1814.] NAPOLEON'S ABDICATION. 409 and teeth. The last may still leave their marks; and "I guess now" (as the Yankees say) that he will yet play them a pass. He is in their rear-between them and their homes. Query-will they ever reach them? I mark this day! world. Saturday, April 9, 1814. Napoleon Buonaparte has abdicated the throne of the "Excellent well." Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes-the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too-Amurath not amiss, had he become aught except a dervise-Charles the Fifth but so so-but Napoleon, worst of all. What! wait till they were in his capital, and then talk of his readiness to give up what is already gone!! "What whining monk art thou— "what holy cheat?" 'Sdeath!-Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this. The "Isle of Elba" to retire to!-Well-if it had been Caprea, I should have marvelled less. "I see men's minds are but a parcel "of their fortunes." 2 I am utterly bewildered and confounded. I don't know-but I think I, even I (an insect compared with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's. But, after all, a crown may be not worth dying for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this!!! 1. In Otway's Venice Preserved (act iv. sc. 2), Pierre says to Jaffier, who had betrayed him 2. "What whining monk art thou? What holy cheat? Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! Expende-quot libras in duce summo invenies? I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats." Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil :—the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat. Psha! "something too much of this." 3 But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, "like the thanes, fallen from him." April 10. I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I never am long in the society even of her I love, (God knows too well, and the devil probably too,) without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library. Even in the day, I send away my carriage oftener than I use or abuse it. Per esempio,—I have not stirred out of these rooms for these four days past: but I have sparred for exercise (windows open) with Jackson an hour daily, to attenuate and keep up the ethereal part of me. The I. "Expende Hannibalem : quot libras in duce summo Invenies?" Juvenal, Sat. x. 147. "Produce the urn that Hannibal contains, Gifford's Juvenal (ed. 1802), vol. ii. pp. 338, 339. 2. "In the Statistical Account of Scotland, I find that Sir John "Paterson had the curiosity to collect, and weigh, the ashes of a person discovered a few years since in the parish of Eccles. "Wonderful to relate, he found the whole did not exceed in weight one ounce and a half! And is this all!"--Gifford's Juvenal, ut supra. 66 3. Hamlet, act iii. sc. 2. 4. Macbeth, act v. sc. 3, "Doctor, the thanes fly from me!" 1814.] OCCUPATION OF A DAY. 411 more violent the fatigue, the better my spirits for the rest of the day; and then, my evenings have that calm nothingness of languor, which I most delight in. To-day I have boxed an hour-written an ode to Napoleon Buonaparte copied it-eaten six biscuits-drunk four bottles of soda water 1-redde away the rest of my timebesides giving poor [? Webster] a world of advice about this mistress of his, who is plaguing him into a phthisic and intolerable tediousness. I am a pretty fellow truly to lecture about "the sect." No matter, my counsels are all thrown away. April 19, 1814. There is ice at both poles, north and south-all extremes are the same-misery belongs to the highest and the lowest only, to the emperor and the beggar, when unsixpenced and unthroned. There is, to be sure, 1. The following is one of Byron's bills for soda water :Lord Byron to R. Shipwash, 27 St. Albans St. a damned insipid medium-an equinoctial line-no one knows where, except upon maps and measurement. "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death."' I will keep no further journal of that same hesternal torch-light; and, to prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this volume, and write, in Ipecacuanha,-" that "the Bourbons are restored!!!"-"Hang up philosophy." 2 To be sure, I have long despised myself and man, but I never spat in the face of my species before-"O fool! "I shall go mad." 8 1. Macbeth, act v. sc. 5, line 22. ت 1.] SPENCER'S POEMS. 413 APPENDIX I. ARTICLES FROM THE MONTHLY REVIEW. 1. POEMS, BY W. R. SPENCER. (VOL. 67, 1812, PP. 54-60.) Art. VII. Poems by William Robert Spencer. 8vo. IOS. Boards. Cadell and Davies. 1811. THE author of this well-printed volume has more than once been introduced to our readers, and is known to rank among that class of poetical persons who have never been highly favoured by stern criticism. The "mob of gentlemen who "write with ease" has indeed of late years (like other mobs) become so importunate, as to threaten an alarming rivalry to the regular body of writers who are not fortunate enough to be either easy or genteel. Hence the jaundiced eye with which the real author regards the red Morocco binding of the presumptuous "Littérateur;" we say, the binding, for into the book itself he cannot condescend to look, at least not beyond the frontispiece.-Into Mr. Spencer's volume, however, he may dip farther, and will find sufficient to give him pleasure or pain, in proportion to his own candour. It consists chiefly of " Vers de Société," calculated to prove very delightful to a large circle of fashionable acquaintance, and pleasing to a limited number of vulgar purchasers. These last, indeed, may be rude enough to expect something more for their specie during the present scarcity of change, than lines to "Young Poets and Poetesses," "Epitaphs upon "Years," Poems "to my Grammatical Niece," "Epistle from "Sister Dolly in Cascadia to Sister Tanny in Snowdonia," etc.: but we doubt not that a long list of persons of quality, wit, and honour, "in town and country," who are here |