Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. FOR THE YEAR 1824. COMPRISING ORIGINAL ESSAYS ON POLITE LITERATURE, THE ARTS AND SCIENCES; POETRY; CRITICISMS ON THE FINE ARTS, THE DRAMA, &c.; BIOGRAPHY; CORRESPONDENCE OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS; ANECDOTES, JEUX D'ESPRIT, &c. SKETCHES OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS; LONDON: Printed by B. Bensley, Bolt Court, Fleet Street. PUBLISHED FOR THE PROPRIETORS, AT THE LITERARY GAZETTE OFFICE, STRAND; 1824. 339 Journal of Belles No. 363. ADDRESS. AND Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1824. As a New-year's custom, therefore, the Editor has nothing to do but to express his hope that an increase, which has never paused, may continue to augment his Numbers, and that the same good understanding which has always existed between the Literary Gazette and the Public may remain unaltered. No endeavour -shall be spared to deserve the consummation of both wishes. REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. I PRICE 8d. none but an author in favour can feel, I con-as every body knows, 'Dear Madam!' I cast templated the blank under my eye, which was my eye down the first page of the paper, and THE Literary Gazette proposed, at its establish- about to be enlivened by my wit, or enriched if it had been an indictment for petty larceny, ment, to present a prompt and impartial pic- with my eloquence. As I mended my pen to I could scarcely have faced it with more horture of the Literature, Fine Arts, Sciences, begin, thought I,-the wisest man on earth ror;-it was as white, and as smooth, and as and Manners and Amusements of its time; and could not anticipate what I shall do here, nor empty as ever! I turned to the inkstand, and if public encouragement be the criterion of suc- the shrewdest guess the subject which will looked into it, like Esop's thirsty crow into not yet in the secret, nor do I know what I tom, which the sagacious bird,-it could not cess, it has fulfilled its plan beyond the most speedily adorn these pages, for I myself am the pitcher with a drop of water at the botsanguine expectation that, ever could have been am going to write. This reflection startled be the same crow that let the cheese fall out entertained. It enjoys a circulation more ex-me, and, 'What will it be?' came with such of his beak into the fox's chops,-raised to the tensive than any literary work in Europe, and importunity into my mind, that I could not brim by dropping pebble after pebble into it. -a dead silence; of the stand, but the meaning out of the ink. penetrates countries otherwise unvisited by Eng- help replying, 'What indeed!' There was But my difficulty was not to bring the ink out lish letters. It stands as high as its Conductors silence among my thoughts,could wish as a just and unprejudiced record of and though I called them,-called them re-Ah!' quoth I, gently shaking it, here lies peatedly and earnestly, as if I were a drown- the quintessence of all science, all art, all incurrent literature; and it daily receives eulogies ing man, to come to my assistance, not one vention, all expression. This drop of ink of which any publication (of far greater preten- would move or speak. I looked with con- could speak all languages, discover all secrets, sternation around, but saw nothing except communicate all feeling, display all knowsions) might well be proud. pen, ink, and paper;-nay, do what I would, ledge, detect all sophistry. There is not a could make no more of them; pen, ink, and thought which the heart of man can conceive, ment increased my perplexity, for whatever is here,—absolutely in my hand, before my paper they were and remained. Every mo- or a word which human lips can utter, but it might be their good-will, or their occult capa- eyes; yet I am so blind, or so stupid, that I bilities, they could do nothing for me of them-can discern nothing but a decoction of nutselves; the pen could not go to the ink, the galls and copperas. O that I had a talisman, ink could not come to the paper, the paper which would enable me to call up from this could not pour forth ideas and array itself dark pool all the legions, angel-forms,' who with words, as the earth in spring throws lie entranced' within it Paradise Lost, Book I. ont verdure and flowers from its bosom, Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks spontaneously spreading beanty and fertility In Vallombrosa. "O that I had a chemical test, whereby I where all had been waste and barren before. Alas! my immaculate sheet lay in view, like might analyze this little fluid, and learn,— an untrodden wilderness of snow, which not what it is made of, but what might be must cross, without a bush, or a knoll, or a made of it! I am too dull at present to fish single inequality on the surface, to guide my up a single idea from the bottom: yet if ten course, or awaken one pleasing association thousand people were to sit down to the examidst the dreary monotony of scene. And truly periment, each one would produce something if it had been what it so chillingly resembled different from every other; and were they all -the very sight of it freezing my blood-I to record their, lucubrations in this ink, with felt just then, as though I would rather have this pen, on this paper, their themes, their been the man perishing amidst the snow, in thoughts, their diction, would appear as di immortality of verse, than the living being verse as their faces, their voices, and their that I was, by a comfortable fireside, with no hand-writing.' perils to fear beyond such as I might encounter at a mahogany writing-desk, in traWere we to enter into minute criticism, we versing with my finger-ends a few sheets of might have to point out the least effective of cream-coloured paper. To consummate my ous speculations, so dazzling, attractive, and the papers, and occasionally an inapplicability misery, I recollected, that one of my fair numberless, that I knew not where to begin, of style to subject, or some such unimportant friend's correspondents being in a similar di- or which to select. It was evident, however, defect; but we are so charmed with the lemma, though not, as in my case, from the on the first glance at this treasure, that I whole, that we will not take this course, folly of self-confidence, had the felicity to fall might fill my paper with a descriptive cataand particularly as we should be bound in asleep, and dream so entertainingly, that I logue of only a few of the gems, while the justice to balance the detections by a much only wondered how he could find in his heart mine whence they came would be as exhaustAccordnore readily obtained extract of insulated to awake, unless it was for the pleasure of less as the collective imaginations of all minds beauties. At least, for the present, we shall telling his dream. But though fervently in that ever have been, are, or will be in this deem it sufficient to abridge one of the Essays, voked, Apollo in no shape, and least of all world of everlasting vicissitude. and if this abridgment does not exhibit a in the shape of Morpheus, would come to my ingly, in brisker spirits, I snatched up the playful, intelligent, and interesting writer, relief; nor could I dream of sleeping in such pen once more, though it trembled like a we shall doubt that Addison deserved a repu- distress, for if I had slept, whatever were my living thing between my fingers, so impatient visions, pen, ink, and paper would haunt me did I feel to fix down with it one of those tation, and Johnson the fame of a moralist. through them, and I knew that when I awoke fleeting visionaries which a breath or a motion began with the I should find nothing before me but pen, ink, might startle away, and for ever dissolve the and paper still. THE taste of the times is not in favour of a book of essays; and we partook of the taste of the times, when these two little volumes were put into our hands. They have changed it; and will, we are sure, provoke a new relish in the palate of most readers. They are very pleasing productions. The prose of a writer of not only poetical feeling and imagination; but of one gifted with a fine mind, replete with graceful sentiments, original thoughts, and delightful fancies. The language, too, is worthy of the matter; easy and elegant. Pen, Ink, and Paper. "There was little in my inkstand, and nothing in my head, when I sat down, with a "Again, with a feeling too forlorn to be refair sheet of Bath-post before me, to write an essay for a lady's portfolio. At first, with membered without a relapse of it, I took up a degree of self-complacency, which perhaps my pen; the ink had already dried in it, though not a line had been written except *Two vols. 12mo. Longman & Co. Will be pub-that shortest and sweetest and easiest of all, lished next week. "Fanciful as this soliloquy may seem to my readers, to me it was a golden key, which of its own accord unlocked a casket of curi enchantment. And thus "If I were little Jackey Jessamy, ten years old last Candlemas, with a flaxen poll, rosy cheeks, and a frilled shirt-neck;-and if, having mastered pot-hooks and strokes, I had made my way into joined hand,-with this expense in another way, by foisting impotent ternity, of diminutive stature, but with the pen, from this ink, on this paper, I should be imitations upon my good-natured readers, to airiness and vivacity of a bird, darting in at inditing, Fortune favours the brave,'- gain spurious credit, under the sanction of the door, lighted on the chair, and rapidly "Custom is second nature,"-"Be wise be- great names. cross-lined and speckled my paper with the times; shun darling crimes," with other saws "The door was first opened without cere- words and the melody of a song, composed and maxims equally elegant and edifying, mony by a hearty-looking, middle-aged and set to music by himself; which he immewhich no time, no space, no circumstance country gentleman, who came in as if he diately warbled forth with the sweetness of a could ever blot out from the tablet of memory; were just arrived at his own home after a redbreast, at the fall of the leaf. It was simthough for the time present, so far from im- day of groase-shooting on the moors, with ple and passionate, tender and indignant, at proving either my morals or my handwriting a smile of indescribable good humour on his the same time. The burthen, of course, was by the exercise, I might be playing truant in countenance, through which some gay appa- the beauty and the wrongs of a female, but my head, and whipping a top, or striking a ball rition of thought seemed breaking, like the whether she was his mistress or his country I with all my heart. But if I were Jackey's moon out of a cloud :-he sat down, took could not precisely determine; if it was mamma, and through means of this same ap- up the pen, dipt it in the ink, and presently Ireland of whom he sung, his patriotism had paratus were corresponding with his school- covered the paper with an eight-syllable lay the fervour of love; if it was Delia, his love master, on the best method of spoiling the of the easiest verse in the world, that am- had the impetuosity of patriotism. Would dear boy, there is no doubt but that, with due bled and cantered in all the paces of a that he had always written as worthily or as maternal tenderness, I would expatiate upon Highland pegasus, through an episode con- ambiguously; the name of the bard, then, his naturally quick parts, and give special cerning barons and knights, and ladies and would never have been degraded under that warning that these should not be blunted by lakes, and fields and tournaments, and feasts of Little, much less under that of Moore! -too much study; for reading wears the eyes, and songs, and forests and mountains, and Wordsworth is next introduced, with a rewriting soils the fingers, and arithmetic minstrels,-so unlike any thing that any body deemed nest of nightingales in his possession': wrinkles the forehead before its time; but I else ever wrote, and so like all that he and is characteristically drawn, till the Essay would recommend the utmost care of his himself had written, that I could not mis- comes to this conclusion: person, the free indulgence of his ginger- take the author. No sooner, however, had bread appetite, and the most conscientious he risen up, than the whole,-which I read neglect of his morals. Ah! then, a hundred as he penned, and which he penned as fast as to one but this very letter would be the death- I could read, vanished from the paper and warrant to the poor lad's best interests; from my mind, leaving both as blank as bewhich, being duly executed by the obsequious fore. pedagogue, would cause him to leave school The next apparition is that of the Great with as little head as the fondest parent Unknown, fancifully imagined. could desire to see on his heir apparent's shoulders, to maintain the family imbecility, and transmit it unimpaired to posterity. Our author next figures the love-letter, its answer, a challenge, &c.; but, shocked by the latter, will not be a man of honour another moment," and lapses into a new train of ideas. "W. had run through half a dozen of his nightingale cadences, and might have sung till next morning without hazard of interruption from me, when a being of almost superhuman appearance made a third in our company. He might have issued from the world of spirits, for before either of us were aware, he stood glaring upon us. W. perceiving him, instantly flew away with his birds, and left me alone with the mysterious apparition. It was Byron! he seized the pen,-it became a magician's wand in his grasp;-he touched the ink-stand, it expanded into a cauldron like that of the witches in Macbeth, and there was a dance of black spirits and white,blue spirits and grey,' about it, using their ineffable incantations with such effect, that the walls of the house fell into nothing before them, and my Lord suddenly unfolding the paper, which had already undergone so many metamorphoses, it stretched itself into a landof all knowledge are blended indistinguish- The next "was in no hurry, however, for scape, under the gloom of night, with a wan ably, and I think, ' If I were a poet!' Why display; and to do him justice, he pored so ray of the moon in the last quarter gleaming nothing in the world is easier than to think long over his task, writing very slowly, along it. Instantly we found ourselves, the oneself a poet; and next to it, nothing more halting sometimes on the down-stroke of a mighty lord and I, in a corner of Lara's common than to be thought so by others! letter, and so frequently retracing, inter- hall. Aye, but to be a poet!-why, to be sure, that lining, and blotting out, that having lost all "A loud but hesitating succession of raps is quite a different thing. Well, but if I were patience, I was ready to push him from the at the door, dissipated the whole phantasmaa poet, how could I illumine these blank seat, when he suddenly rose; his eye kindled goria. A poet, who shall be nameless, came leaves, and adorn them with imagery more into rapture; and, from a completely disfi-in; I looked up, and recollected myself!"' imperishable than the sculptures of Greece? gured and illegible sheet,-in tones that yet If, for example! I were Scott?-Impossible! ring in my ear, like music remembered from Campbell?-next to impossible! Byron? infancy, he recited about twenty lyric lines; The Adventures of Hajji Baba, of Ispahan. more than impossible! Make what you will a spell in which he had bound up so much 12mo. 3 vols. London 1824. J. Murray. of the phrase, it is not a thousandth part so harmony, splendour and pathos of language, THE Adventures of Hajji Baba present us (if absurd as the thought. Well then, if I were imagination and feeling, that I could have we may use the phrase) with a moral and Southey? No. Wordsworth?-No. Bloom- listened to the repetition of the strain a moving panorama of Persian, Curdish, Turfield No. Moore?-No. I was so dis- thousand and a thousand times over, from coman, and Turkish manners. We know only heartened by these negatives, that I durst not hazard another if; but it was my good fortune to fall immediately into a brown study, when, to my astonishment and delight, the afore-named personages, one by one, came "Yet had he scarcely read them once, when into the room, and sitting down on the very Southey, who had been walking to and fro in chair which I had occupied,-how I happened the passage, till he could hold out no longer, to vacate my seat I know not, any more than burst into the room, and Campbell, whom by what spell I was replaced in it, at the end I forgot to name before, vanished in a moof two hours; each in his turn made use of ment; but whether he went through the door, my pen, ink, and paper. Oh! if I could the window, or the ceiling, I could not discopy what they wrote,-what only one of tinguish. them wrote,-I should make these pages the "I caught the disappearing face of my former visitor, turned over his shoulder, with an arch significance of expression, which made it at once another and the same,' and left me bewildered with transport at having discovered the greatest secret of the age, yet grievously tempted to doubt whether I had made any discovery at all. Of one thing, "Pen, ink, and paper are stiil before me, as however, I am positive to this hour, that as at first; and neither copies at school, a letter the sun shone from the passage into the room, full of maternal solicitude, billets doux, dis- when the door was closing, I saw the shadow patches, nor challenges have been produced. of Sir Walter Scott following the person I look again at the ink, in which the elements who went out. morning till evening on a midsummer day, Southey and Bloomfield are now sketched, most acceptable that were ever presented by and their writings disappear. me to the public; but I could not have passed "But this enchantment, as well as the rest, them for my own, without hazarding the fate melted away like the rainbow from my paper, of the jackdaw who borrowed the peacock's while I gazed upon it. I had not time to refeathers. Nor will I plume myself at their gret the loss, for another of the tuneful fra two books in the language, published since our Gazette commenced, which this work resembles; namely, Anastasius, and the Memoirs of Artemi, with both of which our readers may remember we were much delighted. And though the story-chain of Hajji wants the intense interest of the former of these, it is a great favourite with us, and will, we think, greatly please the majority of readers. Hajji, the son of a barber of Ispahan, is made to encounter a variety of fortunes and misfortunes: he is by turns a menial, an itinerant, a captive to the Turcomans, a quack, a dervish, an official to the Shah, a Mollah, a merchant, a rogué, an envoy, a lover, a married man; and he sees much of Tehran, Curdistan, Georgia, Bagdad,Constantinople, &c.; meets many singular characters, describes a many remarkable customs, and tells many | his majesty had caused to be erected of the discovered it. But it was not alone in poetry carious tales. heads of the vanquished. These sayings of that I excelled. I had a great turn for meThe whole narrative brings the national mine were reported to the Shah, and he was chanics, and several of my inventions were traits of the different Asiatics very vividly pleased to confer upon me the highest honour much admired at court. I contrived a wheel before us; and at the conclusion we have which a poet can receive; namely, causing for perpetual motion, which only wants one clearer notions than any Travels could give my mouth to be filled with gold coin in the little addition to make it go round for ever. us, of Persian cunning, duplicity, tyranny, presence of the whole court, at the great I made different sorts of coloured paper; I and avarice; of Turkish pride, rapacity, and audience. This led to my advancement; and invented a new sort of ink-stand; and was oppression; of the ferocity of one tribe, and I was appointed to attend at court, and to on the high road to making cloth, when I the servility of another; and in general of write verses on all occasions. In order to show was stopped by his majesty, who said to me, the strange effects of political despotism and my zeal, I represented to the king, that as in Asker, keep to your poetry: whenever Í a formal sensual religion in rendering Man former times our great Ferdousi had written want cloth, my merchants bring it from creature inexpressibly cruel and unjust to his Shah Nameh, or the History of the Kings, Europe.' And I obeyed his instructions; for those below, base and slavish to those above it behoved him, who was greater than any on the approaching festival of the new year'shim, and false and heartless to all. In short, monarch Persia ever possessed, to have a day, when it is customary for each of his after reading these adventures, the dullest poet who should celebrate his reign; and I servants to make him a present, I wrote European will know more of the countries entreated permission to write a Shahin Shah something so happy about a tooth-pick, which where they occur than the French lady, of Nameh, or the History of the King of Kings; I presented in a handsome case, that the whom the writer relates, she "had so general to which his majesty was most graciously principal noblemen of the court, at the great a notion of the East, that upon taking leave pleased to give his consent. One of my public andience of that sacred day, were of her, she enjoined me to get acquainted enemies at court was the lord high treasurer, ordered to kiss me on the mouth for my pains. with a friend of hers, living, as she said, quel- who, without any good reason, wanted to I compared his majesty's teeth to pearls, and que part dans les Indes, and whom, to my impose upon me a fine of 12,000 tomanns, the tooth-pick to the pearl-diver; his gums astonishment, I found residing at the Cape of which the king, on the plea that I was the to a coral-bank, near which pearls are freGood Hope! first poet of the age, would not allow. It quently found; and the long beard and mushappened one day, that in a large assembly, taches that encircled the mouth, to the unduthe subject of discussion was the liberality of lations of the ocean. I was complimented by Mahmoud Shah Ghaznevi to Ferdousi, who every body present upon the fertility of my gave him a miscal of gold for every couplet imagination: I was assured that Ferdousi in the Shah Nameh. Anxious that the king was a downright ass when compared to me. should hear what I was about to say, I ex- By such means, I enjoyed great favour with claimed: "The liberality of his present ma- the Shah." equal did I say?-nay greater; because in jesty is equal to that of Mahmoud Shahthe one case, it was exercised towards the most celebrated poet of Persia; and in my case, it is exercised towards the humble individual now before you.' Without following the hero through all his career, we shall select a few of the passages most peculiar to and illustrative of the nature of the work. The following is the portrait of a Persian poet (one of Hajji's companions in captivity among the Turcomans :) 12,000 more. fence, if not bastinadoed or ordered to be But let ever so high a favourite give ofinstantly hanged, he is perhaps treated according to the process of one who happened to reclaim his own property: "I was born in the city of Kerman, and my name is Asker. My father was for a long time governor of that city, during the reign of the eunuch Aga Mohammed Shah; and although the intrigues that were set on foot against him to deprive him of his government were very mischievous, still such was his "What does he say?' said the prince: respectability, that his enemies never entirely how and when such great favours had been When the master of ceremonies, taking off "All the company were anxious to hear give him the shoe if he speaks again.'prevailed against him. His eyes were freconferred upon me. quently in danger, but his adroitness pre- I, when my father died, he left a property mouth with the heel of it, shod with iron, In the first place,' said his high green slipper, struck me over the served them; and he had at last the good of 10,000 tomauns; the king permitted me to saying, 'Do you speak to a king's son thus? fortune to die peaceably in his bed in the inherit it; he might have taken it away-Go in peace, and keep your eyes open, or present Shah's reign. I was permitted to there are 10,000 tomauns. possess the property which he left, which high treasurer wanted to fine me 12,000 to pushed and dragged violently away. Then the lord you'll have your ears cut off;'-and so I was amounted to about 10,000 tomauns. In my mauns; the king did not allow it-there are youth I was remarkable for the attention "I returned in utter despair to my mule which I paid to my studies, and before I had what I have subsisted upon ever since I have at what had happened, and said, What could Then the rest is made up of teer, who appeared not in the least surprised arrived at the age of sixteen I was celebrated been in the Shah's service, and so my sum is you expect more? After all, is he not a for writing a fine hand. I knew Hafiz en- made out." And then I took to my exclama-prince? When once he or any man in power tirely by heart, and had myself acquired such tions of May the king live for ever!-may gets possession of a thing, do you think that a facility in making verses, that I might almost his shadow never be less!-may he conquer they will ever restore it? You might as well be said to speak in numbers. There was no all his enemies!'-all of which I flattered expect a mule to give up a mouthful of fresh subject that I did not attempt. I wrote on myself was duly reported to his majesty: grass, when once it has got it within its the loves of Leilah and Majnoun; I never and some days after I was invested with a mouth, as a prince to give up money that has heard the note of a nightingale, but I made dress of honour, consisting of a brocade coat, once been in his hands. it pour out its loves to the rose; and wherever I went I never failed to produce my poetry and a brocade cloak trimmed with fur. I was a shawl for the waist, and one for the head, and chant it out in the assembly. At this also honoured with the title of Prince of time the king was waging war with Sadik Khan, a pretender to the throne, and a battle Poets, by virtue of a royal firman, which, ac- "He began to talk to me of magic and was fought, in which his majesty commanded cording to the usual custom, I wore in my astrology, and gave me various receipts for in person, and which terminated in the defeat cap for three successive days, receiving the making spells and charms, to serve on every of the rebel. I immediately sang the king's congratulations of my friends, and feeling of occasion in life; by the sale of which alone praises. In describing the contest, I made greater consequence than I had ever done I should be able to make my fortune. The Rustam, our fabulous hero, appear, standing double purpose of gratifying my revenge for child, he assured me, produces sleep; and its before. I wrote a poem, which answered the tail of a hare, placed under the pillow of a in a cloud just over the field of battle; who the ill treatment I had received from the lord blood, given to a horse, makes him fleet and seeing the king lay about him desperately, high treasurer, and of conciliating his good long-winded. The eye and the knuckle bones exclaims to himself, Lucky wight am I to be here instead of below, for certainly I should graces; for it had a double meaning all of a wolf, attached to a boy's person, gives never escape from his blows.' I also exerted through: what he in his ignorance mistook him courage; and its fat, rubbed on a womy wit, and was much extolled when I said, thought that the high-sounding words in which indifference: its gall, used in the same manfor praise, was in fact satire; and as he man, will convert her husband's love into that Sadik Khan and his troops onght not to it abounded, (which, being mostly Arabic, he ner, produces fruitfulness. But the article repine, after all; for although they were did not understand) must contain an eulogium, which bore the greatest price in the seraglios vanquished, yet still the king, in his magna- he did not in the least suspect that they were was the kus keftar, the dried skin of a female nimity, had exalted their heads to the skies. in fact expressions containing the grossest hyena; which, if worn about the person, conIn this I alluded to a pillar of skulls which disrespect. In truth, I had so cloked my ciliated the affection of all to the wearer. re No wonder if the report be true, which ascribes meaning, that, without my explanation, it "We reached Ispahan in due time, where the tale to M. Morier. would have been difficult for any one to have I exchanged such parts of my dress as be 6 tailed, by one esteemed the most perfect Some of their superstitions are thus dedervish in Persia: |