The mistress of the rocky cottage Pours for her guest some smoking pottage; Surpris'd, once more inquires his meaning." The Traveller now tells him that he blows his broth to cool it; at which reply the Satyr loses all patience, shews him the door, and fairly turns him out : "Whilst I possess this vaulted roof, (And fiercely then he rais'd his hoof,) No mouth its mossy sides shall hold Which blows at once both hot and cold." We subjoin the conclusion of the fable, with the notes, because it is one of the best and most spirited of the "modern instances," without stepping beyond the bounds of fair and legitimate satire; though we still think this is scarcely the proper place for such topies. "Tell me, ye Westminster Electors, Whom cunning state empirics please, "Who, deeply ting'd with classic lore, Giving, as Harold mounts the gale, "Since the printing of this Fable, the praise here given to the Westminster Electors is no longer due. Panegyric or censure expressed in this place will affect them very little; nor perhaps will their choice, in the present instance, be of much importance to the great council of the nation. This event however, which many persons will consider as the extinction of good sense among the elective body in that city, will be celebrated with appropriate honours by the democratic faction. Mors janua vitæ, is a common motto for funereal decora ments. Mr H- e with the same antithesis, and complying with the propensity to punning, which heraldic inscriptions often exhibit, may place under his achievement, NEWGATE IS THE NEW GATE TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS." The well-known Epigram of a noble Poet, on the same subject, affords one of the many instances of coincidence of thought, where there could be no communication between the writers: Would you go to the House through the true gate, But we must bring this rambling article to a conclusion. If we had more space, it would be easy to say much more in praise of this amusing volume, -and if we had a whole sheet before us, we should have nothing more to urge in the way of objection. The volume is evidently the work of a scholar and a gentleman, while the happy facility of his numbers as clearly shews that he was born a poet :-for, like La Fontaine, "il joint a l'art de plaire celui de n'y penser pas." Whoever he be, we hope a second edition will soon enable this "nameless man" to step boldly forward; and though we cannot promise that he will thereby secure to his descendants the same advantages which, it is said, were conferred upon those of the French Fabulist-a perpetual immunity from taxation; yet he may fairly claim for himself that wreath, which he is so well entitled to wear, from the Tree of Apollo. A SECOND LETTER FROM THE MAN IN THE MOON. "Petruchio. How bright and goodly shines the moon! It shall be moon or star, or what I list, Or e'er I journey to your father's house. Evermore cross'd and cross'd! nothing but cross'd. Kath. Forward, I pray. And be it moon, or sun, or what you please; In my last, respected Christopher, I Taming of the Shrew. pamphlet of predictions concerning her appearances throughout every night of every month in the year, yclept an Almanack? Has not the cottager the stitched pages of hieroglyphic Moore, with a splashed red stamp in the dexter corner of the title-page? Does not the schoolmaster possess White's Ephemeris, or the Gentleman's Diary, cramm'd to the colophon with crabbed diagrams? What old lady is unpossessed of Goldsmith, or else of that still more diminutive record of red-letter days, and lunar changes, with which the Company of Stationers indulge her, in a fairy quarto, about the size of the good matron's pincushion? Do not the various counties of England and of Scotland too, belike, (although of that I am not so well aware, for when I made almanacks my study it was in England,) and eke the learned universities, send forth the same predictive notices in huge broadside sheets, which make walls and doors, and wainscotting look glorious where they are hung up? And do not all and every one of those tell more than a year beforehand; nay, and some of them picture to the eye, the very shape which my mistress the Moon will assume on any given night? Do they not mark down, with the accuracy of a prompter's play-book, the very times when she will make her "exits and her entrances," and declare as infallibly as any old tide-waiter, the periods of her influence upon the hour of high-water at our sea-ports? Although she never fails to do what these sapient oracles set down for her, yet is she taxed with mutability-mutable as she is then, it must be granted that she is so methodically, and that any one of tolerable prudence can foresee her mutations. Well, then, is it fair, doing, as she does, just what is prescribed to her, that novelists should so frequently make her stand stock still? Have not I, above all men, reason for incredu lous hatred of what I read in their fabrications, when I find Henry and Lucy meeting a-nights, for three weeks together, under an oak tree, and having the round moon shining above them through the branches all the while? It is not, perhaps, requisite that writers of stories should be very minute chronologists, but in a case of this kind, it is obvious to all, that they must be talking of some miraculous appearance in the heavenly bodies, or at least they cannot be speaking of that Moon from which I take my prone descent, plumpdown every fortnight. It would be invidious to point out any particular work of fiction; yet surely the multitude of them, in which no observance of the constant variation of the phases of the Moon is paid by the writers of them (the fair ones especially,) is so great, that it cannot have escaped thy keen eye, Christopher, or the observation of thy readers. In fact, our Romancers and Novelists play such vagaries with the moon's appearances and non-appearances, that I become as perplexed as poor Katharine was, and know not whether these tale-tellers, like Petruchio, are talking of the moon, the sun, or of a rush candle; for their description of her doings seems to suit one as little as the other. Canst thou not recal to thy recollection, that, in some delicate narratives, there is a moon visible every night, wherever she is wanted-(a most useful thing it would be, and the Postmasters-GeneVOL. IX. ral would get a parliamentary reward for the discoverer if he would bring his invention to perfection)—while in others the nights are as invariably dark and moonless? In the romances, I believe, most pranks are played with the "silver deity of the silent hours," for most novels are conducted, if not with "truth," yet by " daylight." But in a romance, where, for instance, the scene is laid on the shores of the Mediterranean, the moon is pressed into the writer's service, and made to beam "sans intermission"-she is made to walk through the sky, and to show the whole of her face without a veil, night after night-for otherwise, how could Paolo and Ninetta dance upon the sands in her golden radiance? But presto, it is all sable gloom again, if a cut-throat is hired to murder the heroine, or even if the heroine is to pry about the Castle in which she is immured, shading a lamp with her taper fingers, though we know very well it must be blown out before she gets back to her chamber again. The moon, in this case, if not altogether obliged to make herself scarce, is at the utmost only allowed to give a sullen gleam, and then shroud herself in tenfold darkness!-and poor Angelina, or Celestina, or Rosalbina (or whatever the forlorn virgin's name may be-only there is a special necessity for its ending in a) staggers onward in murky obscurity. There is one thing, however, worth notice, and this is, let the place be ever so ruinous, and full of flights of steps, and crowded with pillars, and dilapidated by very suspicious looking chasms in the side-walls-yet never did I read of one of these young ladies tumbling down stairs, or making her nose bleed by hitting it against an obtrusive pillar, or pitching head over heels down any of the lateral passages, or yawning rents in the mason-work-every one of them an accident most likely to misbetide a damsel who paces about darkling, her lamp out and the moon set. The utmost misfortune which befals, is that she wanders astray a little, and finds herself in a prohibited part of the dwelling perhaps, and possibly she may chance to pick up a rusty dagger by the way, which (the fountain of her heart meanwhile curdling with horror) she perceives to be incrusted with blood long since shed. But thou wilt say 66 Marry, how does she perceive all this in the dark?"-ay, that's a problem, B ments. Mr He with the same antithesis, and complying with the propensity to punning, which heraldic inscriptions often exhibit, may place under his achievement, NEWGATE IS THE NEW GATE TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS." The well-known Epigram of a noble Poet, on the same subject, affords one of the many instances of coincidence of thought, where there could be no communication between the writers: Would you go to the House through the true gate, But we must bring this rambling article to a conclusion. If we had more space, it would be easy to say much more in praise of this amusing volume, -and if we had a whole sheet before us, we should have nothing more to urge in the way of objection. The volume is evidently the work of a scholar and a gentleman, while the happy facility of his numbers as clearly shews that he was born a poet:-for, like La Fontaine," il joint a l'art de plaire celui de n'y penser pas." Whoever he be, we hope a second edition will soon enable this "nameless man" to step boldly forward; and though we cannot promise that he will thereby secure to his descendants the same advantages which, it is said, were conferred upon those of the French Fabulist-a perpetual immunity from taxation; yet he may fairly claim for himself that wreath, which he is so well entitled to wear, from the Tree of Apollo. A SECOND LETTER FROM THE MAN IN THE MOON. "Petruchio. How bright and goodly shines the moon! It shall be moon or star, or what I list, Or e'er I journey to your father's house.- And be it moon, or sun, or what you please; And if you please to call it a rush candle, Henceforth, I vow, it shall be so for me.' In my last, respected Christopher, I gave vent to some of my spleen at the misconceptions and mal-practices of certain of the poetical tribe in your nether sphere. I have as much reason for wager of battle with another set of dabblers in fiction-I mean those prose writers, who compound Novels and Romances for the entertainment of subscribers to Circulating Libraries, and other gentry who are overburdened with time. What I have to complain of in these authors is, that they take strange liberties with the condition of the Moon-that is, they generally keep her at the full throughout their stories. Now, every body knows that the moon -"the inconstant moon"-applicable as this epithet is to her, is "constant in inconstancy"-like a lady of the old French court, she makes her changes very regularly-she waxes and wanes -increases and decreases, with all the precision of a time-piece. Is there not forsooth in every house in the land, a Taming of the Shrere. pamphlet of predictions concerning her appearances throughout every night of every month in the year, yclept an Almanack? Has not the cottager the stitched pages of hieroglyphic Moore, with a splashed red stamp in the dexter corner of the title-page? Does not the schoolmaster possess White's Ephemeris, or the Gentleman's Diary, cramm'd to the colophon with crabbed diagrams? What old lady is unpossessed of Goldsmith, or else of that still more diminutive record of red-letter days, and lunar changes, with which the Company of Stationers indulge her, in a fairy quarto, about the size of the good matron's pincushion? Do not the various counties of England and of Scotland too, belike, (although of that I am not so well aware, for when I made almanacks my study it was in England,) and eke the learned universities, send forth the same predictive notices in huge broadside sheets, which make walls and doors, and wainscotting look glorious where they are hung up? And do not all and every one of those tell more than a year beforehand; nay, and some of them picture to the eye, the very shape which my mistress the Moon will assume on any given night? Do they not mark down, with the accuracy of a prompter's play-book, the very times when she will make her "exits and her entrances," and declare as infallibly as any old tide-waiter, the periods of her influence upon the hour of high-water at our sea-ports? Although she never fails to do what these sapient oracles set down for her, yet is she taxed with mutability-mutable as she is then, it must be granted that she is so methodically, and that any one of tolerable prudence can foresee her mutations. Well, then, is it fair, doing, as she does, just what is prescribed to her, that novelists should so frequently make her stand stock still? Have not I, above all men, reason for incredulous hatred of what I read in their fabrications, when I find Henry and Lucy meeting a-nights, for three weeks together, under an oak tree, and having the round moon shining above them through the branches all the while? It is not, perhaps, requisite that writers of stories should be very minute chronologists, but in a case of this kind, it is obvious to all, that they must be talking of some miraculous appearance in the heavenly bodies, or at least they cannot be speaking of that Moon from which I take my prone descent, plumpdown every fortnight. It would be invidious to point out any particular work of fiction; yet surely the multitude of them, in which no observance of the constant variation of the phases of the Moon is paid by the writers of them (the fair ones especially,) is so great, that it cannot have escaped thy keen eye, Christopher, or the observation of thy readers. In fact, our Romancers and Novelists play such vagaries with the moon's appearances and non-appearances, that I become as perplexed as poor Katharine was, and know not whether these tale-tellers, like Petruchio, are talking of the moon, the sun, or of a rush candle; for their description of her doings seems to suit one as little as the other. Canst thou not recal to thy recollection, that, in some delicate narratives, there is a moon visible every night, wherever she is wanted (a most useful thing it would be, and the Postinasters-GeneVOL. IX. in ral would get a parliamentary reward for the discoverer if he would bring his invention to perfection)—while others the nights are as invariably dark and moonless? In the romances, I believe, most pranks are played with the "silver deity of the silent hours," for most novels are conducted, if not with "truth," yet by " daylight." But in a romance, where, for instance, the scene is laid on the shores of the Mediterranean, the moon is pressed into the writer's service, and made to beam "sans intermission"-she is made to walk through the sky, and to show the whole of her face without a veil, night after night-for otherwise, how could Paolo and Ninetta dance upon the sands in her golden radiance? But presto, it is all sable gloom again, if a cut-throat is hired to murder the heroine, or even if the heroine is to pry about the Castle in which she is immured, shading a lamp with her taper fingers, though we know very well it must be blown out before she gets back to her chamber again. The moon, in this case, if not altogether obliged to make herself scarce, is at the utmost only allowed to give a sullen gleam, and then shroud herself in tenfold darkness!-and poor Angelina, or Celestina, or Rosalbina (or whatever the forlorn virgin's name may be-only there is a special necessity for its ending in a) staggers onward in murky obscurity. There is one thing, however, worth notice, and this is, let the place be ever so ruinous, and full of flights of steps, and crowded with pillars, and dilapidated by very suspicious looking chasms in the side-walls-yet never did I read of one of these young ladies tumbling down stairs, or making her nose bleed by hitting it against an obtrusive pillar, or pitching head over heels down any of the lateral passages, or yawning rents in the mason-work-every one of them an accident most likely to misbetide a damsel who paces about darkling, her lamp out and the moon set. The utmost misfortune which befals, is that she wanders astray a little, and finds herself in a prohibited part of the dwelling perhaps, and possibly she may chance to pick up a rusty dagger by the way, which (the fountain of her heart meanwhile curdling with horror) she perceives to be incrusted with blood long since shed. But thou wilt say"Marry, how does she perceive all this in the dark?"-ay, that's a problem, B |