spent a whole summer in correcting A tedious negotiation dragging on ten lines those written in the from month to month ensued, withTasso of the Duchess of York-out arriving one step nearer consumdisporting himself in this way. Scott here is addressing himself. The poet playing with his gift more commonly adopts the epistolary form, and compliments a friend with some facile careless specimen of his art. We do not want the amusement to become general out of the charmed circle; but where once a name is won, a tribute of verse is felt to be a real token of friendship, and treasured among the most flattering of compliments, as a private communication from Parnassus; especially when it illuminates some grave subject, or assumes an unexpected form, in which the poet selects you as the recipient of a new and choice conceit. mation; at last Canning's patience was exhausted. Sir Charles Bagot, our ambassador at the Hague, was one day (as we are told) attending at Court when a despatch in cipher was hastily put into his hand; it was very short, and evidently very urgent, but unfortunately Sir Charles not expecting such a communication, had not the key of the cipher with him. An interval of intense anxiety followed, until he could obtain the key, when, to his infinite astonishment, he deciphered the following despatch from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs :"In matters of commerce, the fault of the Dutch Is giving too little and asking too much; With equal advantage the French are content, So we'll clap on Dutch bottoms a twenty per cent. cent. Twenty per cent, GEORGE CANNING." It must have been a delightful discovery to the diplomatist when Canning's Despatch first unfolded itself to eye and ear. And that Canning was a universal genius does not prevent the writer of the Nous frapperons Falck with twenty per Anti-Jacobin and the famous Pitt lyric, "The Pilot that Weathered the Storm," being a poet in especial. Canning's general principle, it should be explained, was, that commerce flourished best when wholly unfettered by restrictions; but as modern nations had grown up under various systems, he judged it necessary to discriminate in the application of the principle; hence the Reciprocity Act placing the ships of foreign States importing articles into Great Britain on the same footing of duties as British ships, provided our ships were treated by the same rule in their turn; reserving, however, a retaliative power of imposing increased duties when the principle was resisted or evaded, as it was in the case of Holland-M. Falck, the Dutch Minister, having made a one-sided proposition, much to the advantage of his own country. Tom Moore, subsequently meeting this M. Falck when ambassador at our Court, calls him a fine sensible Dutchman. Whether he ever knew the form in which the tables were turned upon him is nowhere stated. Surprise constitutes some of the fun and attraction of a very different rhymed letter, where Cowper fills a sheet-prose alike in aspect and matter-with a flow of the most ingenious and facile rhymes. It shows remarkable mastery over words; and the little turns of humour, the playing with his own serious aims and with his friend's gravity of calling and reputation, are pleasantly characteristic of the man. letter is long, but does not admit of curtailment, and the lurking rhymes keep up the reader's vigilance and attention. The "July 12, 1781. "To the Rev. JOHN NEWTON. "MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,-I am going to send, what when you have read, you may scratch your head, and say I suppose, there's nobody knows whether what I have got, be verse or not: by the tune and the time, it ought to be rhyme; but if it be, did you ever see, of late or of yore, such a ditty before? The thought did occur to me and to her, as Madam and I, did walk and not fly, over hills and dales, with spreading sails, before it was dark to Weston Park. "The news at Oney is little or noney, but such as it is, I send it-viz., poor Mr Peace cannot yet cease, addling his head with what you have said, and has left Parish Church quite in the lurch, having almost swore, to go there no more. "Page and his wife, that made such a strife, we met them twain, in Dog Lane; we gave them the wall, and that was all. For Mr Scott, we have seen him not, except as he pass'd in a wonderful haste, to see a friend, in Silver End. Mrs Jones proposes, ere July closes, that she and her sister and her Jones Mister, and we that are here, our course shall steer, to dine in the Spinney; but for a guinea, if the weather should hold, so hot and so cold, we had better by far, stay where we are. For the grass there grows, while nobody mows, (which is very wrong), so rank and long, that so to speak, 'tis at least a week, if it happens to rain, ere it dries again. "I have writ 'Charity,' not for popularity, but as well as I could, in hopes to do good; and if the Reviewer should say 'to be sure, the gentleman's muse wears Methodist shoes; you may know by her pace, and talk about grace, that she and her bard have little regard, for the taste and fashions and ruling passions, and hoidening play of the modern day; and though she assume a borrowed plume, and now and then wear a tittering air, 'tis only her plan, to catch if she can, the giddy and gay, as they go that way, by a production on a new construction. She has baited her trap, in hopes to snap all that may come, with a sugar-plum.' His opinion in this, will not be amiss; 'tis what I intend, my principal end: and if I succeed, and folks should read, till a few are brought to a serious thought, I shall think I am paid, for all I have said, and all I have done, though I have run, many a time, after a rhyme, as far as from hence, to the end of my another book, if I live and am here, sense, and by hook or crook, write another year. "I have heard before, of a room with things, with so much art in every part, a floor, laid upon springs, or suchlike that when you went in, you were forced to begin a minuet pace with an air and a grace, swimming about, now in now out, with a deal of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe or string, or any such thing; and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make keep you still, though against your you dance, and as you advance, will will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to an end, of what I have Madam and you are quite worn out, which that you may do, ere penn'd ; with jigging about, I take my leave, and here you receive, bow profound, down to the ground, from your humble me, W. C. "P.S.-When I concluded, doubtless you did think me right, as well you might, in saying what I said of Scott; and then it was true, but now it is due, to him to note, that since I wrote, himself and he has visited we." This was written in a poetical year, when verse and matter crowded Talk," we find him resolving to hang upon him. After finishing "Table up his harp for the remainder of the year, and "Since eighty-one has had so much to do, Postpone what yet is left for eightytwo." Charles Lamb and Cowper are as little associated in our minds as poets can well be; but there were points, especially of temperament, in common, and the Muse was a handmaid to them both; they each liked to adapt her to domestic uses. Cowper acknowledged homely favours by giving a verse for a dish of fish, apostrophising a halibut in high-sounding blank verse, and ex said, Because he is dead." &c. &c. plaining in neatly-turned heroics But it signifies very little what Mellish how the barrel of oysters was delayed on the road by the imprudent kindness of paying the carriage beforehand. Charles Lamb asked a favour through the same medium: It does not seem, by the way, to have been Southey's turn, however much he played with fantastic measures, to versify for the amusement of his friends alone. All his composition-even his fun—had its destination for the press; but we find him slipping into rhythm to his friend Bedford : "How mortifying is this confinement of yours! I had planned so many pleasant walks to be made so much more pleasant by conversation; For I have much to tell thee, much to say Of the odd things we saw upon our journey Much of the dirt and vermin that annoyed us." Charles Lamb was never careless or "Unmeaning joy around appears, In complete contrast to this is the rapidity of Scott's habits of composition. His domestic verse has all the air of extempore. He seems to have considered it a duty to his chief to retain the minstrel character in his letters. In them he liked to exercise his pen in unfamiliar measures, proving how easy they all were to him. Canning had told him that if he liked he could emulate Dryden in heroics, his letter from Zetland beginning— say, Since they saw the last Kraken in Scalloway Bay. He lay in the offing a fortnight or more, But the devil a Zetlander put from the shore, Though bold in the seas of the North to assail The morse and the sea-horse, the grampus and whale. If your Grace thinks I'm writing the thing that is not, You may ask at a namesake of oursMr Scott (He's not from our clan, though his merits deserve it ; He springs, I'm informed, from the Scotts of Scotstarvit); He questioned the folks who beheld it with eyes, But they differed confoundedly as to its And I think, my Lord Duke, your Grace hardly would wish To cumber your house such a kettle of fish." &c. &c. Verse in such easy hands is a very useful instrument for turning a disagreeable incident into a joke, the poet can be imperious in it without giving offence, apologetic without meanness or servility. Thus in Lockhart's unlucky false quantity which made such a stir over Maida's grave. James Ballantyne had run off post-haste with the epitaph thinking it Scott's, and printed it with an additional blunder of his own. All the newspapers twitted the supposed author, and Lockhart properly desired that the blame should lie on the right shoulders. Scott, however, cared much more for the reputation of his son-in-law, the author of 'Valerius,' than his own, and rattled off an epistle to Lockhart with many reasons for letting the matter rest, of which the third is "Don't you perceive that I don't care a boddle, Although fifty false metres were flung at my noddle; For my back is as broad and as hard as Benlomon's, And I treat as I please both the Greeks and the Romans; To-morrow will see me in town for the winter course, But not at your door at the usual hour, sir, My own pye-house daughter's good prog to devour, sir ; Ergo-peace, on your duty, your squeamishness throttle, And we'll soothe Priscian's spleen with a canny third bottle; A fig for all dactyls, a fig for all spondees, A fig for all dunces and Dominie Grundys." &c. &c. We do not often catch him taking the high line about himself that really lies hidden under this disparagement of his scholarship. Tom Moore has recourse to the epistolary Muse under a very different mortification; though there may be many tingling sensations after giving a bad dinner near akin to the discovery of being even party to a false quantity. The man in both cases feels lowered, and has to give himself a fillip to reinstate himself in his own good opinion. The dinner in question seems to have been an utter breakdown; and where Luttrell and brother epicureans were the guests, all can sympathise in the mishap; while it is only given to poets to express in becoming terms a consciousness of disaster. Prose apologies in such cases are heavy. aggravations of the original ill-usage. Moore sitting down after seeing his guests off, aided by his lantern, and soothing his spirits by an imitation of Horace, might be glad he was a poet; for what trouble does not in a degree dissipate itself under neat definition? "That bard had brow of brass, I own, Who first presumed, the hardened sinner, To ask fine gentlemen from town To come and eat a wretched dinner; Who feared not leveret, black as soot, Like roasted Afric at the head set, And making towards the duck at foot, The veteran duck, a sort of dead set; Whose nose could stand such ancient fish As that we at Devizes purveyThan which, I know no likelier dish To turn one's stomach topsy-turvy." &c. &c. Luttrell himself could turn a verse, and was no doubt recompensed in some degree by the opportunity afforded for airing his talent, owning indeed that "your cook was no dab at her duty," but making the answering line "end with poetry, friendship, and beauty." "And then to increase our delight To a fulness all boundaries scorning, "My Lord, At Matthew's palace in Duke Street, Our weekly friends to-morrow meet On bacon-ham and mutton-chine. Thou, humble statesman, may'st descend To see thy servant from his soul Crown with thy health the sprightly bowl; Among the guests which e'er my house Received, it never can produce Of honour a more glorious proofThough Dorset used to bless the roof." And when Gay versified the receipt. for stewed veal, we may take for granted that the dish so glorified would not be lost in a crowd of rival candidates for favour, but was, no doubt, a crowning attraction of the occasion. "As we cannot enjoy anything good without your partaking of it," he writes to Swift, "accept of the following receipt for stewed veal: "The receipt of the veal of Monsieur Davaux, Mr Pulteny's cook, and it hath been approved of at one of our The Twickenham entertainments. you will find is owing to a negligence difficulty of the saucepan I believe in perusing the manuscript. If I remember right, it is there called a stewpan. Your earthen vessel, provided it is close-topped, I allow to be a good succedaneum : "Take a knuckle of veal- |