The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 536, March 3, 1832

"Raise the weak head, and stay the parting sigh,Or with new life relume the swimming eye."

At the corners of streets of traffic, and more especially

"Where fam'd St. Giles's ancient limits spread,"

the matutinal huckster may be seen administering to costermongers, hackney-coachmen, and "fair women without discretion," a fluid "all hot, all hot," ycleped by the initiated elder wine, which, we should think, might give the partakers a tolerable notion of the fermenting beverage extracted by Tartars from mare's milk not particularly fresh. Hard by we find a decent matron super-intending her tea-table at the lamp-post, and tendering to a remarkably select company little, blue, delft cups of bohea, filled from time to time from a prodigious kettle, that simmers unceasingly on its charcoal tripod, though the refractory cad often protests that the fuel fails before the boiling stage is consummated by an ebullition. Hither approaches perhaps an interesting youth from Magherastaphena, who, ere night-fall, is destined to figure in some police-office as a "juvenile delinquent." The shivering sweep, who has just travelled through half a dozen stacks of chimneys, also quickens every motion of his weary little limbs, when he comes within sight of the destined breakfast, and beholds the reversionary heel of a loaf and roll of butter awaiting his arrival. Another unfailing visiter is the market-gardener, on his way to deposit before the Covent Garden piazza such a pyramid of cabbages as might well have been manured in the soil with Master Jack's justly celebrated bean-stalk. Surely Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. The female portion of such assemblages, for the most part, consists of poor Salopian strawberry-carriers, many of whom have walked already at least four miles, with a troublesome burden, and for a miserable pittance—egg-women, with sundry still-born chickens, goslings, and turkey-pouts—and passing milk-maidens, peripatetic under the yoke of their double pail. Their professional cry is singular and sufficiently unintelligible, although perhaps not so much so as that of the Dublin milk-venders in the days of Swift; it used to run thus,—

"Mugs, jugs, and porringers,Up in the garret and down in the cellar."

They are in general a hale, comely, well-favoured race, notwithstanding the assertion of the author of Trivia to the contrary.5

The most revolting spectacle to any one of sensibility which usually presents itself about this hour, is the painful progress of the jaded, foundered, and terrified droves of cattle that one necessarily must see not unfrequently struggling on to the appointed slaughter-house, perhaps after three days during which they have been running

"Their course of suffering in the public way."

On such occasions we have often wished ourselves "far from the sight of city, spire, or sound of minster clock." One feels most for the sheep and lambs, when the softened fancy recurs to the streams and hedgerows, and pleasant pastures, from whence the woolly exiles have been ejected; and yet the emotion of pity is not wholly unaccompanied by admiration at the sagacity of the canine disciplinarians that bay them remorselessly forward, and sternly refuse the stragglers permission to make a reconnoissance on the road. They are highly respectable members of society these same sheep-dogs, and we wish we could say as much for "the curs of low degree," that just at the same hour begin to prowl up and down St. Giles's, and to and fro in it, seeking what they may devour, with the fear of the Alderman of Cripplegate Within before their eyes. The feline kind, however, have reason to think themselves in more danger at the first round of the watering cart, for we have often rescued an unsuspicious tortoise-shell from the felonious designs of a skin-dealer, who was about to lay violent hands on unoffending puss, while she was watching the process of making bread through the crevices of a Scotch grating.6

Another animal sui generis, occasionally visible about the same cock-crowing season, is the parliamentary reporter, shuffling to roost, and a more slovenly-looking operative from sunrise to sunset is rarely to be seen. There has probably been a double debate, and between three and five o'clock he has written "a column bould." No one can well mistake him. The features are often Irish, the gait jaunty or resolutely brisk, but neither "buxom, blithe, nor debonnair," complexion wan, expression pensive, and the entire propriety of the toilette disarranged and degagée. The stuff that he has perpetrated is happily no longer present to his memory, and neither placeman's sophistry nor patriot's rant will be likely in any way to interfere with his repose. Intense fatigue, whether intellectual or manual, however, is not the best security for sound slumber at any hour, more particularly in the morning.

Even at this hour the swart Savoyard (filius nullius) issues forth on his diurnal pilgrimage, "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," to excruciate on his superannuated hurdy-gurdy that sublime melody, "the hundred and seventh psalm," or the plaintive sweetness of "Isabel," perhaps speculating on a breakfast for himself and Pug, somewhere between Knightsbridge and Old Brentford. Poor fellow! Could he procure a few bones of mutton, how hard would it be for his hungry comprehension to understand the displeasure which similar objects occasioned to Attila on the plains of Champagne!

Then the too frequent preparations for a Newgate execution—but enough of such details; it is the muse of Mr. Crabbe that alone could do them justice. We would say to the great city, in the benedictory spirit of the patriot of Venice,—esto perpetua! Notwithstanding thy manifold "honest knaveries," peace be within thy walls, and plenty pervade thy palaces, that thou mayest ever approve thyself, oh queen of capitals,

"Like Samson's riddle in the sacred song,A springing sweet still flowing from the strong!"Blackwood's Magazine

THE SKETCH-BOOK

SCOTTISH SPORTING

From the Letters of Two Sportsmen; with Recollections of the Ettrick Shepherd(For the Mirror.)

After visiting Thoms, the sculptor, "Burns's cottage," "Halloway Kirk," Monument, &c., in Ayrshire, we toddled on over to Dumfries, and had a crack with poor "Rabbie Burns's" widow, not forgetting McDiarmid the author; thence to Moffat, and up that dismal glen, the pass of Moffat, to the grey mare's tail, a waterfall, so called from its resembling the silvery tail of a grey mare; and truly, if the simile were extended into infinitude, which from its sublimity it would admit of, we might compare its waving, silky stream swinging over the broad face of its lofty grey rock, to the tail of the pale horse of Revelation, over the chaos of time. It was a sombre, solemn sort of a day, and the dense clouds hung curtaining down the mountain sides, like our living pall as it were—I scarcely know how—but we felt dismally until we took a dram and got into a perspiration, with tugging up the sinuosities of the cliff's, to the summit of the waterfall. Loch Skein, where we were galvanized, electrified, magnetized, and petrified, all at once, by the quackery, clackery, flappery, quatter, splatter, clatter, scatter, and dash-de-blash, and squash, of a flock of wild ducks, on its reedy, flaggy surface; O, what a scutter was there! Our hearts, too full, leapt into our mouths, but our guns were turned into tons of lead, and ere we could heave them up to our shoulders of clay, the thousand had fled into the eternal grey mist of the mountain, like the dispersion of a confused dream. There we stood like two sumphs, (as Hogg calls those who are ganging a bit aglee in their wits) gaping and staring at each other with a look which said, why did not youshoot? Our dogs too stood as stiff as two pumps, with tails standing out like the handles! Apropos—talking of Hogg, the poet, we called to see him in his half-acre island in Eltrive Lake, and truly we met with that burning hot reception which we had anticipated from Blackwood's Magazine description of him. We had no notes of introductionexcept the notes which our guns pricked upon the echoes of Ettric Forest, and which James Hogg heard and answered with a view-hallo, for us to "come awa doon the brae an' tak' a dram o'speerits," and so we did, and in true Highland style; he met us at the door and gave us a drain from the bottle, first gulping a glass himself of that double-strong like & fire-eater, without a twink of the eye or a wince of the mouth; and then with a grip o' the daddle, which made the fingers crack, he pulled us into his bonnie wee bit shooting box of a house, with a "Come awa ben ye'll be the better o' a bite o' venison pasty;" so in we went, and were introduced to his bonnie wife and sousy barnes, which latter, Jammie Hogg nursed as though he lov'd 'em frae the uttermost ends o' his sowl.

Campbell has it against Byron, that "the poetic temperament is incompatible with matrimonial felicity." Fudge, fudge, Mr. Campbell, did you ever visit James Hogg?

Well, we sat down to take a snack with James and an extraordinary monkey of his, which he has dressed in the garb of a Highland soldier, and which too, sat down at table, and played his knife and fork like a true epicure. "An extrornry crater is that wee Heelan-man o' mine, gentlemen, he can conduc himsel' as weel's ony Christan man at table, and aft when I'm pennin' a bit rhyme 'thegither, the crater'll lowp up 'ith chair anent me and tak' up a pen, in exac emeetation o' me, and keck into my 'een in his cunnin way, as if he was speering me what to write aboot; he surely maun ha' a feck o' thocht in his heed if are could gar him spak it; but ye ken his horsemanship beats a'. I had a spire-haired collie, a breed atween a Heelan lurcher, a grew, and a wolf, dog, a meety, muckle collie he is for sure—weel, gentlemen, do ye ken, he a' rides on him when we hoont the tod (fox), an' to see him girt a screep o' red flannin on for a saddle, that the neer-do-weel toor fra a beggar-wife's tattered duds ane day; an' then to see him lowp on like a mountebank, and sit skreighin an' chatrin, an' cronkin like a paddock on a clud o'yearth. O, its a lachin teeklesome sicht for sure—an' then hee'l thud, thud, thud his wee bit neive 'ith shouther 'oth collie, an' steek his toes in his side, just for a' the world like a Newmarket jockey, an' then hee'l turn him roon behint-afore an' play treeks, till collie gerns at him; an' then beway o' makin friens again, hee'l streek an' pat him, an' peek the ferlie oot o' his hurdles; an' then when we're a' ready for gannin awa, to be sure what a dirdum an' stramash do they twa keek up; an' then aff they flee like the deevil in a gale o' wind, an' are oot o' sicht before ye can say owr the border an' far awa. But I ha' just been speerin the forester aboot the tod (fox), an' he gars me gang owr the muir to Ettric Forest, an' leuk in a cleuch in a rock there is there, an' I shall find the half-peckit banes o' a joop o' mine that stray'd yestreen. So, gentlemen, if yer fond o' oor kin o' sportin, ye shall hae such a sicht o' rinnin an' ridin as ye ne'er saw heretofore we your twa een."

We readily accepted the invite, and off we set in company with the "Ettric Shepherd" and his monkey, and certainly it was a "teeklesome sicht" to see him mounted on the long, lank, wire-haired, shaggy wolf-dog-grew-lurcher, while he in play was scouring round and round the wild and barren moor; away and away as swift as the wind, over brae and bourn and bog they went, like a red petticoated witch on a besom, flying in the storm.

On our way we fell in with the foresters, who were going a deer-stalking; they had a buck to kill for the duke, so we joined company, and gave that satisfactory shrug of the shoulders, with the expectation of sport, that a spider would feel while sitting in the corner of a hollow nut-shell, and seeing his victim already entangled in his web, while he was whetting his appetite with suspended hope, in dream of anticipated fattenings.

We made the best of our way to the watering-place haunt of the deer. Silence was the word, and we crept on tip-toe and tip-toe, scarce breathing, keeping ever out of the wind's course; for they have an ear of silk, and an eye of light, and a scent so exquisite that they could, if it were possible, hear the tread, see the essence, and scent the breath, of a spirit. This watering haunt was in a lonely glen, which was commanded, within pistol-shot, by a small clump of trees, which were under-grown by brushwood and brambles, and wherein we ambushed ourselves. Ay, there it was, the "gory bed," where "this day a stag must die," just one hundred yards from that said clump. Hush, hush, silence, silence, "Swallow your brith," says Jammie Hogg, hush, "Heck, cack, a," says the monkey, "the deevil tak' the monkey," says Jammie, "whist, whist, hush!"

(To be concluded in our next.)

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

THE GEORGIAN ERA

(Concluded from page 124.)Sheridan

"In early life, Sheridan had been generally accounted handsome: he was rather above the middle size, and well proportioned. He excelled in several manly exercises: he was a proficient in horsemanship, and danced with great elegance. His eyes were black, brilliant, and always particularly expressive. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted his portrait, is said to have affirmed, that their pupils were larger than those of any human being he had ever met with. They retained their beauty to the last; but the lower parts of his face exhibited, in his latter years, the usual effects of intemperance. His arms were strong, although by no means large; and his hands small and delicate. On a cast of one of them, the following appropriate couplet is stated, by Moore, to have been written:—

Good at a fight, but better at a play;Godlike in giving; but the devil to pay!

"No man of his day possessed so much tact in appropriating and adorning the wit of others. He pillaged his predecessors of their ideas, with as much skill and effrontery as he did his contemporaries of their money. It was his ambition to appear indolent; but he was, in fact, particularly, though not regularly laborious. The most striking parts of his best speeches were written and rewritten, on separate slips of paper, and, in many cases, laid by for years, before they were spoken. He not only elaborately polished his good ideas, but, when they were finished, waited patiently, until an opportunity occurred of uttering them with the best effect. Moore states, that the only time he could have had for the pre-arrangement of his conceptions, must have been during the many hours of the day which he passed in bed; when, frequently, while the world gave him credit for being asleep, he was employed in laying the frame-work of his wit and eloquence for the evening.

"Like that of his great political rival, Pitt, his eloquence required the stimulus of the bottle. Port was his favourite wine; it quickened, he said, the circulation and the fancy together; adding, that he seldom spoke to his satisfaction until after he had taken a couple of bottles. Arthur O'Leary used to remark, that, like a porter, he never was steady unless he had a load on his head.

"He also needed the excitement of wine when engaged in composition. 'If an idea be reluctant,' he would sometimes say, 'a glass of port ripens it, and it bursts forth; if it come freely, a glass of port is a glorious reward for it.' He usually wrote at night, with several candles burning around him.

"The most serious appointments were, to him, matters of no importance. After promising to attend the funeral of his friend Richardson, he arrived at the church after the conclusion of the burial service; which, however, to their mutual disgrace, he prevailed on the clergyman to repeat. But, notwithstanding his liability to the charge of desecration, even in more than one instance, he professed, and it is but charitable to presume that he felt, in his better moments, a deep sense of the worth of piety. He had ever considered, he said, a deliberate disposition to make proselytes in infidelity, as an unaccountable depravity, a brutal outrage, the motive for which he had never been able to trace or conceive.

"Sheridan enjoyed a distinguished reputation for colloquial wit. From among the best of the occasional dicta, &c. attributed to him, the following are selected:—

"An elderly maiden lady, an inmate of a country house, at which Sheridan was passing a few days, expressed an inclination to take a stroll with him, but he excused himself, on account of the badness of the weather. Shortly afterwards, she met him sneaking out alone.

'So, Mr. Sheridan,' said she, 'it has cleared up.' 'Yes, madam,' was the reply; 'it certainly has cleared up enough for one, but not enough for two;' and off he went.

"He jocularly observed, on one occasion, to a creditor, who peremptorily required payment of the interest due on a long-standing debt,' My dear sir, you know it is not my interest to pay the principal; nor is it my principle to pay the interest.'

"One day, the prince of Wales having expatiated on the beauty of Dr. Darwin's opinion, that the reason why the bosom of a beautiful woman possesses such a fascinating effect on man is, because he derived from that source the first pleasurable sensations of his infancy. Sheridan ridiculed the idea very happily. 'Such children, then,' said he, 'as are brought up by hand, must needs be indebted for similar sensations to a very different object; and yet, I believe, no man has ever felt any intense emotions of amatory delight at beholding a pap-spoon.'

"Boaden, the author of several theatrical pieces, having given Drury lane theatre the title of a wilderness, Sheridan, when requested, shortly afterwards, to produce a tragedy, written by Boaden, replied, 'The wise and discreet author calls our house a wilderness:—now, I don't mind allowing the oracle to have his opinion; but it is really too much for him to expect, that I will suffer him to prove his words.'

"Kelly having to perform an Irish character, Johnstone took great pains to instruct him in the brogue, but with so little success, that Sheridan said, on entering the green-room, at the conclusion of the piece, 'Bravo, Kelly! I never heard you speak such good English in all my life!'

"He delighted in practical jokes, and seems to have enjoyed a sheer piece of mischief, with all the gusto of a school-boy. At this kind of sport, Tickell and Sheridan were often play-fellows: and the tricks which they inflicted on each other, were frequently attended with rather unpleasant consequences. One night, he induced Tickell to follow him down a dark passage, on the floor of which he had placed all the plates and dishes he could muster, in such a manner, that while a clear path was left open for his own escape, it would have been a miracle if Tickell did not smash two-thirds of them. The result was as Sheridan had anticipated: Tickell fell among the crockery, which so severely cut him in many places, that Lord John Townshend found him, the next day, in bed, and covered with patches. 'Sheridan has behaved atrociously towards me,' said he, 'and I am resolved to be revenged on him. But,' added he, his admiration at the trick entirely subduing his indignation, 'how amazingly well it was managed!'

"He once took advantage of the singular appetite of Richardson for argument, to evade payment of a heavy coach-fare. Sheridan had occupied a hackney-chariot for several hours, and had not a penny in his pocket to pay the coachman. While in this dilemma, Richardson passed, and he immediately proposed to take the disputant up, as they appeared to be going in the same direction. The offer was accepted, and Sheridan adroitly started a subject on which his companion was usually very vehement and obstinate. The argument was maintained with great warmth on both sides, until at length Sheridan affected to lose his temper, and pulling the check-string, commanded the coachman to let him out instantly, protesting that he would not ride another yard with a man who held such opinions, and supported them in such a manner. So saying, he descended and walked off, leaving Richardson to enjoy his fancied triumph, and to pay the whole fare. Richardson, it is said, in a paroxysm of delight at Sheridan's apparent defeat, put his head out of the window and vociferated his arguments until he was out of sight."

The minor or appendix biographies are not so neatly executed as the more lengthy sketches. It is rather oddly said, "that Alderman Wood shortly before the demise of George the Fourth, obtained leave to bring in a bill for the purpose of preventing the spread of canine madness." Again, as the Alderman is a hop-factor, why observe "he is said to have realized a considerable fortune by his fortunate speculations in hops." This describes him as a mere speculator, and not as an established trader in hops.

The present volume of the Georgian Era is handsomely printed, and is, without exception, the cheapest book of the day, considered either as to its merit or size—quality or quantity: what can transcend nearly 600 pages of such condensed reading as we have proved this work to contain—for half-a-guinea! Were it re-written and printed in the style of a fashionable novel, it would reach round the world, and in that case, it should disappear at Terra del Fuego.

The embellishments of the Georgian Era are not its most successful portion; but a fine head of George I. fronts the title-page. The anecdotes, by the way, will furnish us two or three agreeable pages anon.

Fine Arts

PATRICK NASMYTH

(For the Mirror.)

This distinguished landscape-painter was the son of Mr. Alexander Nasmyth, an artist who is still living and well known in Edinburgh, at which city Patrick was born about the year 1785. His education appears to have been good, and he was early initiated in the art of painting by his father, who constantly represented to him the many great advantages to be derived from the study of nature rather than from the old masters' productions, the greater portion of which have lost their original purity by time and the unskilful management of those persons who term themselves picture restorers. Far from confining himself to the usual method adopted by most young artists of servilely imitating old paintings, young Nasmyth very soon began to copy nature in all her varied freshness and beauty. Scotland contains much of the picturesque, and from this circumstance he seized every opportunity to cultivate his genius for landscape-painting. With incessant application he studied the accidental formation of clouds and the shadows thrown by them on the earth; by which practice he acquired the art of delineating with precision the most pleasing effects. His style appears very agreeable and unaffected; he excelled however, only in rural scenery, in which his skies, distant hills, and the barks of the trees, are truly admirable. His foregrounds are always beautifully diversified, and every blade of grass is true to nature. He is not equal in every respect to Hobbima, yet certainly approximates nearer to that celebrated master than any English artist.

In 1830, Mr. Nasmyth sold his valuable collection of original sketches and drawings for thirty pounds to George Pennell, Esq., who also purchased several of his exquisitely finished pictures, one of which—a View in Lee Wood, near, Bristol—is now in the possession of Lord Northwick. Nasmyth was a constant exhibitor at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, &c., and his performances delighted the uninstructed spectator as well as the connoisseur.

In person, he was of the middle stature, and possessed a manly countenance with an agreeable figure. In conversation he was vivacious and witty, especially when in company with a convivial party. His character, in some respects, was similar to that of George Morland; he was rather too much addicted to convivial pleasures, yet was ever solicitous to mix with the best company, and his polite manners always rendered him an acceptable guest; in this respect he was unlike Morland, who, it is well known, loved to select his companions from the lowest class of society. Although Nasmyth obtained considerable sums for his pictures, he was never sufficiently economical to save money; on the contrary his private affairs were in a very deranged state. He was never married, and during the last ten years of his life resided at Lambeth.