LE DENTISTE de la JEUNESSE, or the Way to have Sound and Beautiful Teeth, preceded by the Advice of the Ancient Poets, upon the Preservation of the GOD-Teeth; designed for the more intelligent orders of Parents and Guardians; and containing some useful Hints to the Paculty. By T. R. DUVAL, Dentist. Translated and supplied with Notes, by JOHN ATKINSON, Sur 7. TREASURES of THOUGHT, from De Stael Hol- geon-Dentist, &c. &c. &c. stein, price 5s.

pleased with the ingenious Critique prefixed to the PRINCIPLES of EDUCATION, Intellectual,

AND

Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, etc.

No. 191.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1820.

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

POEMS, BY A COMMON SAILOR.

PRICE 18.

Was mutilated much, and small,
Collar, and frill, and wristband riddled thro'
By pounding blanchisseuse's potent drub,
Instead of rub,

The river Seine her suds, a boat her tub.--
"Ma foi," quoth he, " il faut que je m'adonise,
J'ai besoin à present de von chemise-
Et en voila, à-propos,- tout près—”

snuff

the country, from which we trust this public notice will pave the way to redeem it. For ourselves, we shall gladly promote any plan to benefit the In the Literary Gazette, No. 76, individual in question: and that our July 4, 1818, we reviewed a publication goodwill towards him may find congeThe Harp of the Desert, nial sentiment and co-operation, we A gilded shop-front just upon his way, entitled containing the Battle of Algiers," &c. beg not only to refer to our Paper indi-Inform d his eye, in letters painted fair, and purporting to have been written by cated at the commencement of this arti- A chemist-'twas enough-did business there. Ismael Fitzadam, a Seaman. At that cle, but to the following extracts from Our traveller entered-made his bow-took period we were led to believe that this a MS. by the same hand, and, we betitle was merely assumption, and that lieve, from a volume in preparation the real author was Captain C, the for the press, under the title of "LAYS brother of a noble Lord who has tra- OF LAND." The variety of talent which velled much and to good purpose, in they display, their beauty, their pathos, distant countries. Certainly there was their unaffected and pure poetic characnothing in the poetry which could war-ter, will plead more effectually than we rant any conclusion hostile to this the- can for our Poor Sailor! ory; for its merits, both of composition and mind, were such as would not have disgraced a writer of any eminence in station or literature.

We have recently learnt to our great surprise (from anonymous, but selfevidently respectable authority), that Fitzadam is really what was given out... an Able Seaman on board a King's Frigate! And what is still more incredible, that neither the noble Lord, Exmouth, whose exploits he so gloriously sings, nor any of his officers, have ever thought it worth while to seek for and reward this nautical but genuine Child of Song. Perhaps we should be still more astonished at the same neglect in another quarter, were it not known to us that the official duties of the two Secretaries of the Admiralty (both high among the literati of England, and one of them himself a distinguished poet), are of so engrossing a nature, that they may have prevented their attention from being drawn to this fact: otherwise, we should unhesitatingly express our opinion, that it was a discredit to Mr. Barrow, and especially to Mr. Croker, to overlook the author of the striking production to which we have alluded.

Extracts from the unpublished Poems, "LAYS
OF LAND."

SONG.

Oh, would I were among the bowers

Thy waters, Witham! love to lave,
Where Botolph's far-distinguish'd towers
Look out upon the German wave.
There is a star upon that stream,

A flower upon those banks there blows-
Heaven cannot boast a lovelier beam,

Nor earth possess a sweeter rose.
How blest were I, how more than blest,
To sit me down those scenes among,
And there, the cot's contented guest,

Divide my life 'twixt love and song.
To guard thee, sweet, and in thine ears
Plead passion, not perchance in vain-
The very vision costs me tears

Of mingled tenderness and pain.
Alas! how different is my lot!

To drag out being far from thee,
Far from that dear, that sacred spot,
Which Witham leaves in tears like me.
But, pilgrim of whatever shore,

No fate from thee my soul shall tear;
And even when life itself's no more,
My spirit will be with thee there.

A PETER-PINDARIC.

A Frenchman, on a recent tour to Londres,
Made rather a facetious blunder;
And, what is much more rare, got out of it
With somewhat of an expiating hit.
His stock of linen, as it did befall,

A curse long pinned to shoulders of Monsieur, All that we know of Fitzadam is, * Our readers will perceive that we speak that he is a self-educated Sailor; a nadoubtingly on several points in this brief notice: the reason is, that we are personally ignorant tive, as we understand, of Leith; and of these circumstances, and rely on information now discharged, after long and honour-given to us under the signature of "Philo Nauable service, unfriended and unprovid- ticus," who seems warmly to espouse the cause ed for. That such a man should pine hope he will furnish us with further means of of this extra-ordinary bard. If required, we in obscurity and want, is a disgrace to promoting the interests of the writer. ED. VOL. IV.

And look'd complacent round-John Bull look'd gruff.

"Sare," said the son of frogs, "je vois tish here Que, l'on vend les chemises........ que......... c'est à That you do sell some shirt, et.... tout comme

dire,

ça....

N'est ce pas ?"

"Shirts! shirts!" scowled Bolus, tempted half
to throttle,

"Who ever saw, or heard, of shirts in bottle,
Or in a gallipot's dimensions cooped?
Tho' yours, sir,' windowed' as it is, and 'loop-
ed,'

Seems from some mortar's vengeance to have
fled,

Which discipline might serve your own goose head.

Sir, I'm no seamstress-Nay, sir, quit your grin-
ning-

I make up medicine, jackanapes, not linen."
"Ah, vous le medecin-chemist-ah, oui, oui—
Je me suis trompé donc, je trouve-I see.
C'est drole ea, mais-the difference is small-
A peu pres c'est egal-

Monsieur le medecin, you be trop, too proud,
To make some shirt, but you do make the shroud-
Voila tout-that's all."

PARTING.

No, never other lip shall press

The plighted one where thine hath been, Nor ever other bosom press

The heart whereon thy head did lean. Oh, never, love! tho' after this

Thy smile perchance no more I see.-
The very memory of that bliss

Shall keep me sacred all to thee.
Farewell, farewell! in woe or weal,

Tho' worlds may interpose to sever,
And "the world's law," I wildly feel,
Thy heart and mine are one for ever.
Farewell! the ripe tear fills mine eye-
My very inmost soul is riven!
After such pang 'tis light to die-
Matilda, we shall meet in heaven!

LOVERS' OATHS.

By the first hint of love

Heaved from hearts newly swollen, While it secretly strove

Thro' the glance that was stolen--

By the hope mildly born

In that false gleam of gladness, As a moment of morn

Soon clouded in sadness→→→→

By the sigh that would steal,

And the silence, and trembling, Which make the soul feel

It has done with dissemblingBy the vow breath'd thro' lips, Meeting oft as they breathed it, As to drink the warm life

Of the heart that bequeathed it

By the big tear of blisses,

That moistened, in starting,
Our long-clinging kisses,
The moment of parting-
By the sweetness and grace,

More than heaven to a lover,-
By that form and that face,

Which are heavenly all over-
By the struggle we proved,

Shewing, oh, too severely!
That, tho' both dearly loved.
We loved virtue more dearly-
By the anguish like denth

Our hearts felt to sever-
By the memory, whose faith
Will adhere to thee ever-
These pledges I call, love,

To witness i take theeBy these, each and all, love, I'll never forsake thee!

BALLAD.

A dew-drop hung on the cheeks of a rose,
Fast by a bower,

Where, at sunset hour,
The young sylph, Beauty, sought repose.
Lovely as nature the flower looked at even,
And the pure pearl wan,
That trembled thereon,

Had just been distilled from heaven.
An angel of light, on some errand above,
By accident strayed

Where the innocent maid
Lay dreaming-her dreams were of love.
Soft, soft to her wild-flower pillow he stole-
Her bosom of snow,

Now lifted, now low

Spoke the visions that warmed her soul.

Or obvious to the hissing death-bolt, hurled
Thro' the red bursting of confronted war,
Was happiness-for then my worshipped star,
The sacred one of duty, briefly shone,
And audible above the cannon's jar,
My country's voice, and honour's, hail'd me on;
While hoarded hopes of glory to be won
Enhanced the strife, where death and danger

were,

To sternest ecstacy! But all is gone-
And nought is left me now to hope, or donc.
Becalm'd upon thy stagnant pool, despair!
With not one attribute of life, save breath-
And misery-friendless in my sordid shed,
Like the lone captive stretch'd on dungeon bed,
Numbering the slow sands as they creep away,
What recks to me such worse than living death?
Such gloomy eve of no inglorious day?
Oh, bitter doom! bitterer for unforeseen!
Within whose upas shadow joy, hope, nay
The very spirit rots in dull decay.

Is life then stripped to this sere, lifeless thing?
Beams of my morning! blossoms of my noon!
Whither, and wherefore, are ye fled so soon?
Weep, fond enthusiast! weep thy withered

spring

God! that my grave, as was my birth, had been
Amidst the living billows' mighty swing,
Or palled beneath the battle's blazing wing,
Then had I 'scaped this agony of keen,
Keen suffering 'scaped the curse to bear, by
turns,

Ingratitude, that, with a stony eye,
Like the vile heartless Levite, passeth by-
Affected pity's mockery-the spurns
Of pampered pride-perchance the stings of po-
verty!

Tentamen; or an Essay towards the
History of Whittington, some time
Lord Mayor of London. By Vicesi-
mus Blinkinsop, LL. D. F. R. S.
A.S.S., &c. London, 1820. 18mo.
pp. 76.,

and the spirit of contention blasts creation, from the humble plough-boy to the sceptered monarch.

Among the efforts of some of the clever partizans in this servile war, to introduce a little of the pleasantry, if not the chivalry of such conflicts into the struggle of the present period, this Tentamen is the most successful that we have seen. The author, whoever he is, is far above the ordinary standard of squibwriters; and has thrown much more wit into his jeu-d'esprit, than usually belongs to performances of its class.

The design appears to be, to ridicule a person publicly conspicuous enough to render him a fair object of satire to his opponents-we allude to Mr. Alderman Wood; and as this is cleverly done, and without ill nature, under the pretence of raking up the story of the celebrated Whittington, we shall endeavour to entertain our readers (on which ever side they range themselves,) with a glance at its fashion and manner.

The dedication is to the Duke of Sussex, and enumerates a laughable list of His Royal Highness's titles, as patron or member of many benevolent and other institutions, from the Garter to the Fishmongers Company; and from the Grand Lodge of Freemasons, to the institutions for delivering married women at their own habitations, and the General-Central Lying-in Charity; from the Society of Arts,

to the Beef Steak Club. The address which follows this enumeration is so severe, that we trust its insinuations are not well founded; and in this hope, pass on to the body of the work.

The author opens his subject with a good deal of drollery :

"In looking at the propensities of the age we live in, comparatively with those of times One of the most disagreeable features past, one cannot fail to observe a laudable love for the noble science of antiquities: of of the party politics of our times which it may be truly said, that it is con(leaving out of account the horrible versant with peaceful and unoffending yesternastiness of the investigation into the days, while the idle votaries of the world are Queen's conduct abroad), is the sour-busied about to-day, and the visionaries of ness and malignancy of spirit with ambition are dreaming of to-morrow. which the contest is carried on. There is no longer any thing humorous,

Then he plucked the rose, and diffused its fine dye gentle, or manly in the struggle; but

O'er her check so bright,

And bade the mild light

Be henceforth the herald of tender joy.
"And thou, little gem, be still trembling near,
For if hint of our heaven

To mortals be given,
'Tis beauty's blush set with love's tear."

It may be that we have readers (we hope we have none) whose hearts can resist these appeals. If such there be, our last effort upon them is an extract which appears to us to have but too much of the expression of truth in it not to be drawn from the life. The author,

we fear, is himself

THE MARINER,

Son of the storm, along the "vasty" world
Of will, hetble waters wafted

"Connected with this grave and useful purprevailed amongst us in so ardent a degree. suit is the general inclination to search into the minutiae of history, which never before it has assumed a gloomy, bloodthirsty, The smallest information upon traditional and barbarian aspect, at once frightful points, is received with an avidity more and abhorrent to the few who do not salutary and commendable than that which suffer their lives to be embittered by is the result of a common place love of abandoning the bounties of Heaven, and novelty; and the smaller the information, plunging into this gulph of senseless the greater the merit of the painstaking turmoil and unproductive trouble. Po-author; who, like a skilful clock maker, or litics are, indeed, the curse of our times. Peace, the mother of the useful arts, the nurse of the sciences, the improver of the condition of man, hath returned to earth in vain; the stormy and base passions seem loosened by the event, and we pass from aggravation to aggravation, like maniacks; while the detested flux and reflux of discontent drowns all the better parts of nature,

proportion to the minuteness of his work. other nice handy-craftsman, is lauded in

Such are, for instance, the valuable discoveries which that excellent philosopher and novelist Mr. Godwin hath made and edited, of and concerning the great poet Chaucer; and, inasmuch as the nice and mentioned, are carefully placed in huge small works of clock makers, which we have towers and steeples, beyond malicious or impertinent curiosity, so this prudent philosopher hath disposed his small facts in twe

tall volumes, equally out of the reach of They offer indeed to print my work if I
the vulgar.
can get it previously praised in the Edin-
"Such also are those valuable illustra-burgh Review; and the Reviewers say, that
tions of the private lives of public men they are not unwilling to praise it, but that
which have issued from the press under the it must, of a necessity, be previously
titles of " Ana," Remains," and "Me-printed.
moirs,” and which have so admirably an-
swered the purposes for which they were
put forth-namely, that of being sold-while
they at the same time maintain a discreet
silence on all matters which the ingenious
subject of the biography might wish to con-
ceal, agreeably to that excellent maxim de
mortuis nil nisi bonum: by these means,
such treatises become a delectable kind of
reading, wherein nothing is admitted which
can hurt the feelings of any of the worthy
persons mentioned in the course of the work,
particularly if they be deceased. This mode
of writing conduces to good humour and
charity amongst men, and manifestly tends,
as Dr. Johnson observes on another occa-
sion, to raise the general estimate of human

nature.

"On these principles and considerations have I been induced at no small cost of time and labor, to endeavour to throw a new light upon the life of Matthew Whittington, some time Mayor (or Lord Mayor, as the courtesy goeth) of this worthy City of London, a man, whose fame needs no addition, but only to be placed in a proper point of view, to challenge the admiration of a grateful posterity of Mayors and Aldermen. "In humble imitation of my aforesaid friend, Mr. Godwin, and of divers other well reputed authors, I have written this life in one hundred and seventy-eight quires of foolscap paper, in a small and close, but neat hand; which by my computation, having counted the number of words therein contained, as well as the number of words in the learned Bishop Watson's life of himself, (which made my excellent friend Dr. Suodgrass, who lent me the same, facetiously declare, that I was the only man he ever knew who could get through it); I say, having counted all these words, I find that my life of Mr. Wittington, (including thirteen quires on the general history of Cats) would, if duly printed after the manner of Mr. Davison, who never puts more than sixteen lines into a quarto page, make or constitute five volumes of a similar size and shape to Dr. Watson's life, which, with cuts by Mr. John Britton, author of several curious topographical works, might be sold for the reasonable sum of 317. 10s, being only six guineas the volume; and if it should please the legislature, in its wisdom, to repeal the Copy-right Bill, (by which costly books are made accessible to poor students at the Universities, who have no business with such sort of works) my said work might be furnished at the reduced price of 311. 4s. 6d.

I

and by that enlightened zeal for which he is
conspicuous, he has been so fortunate as to
discover rudely carved on the wainscoat by
some fellow pupil,
M. W. IS A FOOL;
M. W. IS A DUNCE;
And one, which is more satisfactory,
M▬▬▬▬W, W. IS A STUPID DUG,
1772.

"I have observed to Mr. Jeffrey in my seventh letter to him on this subject, that this condition is not only new and injurious to me, but, by his own showing, clearly "This date seems at first sight to apply to gratuitous and unnecessary; because for a period long posterior to Mr. Whittington; aught that appears in the generality of his but when we recollect how often the wisest articles, he may never have read the workmen, the most careful copyists, the most exwhich is the subject matter of them; nay, pert printers, mistake dates and transpose it hath sometimes been proved from the figures, we are not to be surprised at a context, that he never hath even seen the similar error in an unlettered and heedless work at all; and as this little accident hath school-boy; and therefore, as Dr. Snodgrass not hindered his writing an excellent essay judiciously advises-(a noble conjecture inunder color of such work, so I contended, deed, which places the critic almost on a that he need not now make the preliminary level with the original writer)—the mistake sine qua non, as to having my work printed; may be corrected by the simple change of for de non impressis et de non lectis placing the figures in their obvious proper cadem est ratio.' order, 1277, which as Mr. Whittington is "But I grieve to say, that all my well known to have been Sheriff or Mayor about grounded reasoning hath been unavailing; the year 1330, when he was probably neár and as neither party will give up his no-sixty, shews that he was about seven when tion, I stand at a dead lock between the at Hog's-Norton; and proves incontestibly, booksellers and reviewers. that to him and him alone, these ancient and fortunately discovered inscriptions refer." It is afterwards added:

"In this dilemma, I should-like Aristotle's celebrated ass-have starved till doomsday; but that, through the kindness "It may seem to some readers that these and prudent advice of my learned friends epithets,-opprobria, as some may think Mr. Jonas Backhouse, Jun. of Pocklington, them,-do not redound to the credit of Mr. and the Rev. Doctor Snodgrass of Hog's- Alderman Whittington's intellect; but even Norton, I have been put upon a mode of if they are not, as before suggested, the extricating myself, by publishing, in a small production of envy, they are by no means form, a tentamen, specimen, or abridgement inconsistent with Whittington's successful of part of my great work, which I am told progress in life; on the contrary, they seem Mr. Jeffrey will not object to review, he to designate him as a person who would nabeing always ready to argue à particulari turally rise to City honours. It is grown ad universale: so that, in future time, the to be a proverb, and admitted by the best learned world may have hope of seeing my writers on the subject, that Lord Mayors are crudite labours at full length, whereof this" stupid dogs." The City hath a prescripdissertation is a short and imperfect sample or pattern."

Having thus beat out his ring, not without hitting some very worthy friends of ours; the author begins the magnum opus.

"The whole history of the illustrious Whittington (he says) is enveloped in doubt. The mystery begins even before he is born; for no one knows who his mother, and still less who his father was. We are in darkness as to where he first saw the light, and though it is admitted that he most probably had a Christian name, adhuc sub judice lis est, as to what that Christian name was."

The inquiry to settle this important point is conducted with due solemnity, and with the help of the Rev. Dr. Snodgrass of Hog's Norton, it is brought to a successful issue.

"Tradition has handed down to us that Whittington was a charity boy, as it is called, and received the rudiments of letters at the parish school of Hog's-Norton aforesaid; this clue directed the Doctor's researches, Cartwright, is owing to the Septennial Parliament Bill (1 Geo. I. cap. 28:) but according to the better opinion of Mr. J. C. Boghouset, to the battle of Waterloo. (vide Panegyr. Nap.

"But small as this sum is, it is with grief say, that such is the badness of the times, ccasioned by the return of peace, and the ate long succession of plentiful harvests; hat I find booksellers strangely reluctant o embark in this transaction with me. # Bon. passim.)

The badness of the times, according to + Erratum,- for " Boghouse," read "Hobhat venerable Bede of modern days. Mr. | house."

tion to choose "fools," for places of honor therein; and as Matthew was at least twice Lord Mayor, he might with great propriety have been twice as great a fool as any of the others."

In the same style of irony follows an investigation to ascertain how often Whittington was mayor; but this we must overleap. The subject is then systematically divided into nine sections; but they are all, save one, postponed for discussion in the great work, and the eighth only treated of in this opusculum. That head is

"What the Cat was by which he rendered himself chiefly notorious, and whether his famous expedition to catch the Cat was undertaken prior, or subsequently, to his second Mayoralty."

Previous however to entering even upon this single point, we have some notice of the earlier life of Whittington, during which he formed an intimacy with one Joshua, a thief and receiver of King's stores.

and was ironically called Joshua the son of "This Joshua was of a very low origin, none, never having had an ostensible father or mother; to which untoward circumstance may be charitably attributed the errors into which he was occasionally betrayed. The first notion of property which a child receives,

t

"It was in allusion to these hoards, and the means and times by which they were collected, that in the quaint biblical facetiousness of that age it used to be observed, that if Joshua of old had known how to do his business by night, as well as his modern namesake, he need not have desired the sun to stand still; a witticism which Speed records with great delight."

Other incidents of the hero's youth are related; and it is decided, that it was not the housemaid, but another domestic who drove him from his service, on these grounds—

Whoe fayledde thus hys nuttes toe gayne,

And onely synged ye Catte.
Thenne Whyttingtone ynn gorgeous state.
Syttynge wythoute his hatte,
Broughte toe hys house atte Grovner-gate
Thys moste yllustrious Catte.
She ys so graciouse and soe tame

Alle menne may strooke and patte;
But yt ys sayde, norre mayde norre dame,
Have dared toe see thatte Catte.
Fulle hugelye gladde, she seemeth, whenne
They brynge herre a greate ratte
But still moe gladde atte katchynge menne
Ys. Whyttington hys Catte.

A Catte, they saye, maye watche a kynge;
Ye apotheme ys patte;

Ye converse is a differente thynge:

Noe kynge may watche thys Catte.
Thenne take,each manne,hys scarlate goune,
Ande eke hys velvette hatte
And humblye wellcome yntoe toune

Great Whyttington his Catte.
Lest any doubt should hang on his allu-
sion, he adds, as if from Mr. Hallam.

"This great Lady," he says, was Catta; that is, a German, one of the people called Catti, who inhabited that part of the ancient Germania now called the Duchy of Brunswick."

come to some lines in his praise, though n
deference to his notorious modesty and hatrel
of public notice, only the initials of h3
name are employed.

Serche Englonde round, naye all the earthe,
Itte myghtelie would trouble you
To find a manne so rich in worthe

As honest Matthew W.

He's notte the manne to doe you wrong
Nor wyth false speeches bubble you,
Whyle Beef grows fatte, and Beer grows strong
Long lyfe to Matthew W.

The writer now falls more directly into tie question which has so much agitated the country; and though he treats it at one shrewdly and sportively, we hold it in sud dislike, that, having quoted enough to sher what the Tentamen is, we shall here be leave to close the volume,

Poems for Youth. By a Family Circle Liverpool and London, 1820. 12mo pp. 106.