Subscription-balls are also carried on,

By those who love to part with one pound one;
"Elegant Extracts!" where they keep it up
Till five or six, and sumptuously sup

A time there was, in Gothic days, when all
Were quite contented with a public ball,
None issued invitations, I've been told,

For more than rooms conveniently could hold;
They, ignorantly, would have thought it airs,
To ask their friends and leave them on the stairs;
But customs alter, folks in times like these,
Who give a party, call it what they please;
The cards once out, it matters not at all
Whether the drawing-room is large or small;
They get a harp the pleasure to enhance,
And then the thing becomes a private dance.

'Whilst these select abodes their charms display,
The young pousetting, as the old survey;
Many at home remain, and treat their friends,
With cakes, cards, coffee, and wax candle-ends;
How wise are they, who thus, whilst others roam,
Prefer sequestered joys and stay at home:-
"At home!" what numberless delights are found,
What sweet emotions mingle with the sound!
'Tis said, that far from cities there are those
Who daily in domestic scenes repose;

To them their native home appears most dear,
When doors are closed and none but friends are near:
But here -to be "at home," is to invite

Half of the world to crowd your house at night,
That all the other half may lie awake,

Scared by the noise your doors and chairmen make :
Here too it seems domestic joys consist,

In scandal, crowded rooms, ice-creams and whist
Candles and Ladies' eyes here shine most bright,
When both should be extinguished for the night,
Inventions multiply, white lies abound,
Sometimes a solitary TRUTH goes round,
For those who talk all morning and all night,
Must inadvertently at times be right.

Oh! blest retreat; where bounteous dames impart
The mingled charms of Nature and of Art; -

Art puts all faded objects out of sight,

Whilst Nature kindly brings all things to light;
Ye favoured beaux! these specimens behold,
Catching your hearts, who thinks of catching cold?
Their gowns they shorten too, and each reveals
A proper quantity of neck and heels:

But fashions change, and soon we may prepare
To see the beaux as beautifully bare;
Nor should the change surprise us, for the men
Expose themselves a little now and then.

Here

Here you will find (the rites of Bacchus done)
Men of all characters, and men of none:
Here ancient bucks their withered limbs display,
Vainly endeavouring to hide decay;

Though still the form of symmetry is seen,

And cork supplies the place where flesh has been ;
Though stays may compensate for vigour gone:
Though white of egg cement his whiskers on;
Though artificial curls are neatly spread,
To hide the sad hiatus on his head:

Can cork, or borrowed curls, Time's progress stop?
Can age be strengthened by a whalebone prop?
Do what he will the number of his years,
Through all his boyish mummery appears;
And whilst the project fails, the vain attempt
Must render age deserving of contempt.'

Such rhymes as the last two of this passage (allowed by the French) are not fairly admissible in any species of English verse. The passage that follows is also happy. We see room, indeed, for ample improvement in each extract: the thoughts may be condensed, the language purified, and the versification amended: but with every drawback, and due diminution of panegyric, much is left to make us laugh, and much to lead us to approve.

These are thy Follies, Bath,- yet even here
Some qualifying Virtues oft appear;

And having sketched the Errors that pervade,
'Tis fair some light should mingle with the shade.
All seem aware of what the proverb means,
"Charity hides a multitude of sins;"

And therefore keep their consciences secure,
By many benefactions to the poor;

Thus Mistress Whist this golden rule regards,
And gives the poor the cash she wins at cards:
Thus he who hears a worthy preacher speak
Against his actions in the former week,
Buys absolution at an easy rate,
By placing his donation in the plate.
At Circulating Libraries we view
No tempting raffles, or delightful loo;
No fair adventurers can there advance

To try their luck at morning games of chance;
No winners seize the spoils, or proudly share
"Trifles from Brighton," or gay Tunbridge ware.:
In these resorts the loungers take their stations,
And ask to see the last new publications,
Monthly Reviews, and Poems neatly stitched,
Novels that tend to prove the world's bewitched,
And Ladies' Magazines just come from town,
With "Lines on Love," and patterns for a gown.
These Laura views, as if a hasty look
Could estimate the value of a book;

And

And if some touch of scandal she perceives,
Some tale initialed, 'twixt the uncut leaves,
She gladly pays the shopman the amount,
Or begs he'll put it down to her account.
Here maiden ladies constantly pursue

Something they have not read, or "something new."
Some seek the reading-room, and there peruse
According to their tastes, the London news;
The politician reads with looks sedate,
"Letters from Paris," and last night's debate;
The female is not happy till she sees
The daily list of deaths and marriages:
One, with uncommon thirst of knowledge blest,
Thinks of herself, unmindful of the rest,
Seizes the Times, and not content with one,
Grasps at the Globe, and sits upon the Sun!'

We hope to see Q. out of his Corner again very soon. His Imitations of Horace are for the most part in good taste: not indeed too like his original, but still superior to many similar attempts. The pamphlet concludes with a very good-for-nothing. imitation of Monk Lewis's Alonzo and Imogine.

Art. 26. Musomania; or the Poet's Purgatory. 12mo. pp.120. 4s. Boards. Baldwin and Co. 1817.

This little volume consists of a common-place text, and an amusing but injudicious common-place book of notes. We shall give our readers an extract from each, that they may judge of the correctness of our designation :

Through lanes, lo, shivering Otway creeping!
To shun the huckster's catchpoles, peeping
With blinking eyes, in hollow sockets,
Warming slink hands in coinless pockets;
(Eager for fame; yet to be seen

Asham'd), the actress meets

Nell Gwyn;

Who, in her gilded chariot dashing,
From head to foot the poet splashing,
Titters to see each stain expose
Some rent in his ill-fitted clothes;
This dire mishap his claim bereaving
Of gracious audience, humbly craving
From pamper'd manager, (who, lolling
In chair of state, perhaps might call in
The culprit wight, half dead with fear,
Were he but decent to appear,)

By hunger urged, he begs a roll,
And, choaked with gorging, yields his soul,
That his gaunt phiz, in nightcap shabby,

May stare in frontispiece or abbey.'

It is scarcely necessary to observe that this often repeated story of the manner of Otway's death is entirely contradicted by later testimony; which may be seen in the preface to the last

edition

edition of that poet's works. As to the verses, they certainly do not demand any criticism. Of the prose we shall exhibit the following specimen :

Hager and Montucci lately attacked each other as impostors, respecting the Chinese language. Psalmanazar in a London garret forged Travels in Formosa, and even fabricated a whole language for that island. Lauder asserted that Milton had stolen his finest passages from obscure Latin poems, which proved to be extracted from the Latin translations of Paradise Lost. Macpherson stands charged with the fraudulent fabrication of state-papers, as well as Erse poetry; and Ireland's counterfeit of Shakspeare shows that nothing is sacred from such impostures. One of the most unaccountable is a Spanish version of Gil Blas, which the title-page pretends to be the original to which Le Sage was indebted, and the preface confesses to be a mere literal translation from Le Sage.'

The author's quotations shew that he trusts to a memory not always correct, and to scholarship far from accurate. Speaking of Juvenal as writing against Egypt,' he thus quotes that poet: "Qualia demens monstra Ægyptus amat."

The original runs thus:

"Qualia demens

Egyptus portenta colat."

In another place, the writer calls the subjoined unmetrical disa smart epigram!'" He, indeed, ought to have smarted

tich <

for it.

Nuper Capitolio quæ sedit culmine cornix

"Bene est non potuit dicere, dixit "erit.”

We will put it into hexameter and pentameter for this classical gentleman, who seems a great enemy to Reviewers; although we should think that he might say with Achilles,

"The distant Trojans never injured me!"

Quæ Capitolino sedit modò culmine cornix
Est benè, non potuit dicere, dixit erit.

What a mode of recording, or rather of bothering, a fact is the following! - Queen Elizabeth ordered Spenser 300l. for a flattering poem !'-The author deserves more than we chuse to express for such a description of the Fairy Queen.

We close our extracts with a specimen of ostentatious display of various reading, which is almost unique even in this age of literary boasting:

Alluding to Asmodeus, the lame devil of intrigue and lust, released by the young scholar from the enchanted phial, in the Diable Boiteux (ridiculously rendered the Devil on Two Sticks). The next couplet alludes to Pandora's box; and the following one to the Oracle of the Bottle, in Rabelais. Wilmot was the famous, or infamous, Earl of Rochester, Boyse's life and poems are in Anderson's British Poets. He wrote from a spunging-house to Cave, editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, a begging note in Latin, "Hodie teste Deo summo, sine pane, sine nummo," &c...

.

• Bel

Bellerophon, rashly mounting Pegasus, was précipitated blinded into the Aleian plain. A fable, partly copied in several of the Arabian Nights, and in Chaucer and Spenser's tale " Of the wondrous horse of brass, on which a Tartan king did ride," &c. This adventurer's calamities became proverbial, as in the uncouth old pentameter Bellerophonteis solicitudinibus. Milton comparés them to his own.

"Io anche son Pittore," said Corregio.'

These shreds and patches, and fag-ends of anecdotes, pervade the volume. It is obvious that much more wantonness than wit, and much more index-hunting than study or judgment, have been employed in their compilation. What is meant by the last sentence of the quotation subjoined, we are happy to be ignorant:

"Nolo contra eum scribere qui potest proscribere," said Pollio. Saint Paul, pursuing his maxim of "being all things to all men,” recommends this diabolical discretion."

MEDICINE, &c.

Art. 27. Memoir on the cutting Gorget of Hawkins, containing an Account of an Improvement on that Instrument, and Remarks on the Lateral Operation for the Stone. By Antonio Scarpa, Member of the National Institute of Italy, &c. &c. Translated from the Italian by James Briggs, Surgeon to the Public Dispensary. 8vo. pp. 29. Cadell and Davies.

1816.

Any proposal for the improvement of the operation for extracting the urinary calculus, coming from so respectable a quarter as that of the Professor of Pavia, who is so well known for the zeal and success with which he cultivated his profession, requires our serious attention. He observes that the best method which anatomy has hitherto suggested to the surgeon, in the extraction of large calculi from the bladder by the perinæum, is the lateral incision of the prostate gland, within certain determinate limits of length and depth; and the prudent resolution of committing the rest of the operation to a gentle and gradual dilatation of the neck of the urethra and orifice of the bladder.' This, which is called the great lateral method, is generally admitted as the utmost degree of perfection to which the operation of lithotomy can be carried; and the only subject of controversy, that now remains, concerns the instruments by which it can be most easily and effectually executed. Cheselden, who brought the lateral method to its present state, and established the principles on which it ought to be performed, employed a simple knife, with which he opened the bladder, with no guide but his correct knowlege of the anatomy of the parts: but, to render the operation more easy to surgeons of less experience than Cheselden, and to reduce it more to a system of mere mechanical rules, Hawkins invented the gorget. The present author remarks; He thought that two great advantages would be gained by the use of this instrument; one, for instance, of executing invariably the lateral incision of Cheselden, the other, of constantly guarding the patient through the whole course of the operation from injury of the rectum and of the arteria pudica profunda.

The