightcap, and her hands clasped in the attitude of prayer, turning up the whites of her eyes at this inexplicable sally of the strange gentleman. Well, my good sir, what is it that you propose to do? will you take a walk in the garden and eat a little fruit-that is to say, a cabbage leaf, or a jerusalem artichoke ? But the gardener is not quite so great a goose as yourself, and is in bed with his wife and six chil dren. So after knocking with your shoulder against the garden gate-you turn about, and espying perhaps a small temple in the shrubbery, thither you repair, and therein I shall leave you till breakfast, to amuse yourself with the caricatures, and the affecting pictures of Eloisa and Abelard. In the intervals of reflection on the virtue of early rising in spring, I allow you to study the history of Europe, in the fragments of old newspapers. gloomyish-dampish-rawishcoldish-icyish-snowyish. You rub your eyes and look about for your breeches. You find them, and after hopping about on one leg for about five minutes, you get them on. It would be absurd to use a light during that season of the year, at such an advanced hour as five minutes past five, so you attempt to shave by the spring dawn. If your nose escapes, you are a lucky man; but dim as it is, you can see the blood trickling down in a hundred streams from your gashed and mutilated chin. I will leave your imagination to conjecture what sort of neckcloth will adorn your gullet, tied under such circumstances. However, grant the possibility of your being dressed-and down you come, not to the parlour, or your study for you would not be so barbarous-but to enjoy the beauty of the morning,-as March, April, and May, are gone, Mr Leigh Hunt would say, "out of and it is Summer-so if you are an doors." The moment you pop your early riser, up you lazy dog, for it is phiz one inch beyond the front wall, between three and four o'clock. How a scythe seems to cut you right across beautiful is the sun-rise! What a truly the eyes, or a great blash of sleet clogs intellectual employment it is to stand up your mouth, or a hail shower rat- for an hour with your mouth wide tles away at you, till you take up a posi- open, like a stuck pig, gazing on the tion behind the door. Why, in the great orb of day! Then the choristers name of God, did I leave my bed? is of the grove have their mouths open the first cry of nature—a question to likewise; cattle are also lowing-and if which no answer can be given, but a there be a dog kennel at hand, I wa long chitter grueing though the frame. rant the pack are enjoying the benefits You get obstinate, and out you go. I of early rising as well as the best of give you every possible advantage. You you, and yelping away like furies be are in the country, and walking with fore breakfast. The dew too is on the ground, excessively beautiful no doubt and all the turkeys, how-towdies, ducks, and guinea-fowls, are moping, waddling, and strutting about, in a manner equally affecting and picturesque, while the cawing of an adjacent rookery invites you to take a stroll in the grove, from which you return with an epaulette on each shoulder. You look at your watch, and find it is Fat least five hours till breakfast-so you sit down and write a sonnet to June, or a scene of a tragedy;-you find that the sonnet has 17 lines-and that the dramatis personæ having once been brought upon the stage, will not budge. While reducing the sonnet to the bakers' dozen, or giving the last kick to your heroine, as she walks off with her arm extended heavenwards, you hear the good old family bell warning the other inmates to doff their nightcaps-and huddling up your papers, you rush into the breakfast-parlour. The urn is diffusing its grateful steam in clouds far more beautiful than any that adorned the sky. The squire and his good lady make their entrée with hearty faces, followed by a dozen hoydens and hobbletehoysand after the first course of rolls, muffins, dry and butter toast, has gone to that bourne from which the fewer travellers that return the better-in come the new-married couple, the young baronet and his blushing bride, who, with that infatuation common to a thinking people, have not seen the sun rise for a month past, and look perfectly incorrigible on the subject of early rising. It is now that incomprehensible season of the year, Autumn. Nature is now brown, red, yellow, and every thing but green. These, I understand, are the autumnal tints so much admired. Up then, and enjoy them. Which (ver way a man turns his face early in the morning, from the end of August till that of October-the wind seems to be blowing direct from that quarter. Feeling the rain beating against your back, you wonder what the devil it can have to do, to beat also against your face. Then, what is the rain of autumn in this country-Scotland? Is it rain, or mist, or sleet, or hail, or snow, or what, in the name of all that s most abhorrent to a lunged animal, sit? You trust to a great coat-Scotch laid-umbrella-clogs, &c. &c. &c.; out what use would they be to you, if you were plopped into the boiler of a steam engine? Just so in a morning of Autumn. You go out to look at the reapers. Why the whole corn for twenty miles round is laid flat-ten million runlets are intersecting the country much farther than fifty eyes can reach-the roads are rivers-the meadows lakes-the moors seas-nature is drenched, and on your return home, if indeed you ever return, (for the chance is that you will be drowned at least a dozen times before that,) you are traced up to your bed-room by a stream of mud and gravel, which takes the housemaid an hour to mop up, and when, fold after fold of cold, clammy, sweaty fetid plaids, benjamins, coats, waistcoats, flannels, shirts, breeches, drawers, worsteds, gaiters, clogs, shoes, &c., have been peeled off your saturated body and limbs, and are laid in one misty steaming heap upon an unfortunate chair, there, sir, you are standing in the middle of the floor, in puris naturalibus, or, as Dr Scott would say, in statu quo, a memorable and illustrious example of the glory and gain of early rising. It is Winter-six o'clock-You are up-You say so, and as I have never had any reason to doubt your veracity, I believe you. By what instinct, or by what power resembling instinct, acquired by long, painful, and almost despairing practice, you have come at last to be able to find the basin to wash your hands, must for ever remain a mystery. Then how the hand must circle round and round the inner region of the wash-hand stand, before, in a blessed moment, it comes in contact with a lump of brown soap! But there are other vessels of china, or porcelain, more difficult to find than the basin; for as the field is larger, so is the search more tedious. Inhuman man! many a bump do the bed-posts endure from thy merciless and unrelenting head! Loud is the crash of clothesscreen, dressing-table, mirror, chairs, stools, and articles of bed-room furniture, seemingly placed for no other purpose than to be overturned. If there is a cat in the room, that cat is the climax of comfort. Hissing and snuffing, it claws your naked legs, and while stooping down to feel if she has fetched blood, smack goes your head through the window, which you have been believing quite on the other side of the room; for geography is gone→→→ the points of the compass are as hidden as at the North Pole-and on madly rushing at a venture, out of a glimmer supposed to be the door, you go like a battering-ram against a great vulgar white-painted clothes-chest, and fall down exhausted on the uncarpetted and sliddery floor. Now, thou Matutine Rose of Christmas, tell me if there be any exaggeration here? But you find the door-so much the worse, for there is a passage leading to a stair, and head over heels you go, till you collect your senses and your limbs on the bear-skin in the lobby. You are a philosopher, I presume, so you enter your study-and a brown study it is, with a vengeance. But you are rather weak than wicked, so you have not or dered poor Grizzy to quit her chaff, and kindle your fire. She is snoring undisturbed below. Where is the tinder-box? You think you recollect the precise spot where you placed it at ten o'clock the night before, for, being an early riser up, you are also an early lyer down. You clap your blundering fist upon the ink-stand, and you hear it spurting over all your beautiful and invaluable manuscripts-and perhaps over the title page of some superb book of prints, which Mr Blackwood, or Mr Miller, or Mr Constable, has lent you to look at, and to return unscathed. The tinder-box is found, and the fire is kindled—that is to say, it deludes you with a faithless smile; and after puffing and blowing till the breath is nearly out of your body, you heave a pensive sigh for the bellows. You find them on a nail, but the leather is burst, and the spout broken, and nothing is emitted but a short asthmatic pluff, beneath which the last faint spark lingeringly expires-and like Moses when the candle went out, you find yourself once more in the dark. After an hour's execration, you have made good your point, and with hands all covered with tallow, (for depend upon it, you have broken and smashed the candle, and had sore to do to prop it up with paper in a socket too full of ancient grease,) sit down to peruse or to indite some immortal work, an oration of Cicero or Demosthenes, or an article for Ebony. Where are the snuffers? up stairs in your bed-room. You snuff the long wick with your fingers, and a dreary streak of black immediately is drawn from top to bottom of the page of the beautiful Oxford edition of Cicero. You see the words, and stride along the cold dim room in the sulks. Your object has been to improve your mind-your moral and intellectual nature-and along with the rest, no doubt, your temper. You therefore bite your lip, and shake your foot, and knit your brows, and feel yourself to be a most amiable, rational, and intelligent young gentleman. In the midst of these morning studies, from which the present and all future ages will derive so much benefit, the male and female servants begin to bestir themselves, and a vigorous knocking is heard in the kitchen of a poker brandished by a virago against the great, dull, keeping-coal in the grate. Doors begin to bang, and there is hearda clattering of pewter. Then comes the gritty sound of sand, as the stairs and lobby are getting made decent; and, not to be tedious, all the undefinable stir, bustle, uproar, and stramash of a general clearance. Your door is opened every half minute, and formidable faces thrust in, half in curiosity, and half in sheer impertinence, by valets, butlers, grooms, stable-boys, cooks, and scullions, each shutting the door with his or her own peculiar bang; while whisperings, and titterings, and horse laughter, and loud gaffaws, are testifying the opinion formed by these amiable domestics, of the conformation of the upper story of the early riser. On rushing into the breakfast parlour, the butt end of a mop or broom is thrust into your mouth, as, heedless of mortal man, the mutched mawsey is what she calls dusting the room; and, stagger where you will, you come upon something surly; for a man who leaves his bed at six of a winter morning is justly reckoned a suspicious cha racter, and thought to be no better than he should be. But, as Mr Hogg says, I will pursue the parallel no far ther. I have so dilated and descanted on the first head of my discourse, that I must be brief on the other two, namely, the connection between early rising and the various professions, and be tween the same judicious habit, and the peculiar character of individuals, Reader, are you a Scotch advocate? You say you are. Well, are you such a confounded ninny as to leave a good warm bed at four in the morning, to study a case on which you will make a much better speech if you never study it at all, and for which you have already received L.2, 2s. Do you think Jeffrey hops out of bed at that hour? No, no, catch him doing that. Unless, therefore, you have more than a fourth part of his business, (for, without knowing you, I predict that you have 10 more than a fourth part of his taents,) lie in bed till half past eight. f you are not in the Parliament House till ten, nobody will miss you. Reader, are you a clergyman ?-A man vho has only to preach an old sermon f his old father, need not, surely, eel himself called upon by the stern oice of duty, to put on his smalllothes before eight in summer, and ine in winter. Reader, are you a alf-pay officer?—Then sleep till elefor well thumbed is your copy of he Army List, and you need not be lways studying. Reader, are you an ditor?-Then doze till dinner; for he devils will be let loose upon thee in he evening, and thou must then corect all thy slips. en; But I am getting stupid-somewhat eepy; for, notwithstanding this philppic against early rising, I was up his morning before ten o'clock; so I ust conclude. One argument in faour of early rising, I must, however. otice. We are told that we ought to e down with the sun, and rise with nat luminary. Why? is it not an xtremely hard case to be obliged to > to bed whenever the sun chuses to > so? What have I to do with the in-when he goes down, or when he ses up? When the sun sets at a reanable hour, as he does during a short eriod in the middle of summer, I ave no objection to set likewise, soon ter; and in like manner, when he kes a rational nap, as in the middle winter, I don't care if now and en I rise along with him. But will not admit the general prinple; we move in different spheres. ut if the sun never fairly sets at all or six months, which they say he does ot very far north, are honest people that account to sit up all that time or him? That will never do. Finally, it is taken for granted by arly risers, that early rising is a virous habit, and that they are all a ost meritorious and prosperous set people. I object to both clauses of VOL. X. the bill. None but a knave or an idiot I will not mince the matter-rises early, if he can help it. Early risers are generally milk-sop spoonies, ninnies with broad unmeaning faces and groset eyes, cheeks odiously ruddy, and with great calves to their legs. They slap you on the back, and blow their noses like a mail-coach horn. They seldom give dinners. " 'Sir, tea is ready." "Shall we join the la dies?" A rubber at whist, and by eleven o'clock, the whole house is in a snore. Inquire into his motives for early rising, and it is perhaps to get an appetite for breakfast. Is the great healthy brute not satisfied with three penny-rolls and a pound of ham to breakfast, but he must walk down to the Pier-head at Leith to increase his voracity? Where is the virtue of gob bling up three turkey's eggs, and demolishing a quartern loaf, before his Majesty's lieges are awake? But I am now speaking of your red, rosy, greedy idiot. Mark next your pale, sallow early riser. He is your prudent, calculating, selfish money-scrivener. It is not for nothing he rises. It is shocking to think of the hypocrite saying his prayers so early in the morn ing, before those are awake whom he intends to cheat and swindle before he goes to bed. I hope that I have sufficiently expo sed the folly or wickedness of early rising. Henceforth, then, let no knavish prig purse up his mouth and erect his head with a conscious air of superiority, when he meets an acquaintance who goes to bed and rises at a gentlemanly hour. If the hypocrite rose early in the morning, he is to be despised and hated. But people of sense and feeling are not in a hurry to leave their beds. They have something better to do. I perceive that all the letters that appear in your Magazine are numbered as if they belonged to a series,—I., II., III., and so forth. If you chuse, you may number mine, "On Early Rising. No. I." If I continue the series, my future communications shall all be written in bed in the forenoon, and will not fail of being excellent. Yours, sincerely. SERO SED SERIO. 4 C THE LITERARY POCKET-BOOK; OR COMPANION FOR THE LOVER Ir we were in one of our savage moods, we should take up this little red Literary Pocket-Book, and tear it into ten hundred thousand pieces, strewing the December gales with them like drifting snow-flakes. But we are not in one of our savage moods. We are sitting, with a pleasant smile on our intelligent features, and would not even hurt the Fly. Besides, we love the Olliers; and should we detect them in the publication of trash, we shall shut our eyes and pass on, pretending not to observe it. Impartiality is an odious vice in a critic. It shews he can have no heart. But our character, we trust, is too well established for partiality, for us to be under any apprehension on that other score. Where is the man of talent and of virtue, to whom we have not shewn the grossest partiality?-They are our friends, and we can't help it. If we are blamed for this, it is only by the pert and the peevish, the vain and the vile, the libellous and the licentious, the demagogue, the incendiary, and the traitor. These we have treated, and will treat, with the most rigorous impartiality; if we cannot amend, we will at least punish-if we cannot close the jaw, we will extract the fang-if we save the reptile's life, we will destroy his poison-bag. But why this burst of eloquence? The Olliers are good men, and, therefore, not only shall we treat them justly ourselves, but we shall see that they are proper ly respected by others. We have heard it whispered that Charles Ollier is the author of that clever and kind-hearted little volume, "Altham and his Wife." If so, he ought to review in this Magazine, instead of being reviewed ;-for we like him, because there is nothing lumbering about his style. He does not write, like some others we could name, with a broad-nibbed pen, originally flourished by some clerk in a public office, and haggled at with a blunt knife, till it leaves every stroke about the thickness of a ram-rod. His mind writes a neat running-hand, and his mental manuscripts are not blurred and blotted. We love the Olliers, both C. and J.—and, therefore, we shall now praise the little red Literary Pocket-Book for 1822. The prose, at the beginning of the volume, seems to be from the pen Mr Leigh Hunt. Perhaps this conjecture is a stupid blunder of ours, and that gentleman may smile at our simplicity. If so, far better is it for him to smile at us than to frown. When he smiles, his countenance has always appeared to us rather engaging; when he frowns, we cannot charge our memory with so absurd looking a personage. The perk of his mouth, and the crispness of his chin, always incline us, when he sports wrathful, to pu his nose. But when he smiles, the case, as we said, is wholly altered, and we then feel disposed to invite him to tea. We wish some friend would te him this-for he never sees Black wood; and, as we know he has a tru and keen relish of a compliment, w wish him to be made happy by our be nevolence. In a late Number of the Examiner, he seems to intimate to th inhabitants of Cockaigne, that he onc challenged "to mortal combat, or ca reer with lance," a general-officer, we known in the military and literar world, for an article in this Magazin supposed to contain some offensiv matter. We allude to General Izzard The General assures us that he has recollection whatever of that allege incident in the life of Mr Hunt, w must have been thinking of some othe person, and some other work. MrHu must refresh his memory with a cu of saloop, and he will be happy to tin that he was mistaken in having sup posed that he ever committed such flagrant act of folly and infatuation to challenge any gentleman connecte in any way with this work, from C.. ourselves, down to the lowest devil. the infernal establishment of Mr Ba lantyne. We recollect, that a little tailor challenged To Crib-in the newspapers, and himself bound over to keep the peac Had this salutary precaution not be taken, no doubt he would have kille the Champion. In like manner, undoubtedly remember some sort blustering in the Examiner a few yea some years ag * London. C. and J. Ollier, Vere Street, Bond Street. 1822. we |
