Rule the second for vocalists, is equally to the purpose. Certain tragic performers, too, might profit by it. Sense, poetry, and feeling-what are they? Our author's indignation next turns upon the absurdity which, in truth, is glaring enough, of people becoming composers upon the strength of their being performers, as if a quick hand argued a nimble wit, or a strong finger a powerful imagination. Now novelty is in such high demand, That every tasteless dabbler tries his hand; To few, or none, the favouring heavens have lent Just as the flow'ret which at Christmas blows, -Oh! potent reasoners, never to be shaken, Seeks both "the cod's head and the salmon's tail." Thus false ambition cheats each class; the man Who executes the work must also plan. Play'rs will write dramas; druggists fix the dose; The stupid indifference of composers to the quality of the words they set, has been often exposed. Singers are just as bad. Burns and Moore have each written words for the air of Robin Adair, yet mark the trash which you still hear appended to it in public. However, hear Simeon Sharp, Esq. If mid some goldsmiths gewgaws you behold Give Breve a peg to hang his notes upon, The muse of Shakespeare, or the Bellman's stuff; -Say, gentle reader, and oblige the muse, The good musician is lastly summed up, something after the spirit of the "True-born Englishman." It is rather too savage-absolutely shocking; and would, we think, startle Dr Johnson himself, even upon his own definition of "a good hater." Of men, if there's one class above the rest sick; Than thus, sans passion, feeling, mind, or heart, To murder nature and dishonour art. Let us take breath!" A little civet, good apothecary." Marry Thank Heaven! the next page is of a milder character, and we hasten to quote it. To those who have ever had their hearts warmed, or the tears brought into their eyes, by the stirring and pathetic old melodies of Scotland or Ireland, we think it will give pleasure. We confess we ourselves like it well enough to wish there were more such in the book. O! I have lived in many a snatch of song, Of times gone by, preserved through many a day, Till all my nature bow'd to their control, And the sweet sounds dissolved my very soul. Who were the minstrels? How perverse their lot, Their lays surviving, and their names forgot; Unlike the sires of many a ponderous strain, Whose scores have moulder'd, but whose names remain. Who heretofore have fill'd the world with sound? And Frenchman Lulli, with his arms a-kimbo; Each in his day a star that never sets; Where are their works?" With all the Capulets. Our author can be in a good humour when he pleases. And for her science, why, sir, I will stake A sovereign, Hallande makes a better shake."- And then, for flexibility of throats, Let Stephens run the scale in quarter-notes! I do believe she'd 'hold' a good half hour. Ballads are Stephens' forte:-I can't endure a 66 Sir, very probably; and, with submission, I'll take the converse of your proposition. Still there's one gift, one charm, beyond all these”- 66 Sir, a heart; Again, take his sketch of a modern concert. The flippant leader seats him in the middle; Think ye, yond fashionables shall endure But we must have done; and shall conclude with the following encomiastic passage, being addressed to certain bibliopoles, for whom (as Odoherty says) 66 we have a particular regard." We are sure our good friends, Messrs Boosey, Monzani, Goulding, &c. will take it as a compliment. Farewell!-yet ere my wearied quill I raise, F Oh! 'twere a grief for modern sons of song, "What's best is newest, and what's newest best!" "A perilous shot out of an elder-gun." Go thy ways, old Simeon.-Thou runnest, we conceit, no little risk of getting thy head broken with a Cremona, which, if it improved the harmony of thy verses, were a consummation to be wished. We think we could guess at thee through thy nomme de guerre,but we refrain. Vive la Bagatelle! we believe we owed thee something of a review, and we are glad of so good an opportunity of quitting old scores. MISS LANDON'S POETRY.* As you travel from the great western boundary of the city of Westminster-namely Hyde Park Corner-and proceed gingerly and genteelly towards that divarication of the road which takes you off in one direction through Brompton, Fulham, Putney, Richmond, and thence into the country far away; and on the other, by Knightsbridge, where the Baron of Waithman Urged his courser on, Without stop or stay, Down the powdery way, That leads to Kensingtonand thence to Hammersmith, and the village, the way to which is famous in the History of Punning, as the remedy for pens suffering under the yellowness of antiquity. If you travel towards this fork, we say, you leave on your right hand the Cannon Brewery, and on the left, the youngest of the Hans towns. Concerning the Cannon Brewery, it is not our intention here to speak, save to say, that its porter is not equal by any means to champagne, and it is generally allowed to be the cause why so many eminent poets who live in that neighbourhood, and are from dire necessity compelled to drink it, have not that beautiful appearance which we see depictured in the countenances of the Apollo Belvidere, and other illustrious lumps of marble. The physiological reasons for this would lead us too much into detail at the present moment, and would, besides, trench in upon an eminent work on porter drinking in general, which has been for several months engaging the pen of one of the first theologians in the country. We therefore leave the Cannon Brewery to the right, and luff to the lar board. Here you find yourself at the debouchement of a wide street, flanked by a pair of gas lamps, at the base of one of which is an inscription in comely capitals, informing you that you are in one of the Hans towns; and, looking up, you will read-for thou can'st read, as Gray says, else you would not be perusing this articlethat you have to walk down Sloane Street. If you be an antiquarian repository, you will then begin to think that you are in a region denominated after that illustrious native of the county of Down, in the province of Ulster, who founded the British Museum; or if you be not, in which case we shall think the better of you, you may proceed along, not troubling yourself with such reflections, but on the contrary whistling, like Dryden's Cymon, as you go, for want of thought, The Improvisatrice; and other Poems. By L. E. L. with embellishments. London: Printed for Hurst, Robinson and Co. 90, Cheapside, and 8, Pall-Mall, London; and Archibald Constable and Co., Edinburgh. or flourishing your bamboo in the manner of Corporal Trim, when his master went courting the widow. Marching through this street, right shoulders forward, and we know nothing to stop you, except the Cadogan coffeehouse in the middle of the way, where, if you have taken nothing to signify since breakfast, you may stop for a whet, as nothing is so bad as suffering the body to pine for want of nutriment you come into Sloane Square, which does not in any respect resemble the squares of Grosvenor or Russell. Through this you may, if you like, meander again townward through the Park, through streets of a raffish description, and emerging (for instance) at the Horse Guards, you may, if you have nothing better to do, go look at the new house Mr Murray of Albemarle Street has just taken in that quarter of the world; but if you do, you will decidedly have made a cursed round for nothing. Good heaven! somebody will say, what is the meaning of this rigmarole cock-and-a-bull sort of nonsense? Do you take us for Peripatetics? By no means, my good friends, but there is no need for hurry. The day is young. Hooly and fairly goes far. Take the world easy. Blow not your horse in the morning, and you will be the farther on when night falls. We are now going on with the review of a book, though you may not perceive it, in the most orderly manner conceivable. We were formerly pupils of the illustrious Professor Von Feinagle, and recollect that he, like Cicero before him, insisted upon the application of Topics which the judicious reader will find that we have, in due order, brought to bear in this case. For, to go without farther prelude to the matter in hand, in that very street down which we bade you shape your course, namely, Sloane Street, at the hundred and thirty-first number thereof, dwells Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon, who has just published a very sweet volume of poetry under the signature of L. E. L. Now it is not because she is a very pretty girl, and a very good girl, that we are going to praise her poems, but because we like them. We are altogether, and by many years, too old, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, and, therefore, may be considered by many as equally incapacitated for admiring love-poetry, as we are avowedly from making love. But it by no means follows, non sequitur, as they have it in the schools-for he who cannot handle a pencil may admire Leslie, the guiltless even of gloves may delight in Spring, and he who never cracked a joke during his existence, may yet be able to pucker up his mouth in a shower of smiles at the facetiousness of some of our articles. So, though quite hors de combat in the fields of Cupid, we may yet give critical judgment on the productions of his favourite muses. We have heard it said that in Miss Landon's volume there was too much love, and that it would be desirable if she would write on something else. We beg your pardon-it would not. If she could change her sex, and become a He, then, as the conundrum has it, the affair would be altered; but as things are, she is quite right. Nothing can be truer than that maxim of Our MIGHTY MORALIST,* that woman equals man in that one glorious passion, and that one only; and, consequently, in it alone has she any chance of rivalling the bearded lords of creation. What a pretty botchery Mrs Hemans, clever and brilliant as indeed she is, has made of it, when she takes upon herself to depict the awful fall of the last of the Caesars, in the breach of the last wall of Byzantium ! Or who does not pity the delusion of Miss Porter, when she fancies that she is giving us the grim features of Sir William Wallace, with a white handkerchief to his face, and a bottle of aromatic vinegar under his nose? Again, what more odiously blue-stocking and blundering, than Madame de Stael's Germany. We should almost as soon read one of her beau Sir James M'Intosh's articles in the Edinburgh Review. What more vivid, more heart-stirring, than those parts of Corinne which have escaped the desire of shewing off literature? Miss Holford's Falkirk, Miss Mitford's Lyrics, Miss Porden's Mineralogy, &c. &c. &c. are all doomed, by the very principle of their existence, to a speedy dissolution, as rapid as Lady Morgan's politics. But on their own ground, LOVE, who doubts but that these ladies would be a model for the odious male crea Odoherty. Maxim xxi. |