finds "a good deal of raffishness" in the scenes with the Hussars, and says there is "some ill-worded expressing" in the dialogue. However, he assures us, that he has "prodigiously felt and admired the comedy in general,” —a fact, of which the knowledge must be infinitely delightful to Mr Croly. But we must now come to Mr Hazlitt's article. We print his Latin and French quotations as we find them in the MS., and as our readers will always find them printed in the Edinburgh Review, &c. &c.] TABLE TALK. A NEW SERIES. No. I. On Nursery Rhymes in general. To me the meanest flower that blows can give SWEET are the dreams of childhood, own. We once said in Constable's Magazine, that, "to be an Edinburgh reviewer, was the highest distinction in literary society;" because, about that time, we began to write in the Edinburgh Review. We were proud of it then, and we are so yet!-But it is a finer thing now. One could not then be radical, if one would. Now it is tout au contraire-Whigs and Radicals have met together-Jeffrey and Hunt have embraced each other. And it is right they should. Jeffrey is the "Prince of Critics and King of Men;" just as Leigh Hunt is King of Cockaigne, by divine right. They are your Quære, years.-Printer's devil. They are like only true legitimates. What admirable pictures of duty (finer than Mr Wordsworth's Ode to Duty) are now and then presented to us in these rhymes!-what powerful exhortations to morality (stronger and briefer than Hannah More's) do we find in them! What can be more strenuous, in its way, than the detestation of slovenliness inspired by the following example? The rhyme itself seems to have caught the trick" of carelessness, and to wanton in the in spiration of the subject! +Mr Hazlitt here omits the name of another sovereign, of whom he thus speaketh in the Edinburgh Review-" The Scotsman is an excellent paper, with but one subject-Political Economy-but the Editor may be said to be King of it !" But perhaps he bethought him afterwards, that, to be "King of one subject," was no very brilliant sovereignty. See saw, Märgery Daw, sold her bed, and lay in the straw; Was not she a dirty slut, to sell her bed, and lie in the dirt? Look at the paternal affection (regardless of danger) so beautifully exemplified in this sweet lullaby : Bye, baby bunting! papa's gone a-hunting, To catch a little rabbit-skin, to wrap the baby bunting in. There is a beautiful spirit of humanity and a delicate gallantry in this one. The long sweep of the verse reminds one of the ladies' trains in Watteau's pic tures: One a penny, two a penny, hot cross-buns, If your daughters do not like them, give them to your sons; But if you should have none of these pretty little elves, You cannot do better than to eat them yourselves. Economy is the moral of the next. It is worth all the Tracts of the Cheap Repository! When I was a little boy, I lived by myself, All the bread and cheese I got, I put it on the shelf. What can be more exquisite than the way in which the most abstruse sciences are conveyed to the infant understanding? Here is an illustration of the law of gravitation, which all Sir Richard Phillips's writings against Newton will never overthrow! Rock a bye, baby, on the tree top, When the wind blows, the cradle will rock: If the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, Then down tumbles baby and cradle, and all. The theories of the Political Economists are also finely explained in this verse, which very properly begins with an address to J. B. Say, who has said the same thing in prose : See, Say, a penny a-day, Tommy must have a new master Why must he have but a penny a-day? Because he can work no faster. This is better than the Templar's Dialogues on Political Economy in The London, and plainer and shorter than the Scotsman. It is as good as the Ricardo Lecture. Mr M'Culloch could not have said anything more profound! There is often a fine kind of pictured poetry about them. In this verse, for instance, you seem to hear the merry merry ring of the bells, and you see the tall white steed go glancing by : Ride a cock-horse to Bamborough Cross, To see a fair lady sit on a white horse; With rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes, There is also a rich imagination about the "four-and-twenty black-birds, baked in a pye;" it is quite oriental, and carries you back to the Crusades. But, upon the whole, we prefer this lay, with its fearful and tragic close :Bye, baby bumpkin, where's Tony Lumpkin? My lady's on her death-bed, with eating half a pumpkin. No wonder !-for we have seen pumpkins in France, that would" make Ossa like a wart!" There is a wildness of fancy about this one, like the night-mare. What an overwhelming idea in the last line ! We're all in the dumps, for Diamonds is trumps, And the kittens are gone to St Paul's: And the babies are bit, and the moon's in a fit, But there is yet another, finer than all, of which we can only recollect a few words. The rest is gone with other visions of our youth! We often sit and think of these lines by the hour together, till our hearts melt with their beauty, and our eyes fill with tears. We could probably find the rest in some of Mr Godwin's twopenny books; but we would not for worlds dissolve the charm that is round the mysterious words. The "gay ladye" is more gorgeous to our fancy than Mr Coleridge's " dark ladye!" London bridge is broken down— The following is "perplexed in the extreme"-a pantomime of confusion! The cat has lost her fiddle-stick-I know not what to do. There is "infinite variety" in this one: the rush in the first line is like the burst of an overture at the Philharmonic Society. Who can read the second line without thinking of Sancho and his celestial goats-" sky-tinctured?” Hey diddle, diddle, a cat and a fiddle, The goats jump'd over the moon ; And the little dogs bark'd to see such sport, And the cat ran away with the spoon. But if what we have quoted is fine, the next is still finer. What are all these things to Jack Horner and his Christmas-pye? What infinite keeping and gusto there is in it !—(we use keeping and gusto in the sense of painters, and not merely to mean that he kept all the pye to himself, (like a Tory,) or that he liked the taste of it which Mr Hunt tells us is the meaning of gusto.) What quiet enjoyment! what serene repose! There he sits, teres et rotundus, in the chiar' oscuro, with his finger in the pye! All is satisfying, delicious, secure from intrusion, solitary bliss!" Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, What a pity that Rembrandt did not paint this subject! But perhaps he did not know it. If he had painted it, the picture would have been worth any money. He would have smeared all the canvass over with some rich, honeyed, dark, bright, unctuous oil-colour; and, in the corner, you would have seen, (obscurely radiant) the figure of Jack; then there would have been the pye, flashing out of the picture in a blaze of golden light, and the green pluin held up over it, dropping sweets! -We think we could paint it ourselves! We are unwilling that anything from our friend, C. P., Esquire," should come in at the fag-end of an article; but, for the sake of enriching this one, we add a few lines from one of the Early French Poets, communicated to C. P., by his friend Victoire, Vicomte de Soligny, whom he met in Paris at the Caffée des Milles Colonnes. The translation is by Mr Hunt; it is like Mr Frere's translations from the Poema del Cid, but is infinitely more easy, graceful, and antique:† C'est le Roy Dagobert, Qui met sa culotte à l'envers ; Mon bon Roy, Votre Majesté Est mal culottée." "Eh bien," lui dit le bon Roy, It was King Dagobert who poking on his yellow breeches, W. H. • Alias Wictoire, Wicomte de Soligny. This Cockney wrote (as few but Mr Colburn the bookseller have the misfortune to remember) Letters on England, under this title, which we demolished. We had then occasion to shew that this impostor did not even know how French noblemen signed their names; and we might have added, that his title-page proved he did not know a man's name from a woman's-Victor being evi. dently the name which C. P. Esq. was vainly endeavouring to spell. Victoire, Vicomte de Soligny, sounds to a French ear just as Sally, Lord Holland, would to an English one. Besides, Victoire is, as everybody knows, a name given in France (almost exclusively) to females of this Wicomte's own rank-maid-servants; and when he was IN PARIS, he had, no doubt, often occasion to violate propriety, by calling out from his room on the ninth floor, Wictoire, woulez wous wenir wite awec du win.-C. N. + Quære, antic. Printer's devil. VOL. XVI. K THE LATE SESSION OF PARLIAMENT. PEACEABLE, monotonous, and comparatively uninteresting, as the late Session was, a review of some of its leading features cannot be altogether devoid of amusement and instruction. The state of parties, or rather the state of party creeds and schemes, is at all times a matter of the highest national importance, and, therefore, we will, in the first place, glance at the exposé of this state which the Session practically furnished. We fear that our lower orders have yet only changed their opinions in a partial degree, but, nevertheless, they have become silent and peaceable. Their efforts only led to ruin; their hopes were blasted; petitions and public meetings, as they possessed no intrinsic charms, lost their attraction with their novelty; work became plentiful; every interest in the state became reasonably prosperous; and, therefore, they retired with one consent from active political life. This retirement-this abandonment of revolution by our labourers and mechanics has actually ruined two of our Parliamentary parties. For a long time Burdett stood alone in the House of Commons. Sometimes he could find an individual to second his motions, but never one to divide with him. The populace then had not entered the political world to become a leading portion of it; the Whigs were a powerful party; they paid some regard to character; and they had not adopted the doctrine, that everything which the Ministers opposed ought to be voted for. In proportion as the cause of revolution prospered with the mob, Burdett acquired followers and influence in Parliament, until at length he became the virtual head of the Opposition. For some years he and his party have led the Opposition, and the Whigs have been content to embrace their principles and schemes, and to act as their humble auxiliaries. The Whigs have constantly voted for all the motions of the Burdettites, no matter how abominable these motions might be in assertion and object. Well, the Burdettites are now objects of compassion. "Westminster's Pride” can no longer be abusive, except towards defunct ministers and Orange societies; and he is compelled to make some ap proaches towards honesty and common sense in his speeches, or to remain silent. Hume is ruined. Bennett has lost his speech. Wilson has only spoke some three times during the Session, merely to confess that he is the greatest man in the universe. No one can tell what has become of Whitbread. Wood never ventures a step beyond city business. And poor Hobhouse delves, and stammers, and musters his brass again and again, and all to no purpose. May our enemies become Gods of revolutionary mobs! May they obtain a little notoriety by repeating the dranken ravings of their worshippers, and then be forsaken! We shall then have our revenge. We should not give vent to so dreadful a wish as this respecting them, were we not exceedingly malicious. As the Whigs have long been the abject followers of the Burdettites, and as they have long had no other supporters in the community than the revolutionary multitude, what has ruined the one party has likewise ruined the other. Their conduct, however, under calamity, is as different as possible. The Burdettites are in agony and despair, but still they truckle not to their conquerors: their language is "What though the field be lost, All is not lost; the unconquerable will And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not to be overcome; That glory never shall their wrath or might Extort from us." This is, at any rate, manly, and it saves them from utter contempt; but the Whigs, always excepting poor Brougham and Earl Grey, display neither torture nor sorrow. They have, with all imaginable alacrity, laid Reform, Emancipation, &c. upon the shelf, and become the most officious of the supporters of the Ministry. Every one remembers what their conduct was during the growth of Radicalism-on the trials of blasphemers and traitorstouching the Manchester meeting-on the Queen's trial-at her funeral-and during the prevalence of agricultural distress. Every one remembers that they fought with all their might the battles of the revolutionists of this and all other countries, so long as the cause 1824. was not utterly hopeless; that they This difference of conduct between 75 keeps the field, though the whole na- Why do we make this recapitulation |