PEN OWEN. "Comedia prisca VIRORUM est!" NORTH. True! manly comedy; but what is it but a string of personalities? There is not one line in all Aristophanes that is not personal. PEN OWEN. 66 Aristophanes was, I suppose, just what Jeffrey says SwIFT was, nothing but a great libeller." NORTH. Yes, and yet you see this same critic, who, four years ago, said " Swift was nothing but a great libeller," has now thought proper to say that personality was a thing unknown until Lord Byron set the example. PEN OWEN. It looks like a contradiction-but go on with your sketch of the great treatise in posse, however. NORTH. Is Horace not personal in his satires? He is so in every line of them, and in half his odes to boot. Was not Virgil abominably personal about the old soldier that go this bonnet-lairdship? Is there no personality in Cicero's Philippics, or in his master, Demosthenes? or in Sallust? or in Tacitus? By Jupiter Tonans, you might as well say that Jeffrey had begun the sin of charlatanism, as that any man now living begun that of personality. SIR A. WYLIE. Weel, weel, but I would like to hear ye on some authors that we hae heard mair about than thae auld heathen Greeks and Romans. NORTH. Swift we have already heard of. You know Shakespeare owed his rise in life and letters to a song which he wrote against a Warwickshire Justice of the Peace. And Justice Shallow is altogether a personal attack on the same worthy body. Ben Jonson was a perfect Turk for personality-his whole life was past in hot water.-Vide D'Israeli !-Why should I allude to the Greens and the Nashes? TICKLER. These fellows were always at cat and dog-quite more recentiorum. NORTH. Nay, nay, forbid that we should be quite so bad as that ætas avorum! I would rather die upon a pile of blazing Magazines, like Sardanapalus on his throne, than write one word within one million of miles of the personalities of Milton-the divine Milton-against Salmasius! DR SCOTT. Keep us a'! Is that the same great gospel gun that wrote the Paradise Lost, that the Spectautor speaks sae muckle about? PEN OWEN. The same, the same. Bah! 'tis all fudge, and fudge fusty-as fusty as Benthamism. NORTH. Come down to the polite æra of Charles II. Is there no personality in Dryden? or rather, is there any thing else in half his most eternal masterpieces? Is there no personality in Butler's Hudibras, nor in Cowley's Cutter of Coleman Street? Or take the glorious days of Queen Anne-There's Swift for one, and there's Pope.-I suppose we've all heard of such a thing as the Dunciad. There's one Arbuthnot too-he wrote a work called the History of John Bull—that is commonly supposed to be something personal, I believe. DR SCOTT. As bad as the present John Bull? NORTH. Yes, truly, very nearly as bad, and indeed rather worse, I take it ; in as much as John Duke of Marlborough was rather a greater man than the present John Duke of Bedford; and in as much likewise, as to be a WHIG was not quite so bad a thing a hundred years ago, thank God! as it is now. PEN OWEN. But in those days there were no reviews nor magazines. NORTH. True, but they came not long after, and personality, which no literature ever was without, blended itself with them ab ovo. Is it possible that you have need for ME to tell you all the old stories about Samuel Johnson and Ossian Macpherson and the oak cudgel? or about Dr Smollet and the Critical?and Fielding? How he kept the Thames on fire with his farces and novels, and roasted all his brother justices to cinders? TICKLER. Why, you know, all the old novelists dealt in nothing but personalities; about that there was no manner of dispute. The only question was, not whether there were a real Morgan or a real Trunnion, but which of the author's competing friends had sat for the portrait. NORTH. Just so; and to tell you the truth, I'm really sick of such hackneyed truths -you may just trace personality as distinctly as stupidity, down the whole line of our Whig literature in particular. Turn over D'Israeli's nice little books, if you have doubts-The Quarrels of Authors above all Nocturnâ versate manu versate diurnâ. TICKLER. Once landed in our own times, we can be at no great loss to find our way. Plenty of fine staring finger-posts as one moves along. The Fudge Family, a production of one of the most charming Whigs that ever breathed-and a more disloyal piece of Whiggery was never written, even by that charming Whig, stands pretty visible yonder against the sky. PEN OWEN. Yes, the black and lowering sky of disgustful remembrance. TICKLER. The Twopenny Post-Bag! 'Tis sufficient to mention the name of such a bag of poison-base brutal poison. Hone's nice little books, (worthy man! the Whigs subscribed for him, you know, as well as for Gerald-I hope the money did him much good!) The Morning Chronicle, with so many of Tom Moore's songs against kings and ladies introduced into it by good Mr Perry, whom Sir James Macintosh so disinterestedly lauded in the House of Commons -The Old Times, stinking of Cockney radicalism and Cockney personality in every column-there's no want of land-marks to guide one along the mare magnum of Whiggish ruffianism. SIR A. WYLIE. And after a' this poor Lord Byron must be charged, forsooth, with beginning the vice o' personality. Oh dear! what a thumper! NORTH. The fact is, that Lord Byron, instead of being the sole personal libeller, is only an unit in the Whig array, whereof Mr Jeffrey himself is another unit-and if the question were, which of these two is the more deserving of the title of leader in such work, I protest I think I should have no difficulty in giving my vote to the commoner. I beg leave to propose the memory of Dr Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick. Dean Swift!!! OMNES. [Music without. Air-Diogenes, surly and proud.] 'Tis not when on turtle and venison dining, And sipping Tokay at the cost of his Grace; Like the plate on his sideboard, I'm set to be shining— (So nearly a mug may resemble a face.) This is not the dinner for me-a poor sinner; Where I'm bound to shew off, and throw pearls before swine. Your critic shews off, with his snatches and tastes 1 612 Con oni-are not for my money, Blue Stockings prate about Wylie and Pen ; Idther get tipsy with ipsissimi ipsi—— Plain women must yield to plain sense and plain men. Your dowager gives you good dinners, 'tis true; As the custom of those is, I've cut for to-night. Your colonels talk but of a siege or a battle— Your merchants of nought but the course of exchange- But here, where all sets and all topics are mingled- But our wine and our wit each discussion inspire; Where each song seems quite heavenly, each bumper divine; Where there's drinking and smoking, and quizzing and joking, But nothing provoking-HERE! HERE! let me dine. PEN OWEN. Talking of Dean Swift,-what is Mr Maturin about? ODOHERTY. (here! here!) Grinding, grinding! Is'nt it a shame for people to run him down at such a rate? and the man a Tory-an Aristocrat-a well-dressed gentlemanlike author! "Tis abominable. 'Tis too bad to think of such a man being poor, and you know he complained of it himself in his Preface. PEN OWEN. Mr Odoherty, I don't mean to defend the Quarterly-but did you never take a wipe at Mother Morgan yourself? ODOHERTY. I believe I may have done such a thing-But how different the case: why that little çidevant Miladi absolutely brags of her cash, and sets off public reprobation with a balance of pounds, shillings, and pence. Her motto is, no doubt, TICKLER. "Populus me sibilat: at mihi plaudo. Ipsa domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arcâ." But did not Maturin write something called the Universe? ODOHERTY. That has reached long ago the uttermost ends of the earth-but why allude to such things? when are we to have the Southside Papers? TICKLER. Why, I am kept back by a late decision. I fear the judge who refuses his protection to Byron's Cain, would scarcely take my rattan under his wing. SIR A. WYLIE. Gentlemen, I've sat here a long while, and been greatly diverted with many things I've heard, and edified with some-but the Chancellor, I have the honour to say, is my friend, and I must quit the company, if I hear any thing further in a similar strain. Besides, he was perfectly right in that decision. Multum dubito. PEN OWEN. ODOHERTY (aside to PEN OWEN.) You had better not enter into any dispute with Sir Andrew. Not much flash, but the longest Scotch head I am acquainted with. And his humour, why even you might find him ill to deal with. PEN OWEN. You are right. He is indeed a canny clever Scotchman. Entre nous THE KING was delighted with his book. You may depend upon this. I heard him say so myself. TICKLER. I have been much interested by your delightful description of a certain beautiful creature, Mr Owen? Have you and Mrs O. any family, by the bye? Three PEN OWEN. ODOHERTY. You mean volumes—and if so, I can tell you very seriously, the third is the best of the batch. PEN OWEN. To be candid, what is your opinion of my book? ODOHERTY. Your book is a jewel; but if you had happened to be a Scotsman, and writ such a book about Scotland, and Scots people, you might just as well have leaped from the top of the Monument as published it. PEN OWEN. Why? I assure you, I wrote the book in the greatest possible good nature. ODOHERTY. Devil doubts you. I dare say Hogg was never in half such a benign disposition, as he was when he wrote THE CHALDEE. PEN OWEN. Satire is upon the whole a good-humoured vice, in my opinion. ODOHERTY. 'Tis in my estimation the most placid of virtues.-Pick me up some day with a face like a lemon rind-hazy-dumpish-sulky-bitter-perhaps just escaped from a detestable dun of a tailor, or a dozen of prating whiglings or the like—and take me into the nearest tavern. Order a hot beef-steak, a rummer of brandy and water-bring out a good pen and a few sheets of hotpressed paper, and a bundle of segars, and say, "At it, Odoherty! Up with your back, Adjutant!" What follows? PEN OWEN. ODOHERTY. A calm! a perfect Claude, the most beautiful, serene, delightful, dewy atmosphere, spreads its wide embracing canopy over all the troubled surface of my soul. My spirit, enshrined as it were in the divine depths of contemplation, exerts her energies sweetly, nobly, sublimely! It is then that I comprehend how true to nature and to virtue is the exquisite apostrophe of the Epicurean bard, "Suave mari magno, turbantibus æquora ventis Ex tuto alterius longum spectare laborem." On the whole, I consider Tom Cribb and myself as the two best natured men in Britain ! PEN OWEN. Well, now, I confess 'twas not in that high placed vein I composed my most cutting chapters. I have sometimes wakened of a morning, God knows how or why, in a strange mixed state of feeling-ready to go my lengths, in short -up to any thing-utterly reckless-that's all I can say about the matterdeuced good fun! ODOHERTY. Ay, but how inferior that is to the chosen " moods of my mind!" On such occasions, it may almost be said I would not harm a fly. PEN OWEN. The scope and tendency of some of your observations perplex me. NORTH. committee business. We're all getting into knots and core Adjutant upon satire and segars Feldborg and the Odon of Muscovy's tooth powder-Tickler dozing—and Sir AndrewTM yself left quite alone to the great topic of things in general! Whyi never do. kurbus saw lit edt as ori DR SCOTT.Tapping his spoon against the side of the bowl, sings.] Jolly Tories, fill your glasses, ODOHERTY. (Sings.) Hear the tinkle on the rim. TICKLER. (Sings.) All the Whigs are geese and asses. Hollow heart and vision dim! Chorus. Fa! la! la! la! la! la! la! la! &c. FELDBORG the Dane. Allow me to give you a little Scandinavian solo. NORTH. (Knocking with his hammer.) Silence! Feldborg's solo! FELDBORG. (Sings.) Dynr a Brezkar, &c. NORTH. Come, it suits you very well, after what happened not quite fifty years ago, to sing such a ditty as this. DR SCOTT. Keep us a'! Do you ken what he was singing? I thought it was Danish or Dutch at the lowest penny. NORTH. The last two lines, being interpreted, signify, "The King of Denmark's bloody hail Is it not so, Professor ? FELDBORG. I suffer this no longer! Golt und Teüfel! I quit the Nomber. NORTH. [Exit FELDBORG. Why, this is beyond all bearing! Tickler, you are a new married man,you are or ought to be nimble,-run after the Dane, and recall him. TICKLER. Sir, do you suppose that because I'm a contributor, an editor has a right to cast personal reflections upon me? to rend away the veil of my domestic concerns?-Sir, I scorn your sneers!-Sir, your servant!-Good night, gentle[Exit TICKLER, furiosus. men. ODOHERTY. Ye Gods! How infernally drunk Tickler has been these two hours! Honest Tickler! he, too, to be up! Timotheus placed on high, I suppose the next thing will be Sir Andrew Wylie bolting upon some absurd allusion to his autobiography. |