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be ower gude for't. It shinna be burned, no it—Oh my prophetic soul! a Cockney Stink Pot!

NORTH.

Mr Ambrose, send in the scavenger.-Sorters, collect and arrange.

(C. B. B. Sorters and Devil in full employment.)

SHEPHERD.

Thae Incremawtors hae a gran' effec! They canna be less than sax feet four, and then what whuskers! I scarcely ken whether black whuskers or red whuskers be the maist fearsome! What tangs in their hauns! and what pokers!— Lucifer and Beelzebub!

NORTH.

At home, James, and at their own firesides, they are the most peaceable of

men.

SHEPHERD.

I canna believe't, Mr North, I canna believe't; they can hae nae human feeling-neither sighs nor tears.

NORTH.

They are men, James, and do their duty.-He with the red whiskers was married this forenoon to a pretty delicate little girl of eighteen, quite a fairy of a thing seemingly made of animated wax-so soft that, like the winged butterfly, you would fear to touch her, lest you might spoil the burnished beauty.

SHEPHERD.

Married-on him wi' the red whuskers !

NORTH.

Come now, James, no affected simplicity, no Arcadian innocence!

SHEPHERD.

You micht hae gien him the play the day, I think, sir; you micht hae gien him the play. The Incremawtor!

DEVIL.

The sorters have made up a skuttlefu' o' poetry—Sir, shall I deliver up to Lucifer or Beelzebub?

All poetry to Beelzebub.

NORTH.

SHEPHERD.

A' poetry to Beelzebub!! O wae's me, wae's mee-Well-a-day, well-a-day! Has it indeed come to this! A' poetry to Beelzebub! I can scarce believe my lugs

NORTH.

Stop, Beelzebub-read aloud that bit of paper you have in your fist.

Yes, sir.

BEELZEBUB.

SHEPHERD.

Lord safe us, what a voice! They're my ain verses too-Whisht-whisht.

BEELZEBUB-recites.

THE GREAT MUCKLE VILLAGE OF BALMAQUHAPPLE.

AIR" Soger Laddie."

I.

D'VE ken the big village of Balmaquhapple,
The great muckle village of Balmaquhapple?
'Tis steep'd in iniquity up to the thrapple,

And what's to become of poor Balinaquhapple?

Fling a' off your bonnets, and kneel for your life, folks,
And pray to Saint Andrew, the god o' the Fife folks;
Gar a' the hills yout wi' sheer vociferation,

And thus you may cry on sic needfu' occasion:

II.

"O blessed Saint Andrew, if e'er ye could pity folk,›
Men folk or women folk, country or city folk,
Come for this aince wi' the auld thief to grapple,
And save the poor village of Balmaquhapple!
Frae drinking, and leeing, and flyting, and swearing,
And sins that ye wad be affrontit at hearing,
And cheating, and stealing, O grant them redemption,
All save and except the few after to mention.

III.

There's Johnny the elder, wha hopes ne'er to need ye,
Sae pawkie, sae høly, sae gruff, and sae greedy,
Wha prays every hour, as the wayfarer passes,
But aye at a hole where he watches the lasses:
He's cheated a thousand, and e'en to this day yet
Can cheat a young lass, or they're leears that say it;
Then gie him his way, he's sae sly and sae civil,
Perhaps in the end he may cheat Mr Devil.

IV.

There Cappie the cobler, and Tammie the tinman,
And Dickie the brewer, and Peter the skinman ;
And Geordie, our deacon, for want of a better;
And Bess, that delights in the sins that beset her.
O, worthy Saint Andrew, we canna compel ye,
But ye ken as weel as a body can tell ye,
If these gang to heaven, we'll a' be sae shockit,
Your garrat o' blue will but thinly be stockit.

V.

But for a' the rest, for the women's sake, save them!
Their bodies at least, and their souls, if they have them;
But it puzzles Jock Linton, and small it avails,

If they dwell in their stomachs, their heads, or their tails.
And save, without frown or confession auricular,

The clerk's bonny daughters, and Bell in particular;
For ye ken that their beauty's the pride and the stapple
Of the great wicked village of Balmaquhapple.

Bad-Hogg's.

NORTH (to TICKLER, aside.)

SHEPHERD.

What's that you two are speaking about? Speak up.

NORTH.

These fine lines must be preserved, James.

SHEPHERD.

Pray, are they allegorical?

What a dracht in that lum! It's a vera fiery furnace! hear till't hoo it roars, like wund in a cavern! Sonnets, charauds, elegies, pastorals, lyrics, farces, tragedies, and yepics-in they a' gang into the general bleeze; then there is naething but sparking ashes, and noo the thin black wavering coom o' annihilation and oblivion! It's a sad sicht, and but for the bairnliness o't, I could weel greet. Puir chiels and lasses, they had ither howps when they sat down to compose, and invoked Apollo and the Muses!

NORTH.

James, the poor creatures have been all happy in their inspiration. Why weep? Probably, too, they kept copies, and other Balaam-boxes may be groaning with duplicates. 'Tis a strange world we live in!

SHEPHERD.

Was you ever at the burning o' heather or whins, Mr North?

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In half an hour from the first spark, the hill glowed with fire unextinguishable by water-spout. The crackle became a growl, as acre after acre joined the flames. Here and there a rock stood in the way, and the burning waves broke against it, till the crowning birch-tree took fire, and its tresses, like a shower of flaming diamonds, were in a minute consumed. Whirr, whirr, played the frequent gor-cock, gobbling in his fear; and, swift as shadows, the old hawks flew screaming from their young, all smothered in a nest of ashes.

Good-excellent!-Go it again.

TICKLER.

NORTH.

The great pine-forest on the mountain side, two miles off, frowned in ghastly light, as in a stormy sunset-and you could see the herd of red-deer, a whirlwind of antlers, descending, in their terror, into the black glen, whose entrance gleamed once twice-thrice, as if there had been lightning; and then, as the wind changed the direction of the flames, all the distance sunk in dark repose.

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Millions of millions of sparks of fire in heaven, but only some six or seven stars. How calm the large lustre of Hesperus!

TICKLER.

James, what do you think of that, eh?

SHEPHERD.

Didna ye pity the taeds and paddocks, and asks and beetles, and slaters and snails and spiders, and worms and ants, and catterpillars and bumbees, and a' the rest o' the insect-world perishin' in the flaming nicht o' their last judgment?

NORTH.

In another season, James, what life, beauty, and bliss over the verdant wilderness! There you see and hear the bees busy on the white clover-while the lark comes wavering down from heaven, to sit beside his mate on her nest! Here and there are still seen the traces of fire, but they are nearly hidden by flowers-and

SHEPHERD.

For a town-chiel, Mr North, you describe the kintra wi' surprisin' truth and spirit; but there's aye something rather wantin' about your happiest pictures, as if you had glowered on everything in a dream or trance.

NORTH.

Like your own Kilmeny, James, I am fain to steal away from this every-day world into the Land of glamoury.

SHEPHERD.

Hoo many volumms o' poetry, think ye, the Incremawtor has thrust, just noo, intil the fire?

NORTH.

I should think about some score, or so, of crown octavo-350 pages-twenty lines to the page. Calculate that, James.

SHEPHERD.

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Maist equal to a “farther portion" o' the "Excursion!" Surely, surely, there maun hae been twa three thousan' gude lines amang sic a multitude!

TICKLER.

Devil the one-all fudge and flummery. More meaning in any one paragraph of Pope, than in the whole skuttleful.

SHEPHERD.

A skuttlefu' o' poetry! I canna thole either the sicht or the soun'. It's degrawdin to the divine art.-Get out o' my reach, ye wee wicked weezen'd devil, or I'll clour your pow for you. And as for thae Incremawtors

NORTH.

Why, James, would you believe it, that Stoic with the black whiskers is himself a poet; and has even now, with his inexorable poker, in all probability, thrust into nothingness a quire of his own versified MSS.!

SHEPHERD.

Oh! wae's me! that poetry should be siccan a drog! Is there nae chance, think ye, sir, o' it's lookin' up?

NORTH.

None, James. Not till new men effulge. All your old stagers are done up. Scott has done his best in verse-so has Southey-so Moore—so Wordsworth-so Crabbe-so Campbell-so Hogg.

TICKLER.

And really, Mr North, after all, what have they done? Sir Walter has versified a few old stories, and is at the head of all modern ballad-mongers. What more? Southey has written one wild and wondrous tale, Thalaba; but all his other attempts are abortive-and the last spark of inspiration within him has been for years extinct. Many of Moore's songs will live-but a man cannot be song-singing all his days; and as for Wordsworth, take him out of the Lake country, and his prattle is tedious. Crabbe, and Campbell, and Hogg

NORTH.

Come, come, don't be silly, Tickler. A man looks like a ninny the moment he begins even to think about versemen.

TICKLER.

There it goes up the chimney-An Ode to the Moon-pursued by The Sleeping Infant-The Horned Owl-The late Elephant-and General Boli

var.

SHEPHERD.

O, sirs! the room's gettin' desperate warm. I pity the poor Incremawtorsthey maun be unco dry. Beelzebub, open the window, man, ye ugly deevil, and let in a current o' cool air. Mr North, I canna thole the heat; and I ask it as a particular favour, no to burn the prose till after supper. At a' events, let the married Incremawtor gang hame to his bride-and there's five shillings to him to drink my health at his ain ingle.

(Incremator, Devil, Clerk of the Balaam-box, Porters, and Mr Ambrose retire.)

NORTH.

Who are the wittiest men of our day, Tickler?

TICKLER.

Christopher North, Timothy Tickler, and James Hogg.

NORTH.

Poo, poo-we all know that-but out of doors?

TICKLER.

Canning, Sydney Smith, and Jeffrey.

NORTH.

I fear it is so. Canning's wit is infallible. It is never out of time or place, and is finely proportioned to its object. Has he a good-natured, gentlemanly, well-educated blockhead-say of the landed interest-to make ridiculous, he does it so pleasingly, that the Esquire joins in the general smile. Is it a coarse calculating dunce of the mercantile school, he suddenly hits him such a heavy blow on the organ of number, that the stunned economist is unable to sum up the total of the whole. Would some pert prig of the profession be facetious overmuch, Canning ventures to the very borders of vulgarity, and discomfits

him with an old Joe. Doth some mouthing member of mediocrity sport orator, and make use of a dead tongue, then the classical Secretary runs him through and through with apt quotations, and before the member feels himself wounded, the whole House sees that he is a dead man.

TICKLER.

His wit is shown in greatest power in the battles of the giants. When Brougham bellows against him, a Bull of Bashan, the Secretary waits till his horns are lowered for the death-blow, and then stepping aside, he plants with graceful dexterity the fine-tempered weapon in the spine of the mighty Brute.

SHEPHERD.

Whish!-Nae personality the nicht. Michty Brute !-Do you ca' Hairy Brumm a michty Brute? He's just a maist agreeable enterteenin' fallow, and I recollect sitten up wi' him a' nicht, for three nichts rinnin', about thretty years syne, at Miss Ritchie's hottle, Peebles. O man, but he was wutty, wutty-and bricht thochts o' a maist extraordinary kind met thegither, frae the opposite poles o' the human understanding. I prophesied at every new halfmutchkin, that Mr Brumm would be a distinguished character, and there he is, you see, Leader o' the Opposition.

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No him perpetually playin' upon words. I canna thole to hear words played upon till they lose their natural downright meaning and signification. It was only last week that a fallow frae Edinburgh came out to the south for orders o' speerits amang the glens, (rum, and brandy, and Hollands,) and I asked him to dine at Mount Benger. He had hardly put his hat on a peg in the trans, afore he began playin' wi' his ain words; and he had nae sooner sat down, than he began playin' wi' mine too, makin' puns o' them, and double entendres, and bits o' intolerable wutticisms, eneuch to make a body scunner. Faith, I cut him short, by tellin' him that nae speerit-dealer in the kingdom should play the fule in my house, and that if he was a wut, he had better saddle his powney and be aff to Selkirk. He grew red, red in the face; but for the rest o' the evening, and we didna gang to bed till the sma' hours, he was not only rational, but clever and weel-informed, and I gied him an order for twenty gallons.

TICKLER.

Yes-Sidney Smith has a rare genius for the grotesque. He is, with his quips and cranks, a formidable enemy to pomposity and pretension. No man can wear a big wig comfortably in his presence; the absurdity of such enormous frizzle is felt; and the dignitary would fain exchange all that horsehair for a few scattered locks of another animal.

NORTH.

He would make a lively interlocutor at a Noctes. Indeed, I intend to ask him, and Mr Jeffrey, and Cobbett, and Joseph Hume, and a few more choice spirits, to join our festive board

SHEPHERD.

O man, that will be capital sport. Sic conversation!

TICKLER.

O my dear James, conversation is at a very low ebb in this world!

SHEPHERD.

I've often thought and felt that, at parties where ane micht hae expeckit better things. First o' a' comes the wather-no a bad toppic, but ane that town's folks kens naething about. Wather! My faith, had ye been but in Yarrow last Thursday.

TICKLER.

What was the matter, James, the last Thursday in Yarrow?

SHEPHERD.

I'se tell you, and judge for yoursel. At four in the mornin', it was that hard frost that the dubs were bearin, and the midden was as hard as a rickle VOL. XIX.

5 B

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