among those divine writers, as mine do, Mr Editor, when the hounds are not out, he would have known, that one indispensible requisite in a huntingdinner is plenteousness, or rather profusion.* But this is not the matter in hand. My object in writing was to know, whether you could find it consistent with your political conscience to slip in a little word in his favour. You have a powerful way with you; and I should think, your lucubrations must fall occasionally under the observation of the higher powers. Do try your hand, Mr North. There is some thing about an accusing and a recording angel, which, I think, might be quoted with effect; but my English reading for these many years past has been confined to Jackson's Chronicle, (with the addition lately of your enter taining Miscellany,) and I cannot refer to the passage. Perhaps you could extract something out of a dream. Justice and Mercy are figures to come at a beck. Excuse this prompting, and believe me,

"Your's very respectfully,
"Mr Editor,

"AN OXFORDSHIRE SQUIRE."

We can devise no way by which the law and this Greek-loving Squire may be equally satisfied, but by proposing a commutation. Let Hobhouse take the half, or, if possible, the whole of his brother-member's punishment; and though it should extend to two, four, six, or even twelvemonths, we, at least, shall not be the men to complain of it. There is a certain look about that little republican, which seems to mark him out for a visitation of this kind; and his authorship fits him much more for confinement than Sir Francis. Let him amuse himself with writing Prison

Thoughts, and we engage to furnish abundant amusement for the reader by a review of them. Every one will thus be a gainer.Here we pause.

These asterisks might have been filled up with four hundred, fourscore, and four letters, (for such, on counting, we find are still left us); but, as we before told the reader, we despise humbug, or, as the grammarians write, "Omne quod exit in hum, seu Greek-hum, sive Latine-hum;" and, had we inserted the whole of our collection, we might have been suspected of filling our columns as the Times did, with its list of public rejoicings for the Queen; and Heaven forbid

that we should resemble that frantic Journal in any thing but its expeditious printing.

Nothing is perfect in life; and the very fountain of pleasure, says a Latin poet, has a well of bitterness in it.Even our bliss is not without alloy. We have been the occasion of mischief in'private families. Many letters, which should have begun My dear papa, have been found to begin My dearest North; and with what confusion to the fair writers it pains us to say. We have offered our hand to no less than ten young ladies, to preserve peace in families; and, through mere forgetfulness, had nearly subjected ourselves to an action for polygamy.

Again, The Tailor at Yarrow Ford has taken umbrage, and returned one of his copies. What does the ninthpart of a man mean? But we defy him. He formerly read two copies once over each; he will now read the same copy over twice. Et voilà tout.

DEAR NORTH,-You will, no doubt, be both angry and surprised at my delay in sending you a bulletin of my proceedings; but the truth is, that I have been spending the last half-dozen months in such a round of dissipation and idleness, that, the devil take me if I could command my intellects, and abstain from the pleasures of good fellowship, (including rare stuffing and strong drink,) for half an hour together. I have been literally, since the fragment of a letter I wrote you from Killarney, hurried about from one quarter of the Emerald Isle to the other; and, as I was generally "no that fou, but just a drappie in my e'e," I have been fortunate enough to collect such a knowledge of the Irish peasantry, both male and female, at fairs, and otherwise, as fully to entitle me to commence my intended work "On the National Manners of Ireland, with a Preliminary Dissertation, fully and satisfactorily proving that Ossian was a Native, and his Poems Authentic." But the work is as yet only in limine, as,

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Wha o' study then could think,
Wi' sic gude fallows, by him?

Pretty goings on," you will be very apt to exclaim, most sage Christopher," Pretty goings on, Mr Standard bearer." But hold-what merit, pray, have you, in your sober, genteel, staid, and very retired life, when it is a thing not of choice, but of necessity; and when, (probably,) if you had good health, and if the spirit of the gout and rheumatism (oh fye, Dr Balfour!) were quietly consigned over to the Red Sea, the morning would be spent in tollowing the hounds, the afternoon over the bottle with your friends, and the evening at the theatre, (not the new one,) or in walking with belles in the George's Street Assembly Rooms? But, joking aside, I am a little ashamed of my late way of living; and, as the first fruits of my repentance, and, were it for no other reason than just to make up matters between us, you will find in the sequel of this packet a few scraps, which certainly, were this my first interview with the public, night not give them any very high pinion of me; but luckily this is a

long decided point with them; and, like my friend Byron, scattering around cantos of his Don Juan, I can sit smoking my pipe in security and honour, beneath the shade of my already hard-earned, but, at the same time, honourably acquired laurels.

"Sublimi feriam sidera vertice."

By the by, I was horribly angry, at first sight, with observing, in that exquisite morceau of thirty pages, ، The Tête-a-Tête," what you have said with regard to my abstracting the memorandum book of your Irish sale, and the sarcasm on my pantaloons; but my features gradually relaxed to a smile, and my pulse subsided to the natural standard; and at last, to use the expression of our friend Hogg, I could not help bursting into a loud gaffaw" at the joke, for you certainly intended it for such. Not that I am by any means thin-skinned-you know. Morgan too well for that--but I was afraid that such an imputation thrown out in public against the honour of a military man, allowing me to have taken away the sale-book by willing mistake, might injure me in the eyes of the comrades at whose side I have fought in the day of battle; but these scruples were speedily hushed to rest, to use a poetical simile, like the cackling of an old goose, when an ounce of No. 6. is lodged in his head ; and I remembered, to my no small satisfaction, that few of them knew any thing of books, except the Heavy Dragoon, and about other six more.

I am determined to take a month of hard study to reduce me, as I am three stones, seven pounds, and two or three neither-here-nor-there ounces heavier since I left "Edina, Scotia's darling seat;" and though I have not ordered myself to be chained to my chair, in imitation of Alfieri, I have ordered my landlady for a fortnight to come to lock my door on the outside, and neither to allow ingress nor egress, except for the sake of recruiting my corporeal man. Eight days are already over and gone, and I am beginning to become more reconciled to my situation. I can now sit with tolerable comfort for a spare half-hour at my window,

You will doubtless observe that these lines do not altogether apply; but they certainly are very fine.

Speaking of Byron, what the deuce can he mean by thus bantering us, by thus whetting and disappointing the public taste? First, we had among our literary notices an annunciation of Don Juan, Cantos Third and Fourth; but month after month elapsed, and at length the report

died away

Into the light of common day." Then we had " Parga, a poem," but his lordship wishing to try the taste of the Greek-reading public, (we would like to know if it be extensive,) had it translated into Romaic, and distributed gratis, like lottery puffs, and cheap sales, among the peasants, to rouse in them the spirit of their ancestors, which seems of late to have declined a little. We are credibly informed, that not a few have put themselves to school, in order to have a reading of his lordship's present.

Then we had the lamentation of Dante, or rather we were to have, as the midwife of the Muses has either strangled it, or the manuscript has been sent to sea, and lost in a storm by shipwreck. We regret this very much, as I had a preface of nine pages written out to commence a review of it, whenever it appeared; but which I am quite determined not to lose, as I will stitch it to the front of the very first poem, on whatever subject it may be, whether serious or comic, that I may happen to take notice of, in "my grandmother's review, the British." The Doge of Venice, which was the last horse entered for the plate, will certainly be the first to come in for the sweepstakes. Talking of tragedies, what do you think of Barry Cornwall's Mirandola? For my part, I think it is simple, and sweet enough, but it wholly wants thews and sinews-Bertram, and Fazio, and Evadne, are but so so; and not at all calculated to do away "hujus seculi opprobrium," as being fine tragedies. I blush when I declare to you, that I have a fiery and unquenchable thirst, to be myself the

achiever of this mighty enterprize; and, if I fail, there is certainly no one, but the author of Waverley, who has the least chance of succeeding. I am hesitating whether or not, after the fashion of the Greeks, to introduce a chorus, but I have resolved, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Aristotle, to pay no attention to the rules of dramatic unity, but to introduce whatever will serve my purpose. It is to be a national tragedy, and the scene laid in the Highlands of Scotland. The name you may have heard before; do you think it will do-" Alexander Macpherson, or the Black Revenge!" The plot I shall not at present trouble you with, but I think it will answer to a nicety; and for stage effect, let me alone for that. I am very much of opinion, that a variety of costume in the actors, has a grand, and, at the same time, a natural effect on the stage, and I trust that your humble servant has as much good sense as to follow the suggestions of his judgment. The body-guard of Macpherson consists of five Mamelukes, and a negro sharpshooter,-the cher amie of Macgregor Aurora, one of the chieftains, is à Circassian damsel, taken captive in Palestine, during the Holy War; and an itinerant knight, concealed in the disguise of a Jew doctor, is made to flourish occasionally on the stage, with a Turkish turban, and a long bushy black beard. The fifth act shews blood, and slaughter ad libitum; I at once cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of War." But a tragedy needs now and then to be a little enlivening, that the horrors may shew the greater by contrast, as the sun seems larger through a smoked glass; and Shakespeare introduces his gravedigger singing in Hamlet, and Lewis has introduced Father Philip, with his cowardice and round belly, into the Castle Spectre. It takes off the uniformly sombre effect, and throws us off our guard, so that we may be shocked more securely. The Jew-doctor's address to his customers I have intended-do I fail or not?-to be of this character.

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