Give Breve a peg to hang his notes upon,
And be it brick or ruby, 'tis all one ;
The muse of Shakespeare, or the Bellman's stuff ;
Give Breve but syllables, and that's enough-

-Say, gentle reader, and oblige the muse,
Which horn of the dilemma would you choose ?

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.”

sick;

Of men, if there's one class above the rest
That from mine inmost nature I detest;
One fellow-trav’ller on this common road,
Whose company I loathe, above a toad :
If from the herd one coxcomb I must pick,
At whom my gorge heaves and my

soul

grows
Were I compell’d to doom him to perdition,
That one should surely be “a good musician.”
Without a fancy, where shall we appeal ?
Without an eye to note, a heart to feel;
Without or soul or sense to understand,
Without-with nothing but a nimble hand!
Since him his stars have not a tailor made,
The pickpocket’s were sure a better trade
Than thus, sans passion, feeling, mind, or heart,
To murder nature and dishonour art.

Let us take breath !" A little civet, good apothecary.” Marry

-Here's a stay
That shakes the rotten carcase of old Death
Out of his rags.”

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.

0! I have lived in many a snatch of song,
Old as the mountains, as their breezes strong ;
In many a stirring, many a mournful lay,
Of times gone by, preserved through many a day,
Which, heard but once, the heart will ever keep,
O'er which our grandsires wept–our sons shall weep,
And felt them fall and soothe, when ill at ease,
Like scatter'd oil upon the ruffled seas,
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.
Where are the tomes of many to be found
Who heretofore have fill'd the world with sound ?
Destroy'd, forgotten, heeded not-Oh, shame!
Hath noisy counterpoint but deafen'd fame?
Methinks I see th' indignant shade of Gluck,
Piccini, still inclined to win a muck;
And Frenchman Lulli, with his arms a-kimbo ;
Where are they now ? - Forgotten-gone-in limbo ;

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.

Stephens, no doubt, is sweet, but you may hear
In many a theatre a voice as clear;
And for her science, why, sir, I will stake
A sovereign, Hallande makes a better shake.”-
“ A sovereign! nay,

bet something."

“Sir, content ye,
If
you

think one too little, make 'em twenty.
And then, for flexibility of throats,
Let Stephens run the scale in quarter-notes !
No; Catalani's is the pipe for power,
I do believe she'd 'hold' a good half hour.
Ballads are Stephens' forte :- I can't endure a
Mere ballad-singer straining at bravura.”-
“Sir, very probably; and, with submission,
I'll take the converse of your proposition.
Still there's one gift, one charm, beyond all these”-
“ A charm indeed, pray, name it, if you please.”-
“Ay, sir, one grace beyond the reach of art.
“ And what is that, in God's name?”

Sir, a heart;
That spell, that periapt, that master-zest,

Which, like Aladdin's lamp, dims all the rest.”
Again, take his sketch of a modern concert.

The flippant leader seats him in the middle ;
The tenor grave, and pompous the great fiddle ;
The hautboy at his solo squints with pride;
The simpering flute sits with his head aside;
They tune; the books are oped; the master's bow
Lets fall the well-known tap, and off they go !

Think ye, yond fashionables shall endure
To sit mumchance through a whole overture?
No; chitchat to the Aria lends a grace,
And whisper'd scandals help the thorough bass,
Till suddenly, perhaps, they're ta’en aback,
Caught by some “ pause" in the full tide of clack.

Another crash-bows, elbows jerk amain,
And tongues and fans are at their work again.
Strange exhibition !--and is this the goal ;
The feast of sound ; the rapture of the soul;
The treat where none can sympathy refuse,

The heights of art, and triumph of the muse? But we must have done; and shall conclude with the following encomiastic passage, being addressed to certain bibliopoles, for whom (as Odoherty says)

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,
Take from the satirist one drop of praise;
I laud ye-if ye'll swallow laud of mine,
For never making your fine things too fine.
In sooth, your mystery would soon be past,
If these fine things were fine enough to-last;
If

every finest did not meet with finer;
And every major dwindle to a minor;
And 'tis the ne-plus-ultra of the art,
That still Rossini overcrows Mozart.

Oh! 'twere a grief for modern sons of song,
If their huge tomes of crotchets lived too long ;
For who would be at charge to buy him new,
With five score ancient folios to play through ;
Or who, that had immortals by the score,
Could make him room for fifty folios more?
Full many a sheet would due admirers lack,
Did aught remain of Lulli, Bull, or Bach,
And music-sellers feel a gap in nature,
If great musicians did not yield to greater.
If German fiddlers deathless rondeaus made,
Why, what the vengeance would become of trade ?
This be your motto, be what will your crest,

“ 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 west- Apollo Belvidere, and other illustrious ern boundary of the city of Westmin- lumps of marble. The physiological ster-namely Hyde Park Corner-and reasons for this would lead us too proceed gingerly and genteelly towards much into detail at the present mothat divarication of the road which ment, and would, besides, trench in takes you off in one direction through upon an eminent work on porter drinkBrompton, Fulham, Putney, Rich- ing in general, which has been for semond, and thence into the country far veral months engaging the pen of one away; and on the other, by Knights of the first theologians in the country. bridge, where the Baron of Waithman We therefore leave the Cannon Urged his courser on,

Brewery to the right, and luff to the Without stop or stay,

larboard. Here you find yourself at Down the powdery way,

the debouchement of a wide street, That leads to Kensington

flanked by a pair of gas lamps, at the and thence to Hammersmith, and the base of one of which is an inscription village, the way to which is famous in in comely capitals, informing you that the History of Punning, as the reme you are in one of the Hans towns; and, dy for pens suffering under the yellow- looking up, you will read—for thou ness of antiquity.

can’st read, as Gray says; else you If you travel towards this fork, we would not be perusing this article say, you leave on your right hand the that you have to walk down Sloane Cannon Brewery, and on the left, the Street. If you be an antiquarian reyoungest of the Hans towns. Concern- pository, you will then begin to think ing the Cannon Brewery, it is not our that you are in a region denominated intention here to speak, save to say,

after that illustrious native of the that its porter is not equal by any county of Down, in the province of means to champagne, and it is gene- Ulster, who founded the British rally allowed to be the cause why so Museum ; or if you be not, in which many eminent poets who live in that case we shall think the better of you, neighbourhood, and are from dire ne you may proceed along, not troubling cessity compelled to drink it, have not yourself with such reflections, but on that beautiful appearance which we see the contrary whistling, like Dryden's depictured in the countenances of the Cymon, as you go, for want of thought,

* The Improvisatrice ; and other Poenis. By L. E. L. with embellishments. 1900don : 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 and, therefore, may be considered by manner of Corporal Trim, when his many as equally incapacitated for admaster went courting the widow. miring love-poetry, as we are avowedMarching through this street, right ly from making love. But it by, no shoulders forward, and we know no means follows, non sequitur, as they thing to stop you, except the Cadogan have it in the schools—for he who cancoffeehouse in the middle of the way, not handle a pencil may admire Leswhere, if you have taken nothing to lie,--the guiltless even of gloves may signify since breakfast, you may stop delight in Spring, and he who never for a whet, as nothing is so bad as cracked a joke during his existence, suffering the body to pine for want of may yet be able to pucker up his nutriment, you come into Sloane mouth in a shower of smiles at the faSquare, which does not in any respect cetiousness of some of our articles. So, resemble the squares of Grosvenor or though quite hors de combat in the Russell. Through this you may, if fields of Cupid, we may yet give criyou like, meander again townward tical judgment on the productions of through the Park, through streets of his favourite muses. a raffish description, and emerging (for We have heard it said that in Miss instance) at the Horse Guards, you Landon's volume there was too much may,

if

you have nothing better to do, love, and that it would be desirable if go look at the new house Mr Murray she would write on something else. of Albemarle Street has just taken in We beg your pardon—it would not. that quarter of the world ; but if you If she could change her sex, and bedo, you will decidedly have made a come a He, then, as the conundrum has cursed round for nothing.

it, the affair would be altered ; but as Good heaven! somebody will say, things are, she is quite right.

Nowhat is the meaning of this rigmarole thing can be truer than that maxim of cock-and-a-bull sort of nonsense ? Do our MIGHTY MORALIST,* that woman you take us for Peripatetics ? By no equals man in that one glorious pasmeans, my good friends, but there is sion, and that one only; and, conseno need for hurry. The day is young. quently, in it alone has sbe any chance Hooly and fairly goes far. Take the of rivalling the bearded lords of creaworld easy. Blow not your horse in tion. What a pretty botchery Mrs the morning, and you will be the farm Hemans, clever and brilliant as inther on when night falls.

We are

deed she is, has made of it, when she now going on with the review of a takes

upon herself to depict the awful book, though you may not perceive it, fall of the last of the Cæsars, in the in the most orderly manner concei breach of the last wall of Byzantium ! vable. We were formerly pupils of the Or who does not pity the delusion of illustrious Professor Von Feinagle, and Miss Porter, when she fancies that she recollect that he, like Cicero before is giving us the grim features of Sir him, insisted upon the application of William Wallace, with a white handTopics which the judicious reader will kerchief to his face, and a bottle of find that we have, in due order, aromatic vinegar under his nose ? brought to bear in this case.

Again, what more odiously blue-stockFor, to go without farther prelude ing and blundering, than Madame de to the matter in hand, in that very Stael's Germany. We should almost street down which we bade you shape as soon read one of her beau Sir James your course, namely, Sloane Street, MʻIntosh's articles in the Edinburgh at the hundred and thirty-first num Review. What more vivid, more ber thereof, dwells Miss Letitia Elie heart-stirring, than those parts of Cozabeth Landon, who has just publish- rinne which have escaped the desire of ed a very sweet volume of poetry un- shewing off literature? Miss Holford's der the signature of L. E. L. Now it Falkirk, Miss Mitford's Lyrics, Miss is not because she is a very pretty Porden's Mineralogy, &c. &c. &c. are girl, and a very good girl, that we are all doomed, by the very principle of going to praise her poems, but because their existence, to a speedy dissoluwe like them. We are altogether, and tion, as rapid as Lady Morgan's poliby many years, too old,

tics. But on their own ground, Love, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

who doubts but that these ladies would Or in the tangles of Neara's hair,

be a model for the odious male crea

* Odoherty. Maxim xxi.

tures who venture on it ? Take our left nothing for the more slow moving most eminent amorist, Lady Holland's critiques of Monthly reviewers. The little man, Tom Moore,--and see how gens de plume in London have pawed cold, glittering, tinsel-like, nine-tenths the book kindly, we doubt not, but of his poetry on the subject are, and clumsily, and we fear that there may how completely, how immeasurably be a reaction. The clever lads who under his model, Sappho, he sinks, write for Knight's Quarterly Magaeven in his most elevated and success zine, have called · Miss L. E. L. the ful efforts. Sappho! did we say? “ girl puffed in the newspapers," and Why, he is inferior to many passages though they hasten to do away the in the little volume before us, in real apparent unkindness by a civil and flatand true warmth and tenderness of tering notice, yet the very use of the delicate feeling.

phrase (not a very gallant one for you, The principal poem of Miss Lan- young gentlemen) marks the nature don's book, is entitled by a name most of the impression likely to be made jaw-breakingly perplexing to the popu- by panegyrics proceeding from such lation of Cockaigne ; particularly that contraband, and indeed, we may safely portion of them who have an affection add, incompetent dealers in criticism. for lovely Italy,—the Improvisatrice. Miss L. has a good command of The idea is pretty ; a young lady of language, and a fair store of poetical great poetical powers falls in love, ideas, with a great deal of taste in are unhappily, as usual, and her adven- rangement, and an ear tuned to the tures afford a thread on which to hang varied melodies of the language. She little poems of her composition. The would do much better if she did not opening is a very melodious piece of write after so many different models, versification.

and in so many distinct keys. But “ I am a daughter of that land,

the lady is young, in her teens we are Where the poet's lip and the painter's told, and, of course, will not listen to hand

the voice of advisers like us powdered Are most divine, where earth and sky Are picture both and poetry

with the snow of years. We shall not

therefore now trouble her with such I am of Florence. 'Mid the chill Of hope and feeling, oh! I still

unpalatable food, but, quoting a couple Am proud to think to where I owe

of specimens from her smaller poems, My birth, though but the dawn of woe ! put an end to our article.-From “ The

My childhood pass’d ʼmid radiant things, Legend of the Rhine.” Glorious as Hope's imaginings ;

“ Lord Herbert sat him in his hall; the Statues but known from shapes of the

hearth earth,

Was blazing as it mocked the storm withBy being too lovely for mortal birth ; Paintings whose colours of life were caught With its red cheerfulness; the dark hounds From the fairy tints in the rainbow wrought; Music whose sighs had a spell like those Around the fire ; and the old knight had That float on the sea at the evening's close ;

doff'd Language so silvery, that every word His hunting-cloak, and listen'd to the lute Was like the lute's awakening chord ; And song of the fair girl who at his knee Skies half sunshine, and half starlight ; Was seated. In the April hour of life, Flowers whose lives were a breath of de. When showers are led by rainbows, and the light;

heart Leaves whose green pomp knew no wither. Is all bloom and green leaves, was Isa

ing; Fountains bright as the skies of our A band of pearls, white like the brow o'er Spring ;

which And songs whose wild and passionate line They past, kept the bright curls from off Suited a soul of romance like mine."

the forehead; thence There are many other as swelling They wander'd to her feet-a golden and Coleridge-like passages through She had that changing colour on the cheek the poem-and some of the stories introduced are highly poetical-particu

Which speaks the heart so well ; those

deep-blue eyes, larly the Moorish Romance. But we

Like summer's darkest sky, but not so are puzzled how to make quotations. gladSomehow or other, the newspapers They were too passionate for hapriness. have got hold of this poem, and quoted Light was within her eyes, bloom on her from it so liberally, that they have cheek,

out

lay

belle ;