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His heart to force it out, for (to be shorter)
To them 'tis a relief, to us a torture.

"And she would have consoled, but knew
not how ;

Having no equals, nothing which had e'er ! Infected her with sympathy till now,

F And never having dreamt what 'twas to bear

Aught of a serious sorrowing kind, although
There might arise some pouting petty care
To cross her brow, she wonder'd how so

near
Her another's
eyes
could shed a tear.
eye
"But nature teaches more than power can
spoil,

And, when a strong although a strange

sensation,
Moves-female hearts are such a genial soil
For kinder feelings, whatsoe'er their
nation,

They naturally pour the wine and oil,'
Samaritans in every situation;
And thus Gulleyaz, though she knew not
why,

Felt an odd glistening moisture in her eye." What ensued I have not time at present to tell, I must refer you to the book itself, for I hear the postman's bell passing the end of the street, and he will be here before I can say half of what I would. I have, however, given enough from the poem to convince you that Byron's powers are in no degree abated, and that there is some tendency to an improvement of manners, in the manner, of this, in so many respects, felicitous work. It will certainly help to redeem his poetical reputation from the effects of that lumbering mass of waggon-wheeled blank verse, "The Doge." But to those who suspect him of " a strange design,

Against the creed and morals of the land, And trace it in this poem every line," it will be found as bad as ever; indeed, with all my own partiality, Christopher, for this singularly gifted nobleman, I dare not venture to approve of some of his allusions in these cantos. He shows his knowledge of the world too openly; and it is no extenuation of this freedom that he does it playfully. Only infants can be

shown naked in company, but his Lordship pulls the very robe de chambre from both men and women, and goes on with his exposure as smirkingly as a barrister cross-questioning a chamber maid in a case of crim. con. This, as nobody can approve, I must confess, is very bad, and I give you full liberty, Christopher, to drub him well for it in your next. You may also introduce a few parenthetical notices respecting stanzas, of which he ought, as a versethe three hundred and fifty ricketty maker, to feel as much ashamed as any carpenter ever did of a slovenly piece of work. But in your flagellation, be not so peremptory as you sometimes are.-Lord Byron may have his faults,-you may have your own, my good friend, but there is some difference between constitutional errors, and evil intentions, and propensities, it is harsh to ascribe to wicked motives what may be owing to the temptations of circumstances, or the headlong impulse of passion. Even the worst habits should be charitably considered, for they are often the result of the slow, but irresistible force of nature, over the artificial manners and discipline of society,the flowing stream that wastes away its embankments. We know not what sins the worst men have mastered, when we condemn them for the crime that subjects them to punishment. Man towards his fellow-man, should be at least compassionate, for he can be no judge of the instincts and the impulses of action, he can only see effects.

"Tremble thou wretch That hast within thee undivulged crimes, Unwhipped of justice: Hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjured, and thou simular mar of

virtue

That art incestuous: Catiff, to pieces shake, Who, under covert and convenient seeming, Hath practised on man's life! Close

pent-up guilts Rive your concealing continents, and cry These dreadful summoners grace."

In short, Christopher, look to thyself, and believe me truly yours, HARRY FRANKLIN.

Berkley Square, Thursday. ̧

AN EXPOSTULATORY ROUND-ROBIN FROM FOURTEEN CONTRIBUTORS.

BELOVED CHRISTOPHER, Certain individuals, not acting in concert, having betaken themselves, according to your prescription, to the seaside, it was found, by an indescribable sort of freemasonry, that each was labouring under the same distressing symptoms of one species of the love of fame, aggravated to an intermittent fever by a constipation or improper secretion of their several productions in your escritoire. We therefore form a little knot of fellow-sufferers in the same way, although indeed we are but a mere frustum from that "immense body of mankind which forms the mass of your contributors"'—a mere block or two of the stately pile which is growing under your architectonic skill. Having been all disappointed of relief from the short statement you made in your July Number, when there was a chance that you would be explicit, we have at last determined to lay our complaints before you. We have conferred with one another, and each has submitted to all the rest the compositions of his or her's, which are lying in your hands, and they have been taken into impartial consideration. We trust we have herein acted ingenuously, honestly, and honourably. Each author laid down a copy of such articles as are candidates for entrance in your Magazine, and it was made a sine qua non that the writer should be absent while the rest heard the work read, and then discussed it, and passed sentence on it; each of us in succession thereby becoming examiner and examinee. perpetual board of green cloth, with interchangeable claimants and referees, thus sat for more than a month; and as many of the articles were of great length, and each member too fearful that his own progeny might be over

A

hastily dealt with, if he grudged his time and attendance, by decreeing a summary rejection of any thing, so it was rather a tedious business. We have got through all the compositions of the party written and transmitted previously to the 15th July, subsequent ones being pronounced inadmissible at our sittings, lest they might never terminate; for we found that many of us, while our elder-born were coram judice, helped off the weary time by another literary parturition. An end was made of the committee at last-essay, tale, and letter, song, sonnet, canto, and pastoral, vanished one by one, with our painstaking mark of approbation or condemnation affixed to it. Persons not well acquainted with the circumstances may think us partial, and so we may be individually, each to his or her own performance, but that solemn quorum, from which the immediate author was excluded, scanned with severer eyes the labours of their absent competitor, in which condition every one by turns was placed. Where we commend we have done it from a sense of justice; and where we found reason to reject, those compositions are entirely passed over in the present statement. Having thus explained ourselves, we trust that the aggregate commendation of so impartial a body will induce you, if not to introduce the articles, discriminated beneath, into your Magazine, yet at least to give them the preference of a decision.

(Signed)

DOMESTICUS.

X.

M. M'NIP.

M. O. M.
P. Q. R.

PHILOLIMNESTES.

VIATOR.

H.TWITCH.
P. P.
ALICE FILd.
V. D. B.
OMICRON.

LAURA.
CRUX.(1.)

(1.) As Mr Ballantyne would find it difficult to get into our page a circle of sufficient diameter to contain the address with the names of our fourteen well-beloved contributors, sticking on the outer edge like the monsters of the zodiac about a globe, we have given orders that it be printed in the ordinary manner; and though we must of necessity put some signatures before, and some after others, yet to all and singular the circumscribers, the rights and immunities enjoyed in the round-robin shape of address are hereby guaranteed without let or gainsay; wherefore the public is warned, that Mr Domesticus, the foremost man, is not more of a ring-leader in this business than Mr and Mrs Crux the lattermost, nor are Messrs Viator and Twitch, though now holding a middle station. less worthy of being the anteriors, or posteriors, in the array, than the gentry aforesaid For this Note, and for the others following, we announce, according to editorial usage, tha we hold ourselves responsible; since we differ in some measure from the autocritical junto who are willing to dictate to us, hitherto held to be autocratorical in this department. C. N

"Hearth-Rug and Fender Promptings," Nos. 1. II. III. by Domesticus. -Although Shakespeare said, "homekeeping youths have ever homely wits," these essays bear no marks of it; they seem to us to possess strong claims to your regard, for they surpass Mr Leigh Hunt's celebrated" Day by the Fireside." (2.)

"Future Times of Yore,"-X. By no ordinary hand."(3.)

"On the moral and intellectual tendency of pincushion-making," by Minimus M'Nip, Fell. Phil. Soc. Ups. Downs, Cork, Lead, &c. &c. A curious but somewhat subordinate question in Political Economy, ably and luminously investigated and demonstratively settled.

"The Imperturbable Patten-maker,' ""The Polyandrian Marriage," and "The Demon of the Salt-box," translated from the German, by M. O. M.-Spirited versions of interesting tales.

"Lament over the laziness of Dr Scott, Timothy Tickler, Esq. William Wastle of that Ilk, Esq. and others of paramount prowess in wit and warfare," signed P. Q. R.-Risibly severe, and which we should hope would prove as expergifacient as a sternutatory to the parties addressed. (4.)

"Dirty Nat, the Pig-boy," a lyrical ballad, to be classed among " Poems of Sentiment and Reflection," although,

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Sonnet on seeing some dead frogs galvanized; with a Supplementary Half-Sonnet, being the overflow of the images and feelings which it was found impossibie to compress within fourteen lines," by Hortentius Twitch.Deep-thoughted, nervous, and imaginative. (6.)

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Specimens of Euclid's Elements in Madrigals," like Ovide en Rondeaux, signed P. P.-Ingenious, perhaps useful. (7.)

SHILLING FARES; or the sights seen, characters observed, conversations heard, pleasures enjoyed, and accidents undergone, in the stages plying about the environs of the metropolis; by Alice Field, formerly of Durham, afterwards, Semptress in Chancery-lane, and now retired from business, in a series of parts." We fear that these journies have heen stopped by the Steam-Boat; but surely Mr Duffle would be sorry to find himself an obstacle to a lady's telling her story. Mrs Field begs us to say, that she is not "the wearyful woman." (8.)

"The Three-legged Stool," a dramatic scene. Of overpowering tenderness; and "Decapitation," another gracefully sportive, both by V.D.B.(9.) "The Poet's Celestial Tour," by

(2.) Although our invalided toe holdeth sweet accord with the hearth rug, and there hath been dalliance of an intimate nature betwixt it and the fender, yet Master Domesticus's promptings mislike us grievously. We print not from the prompter's book-it may be a merit in farces, but not in magazines.

(3.) Most true,—we recommend that he be forthwith elected Poet Extraordinary to any hospital for incurables which wants such an appendage.

(4.) P. Q. R. must favour us with his address, or come and hear our reasons in propria persona. In his cruet-stand, the vinegar-bottle of sarcasm is not dulcified by the neighbourhood of the oil-flask of courtesy. The omission may be supplied.

(5.) We wash our hands of it.

(6.) Deep thoughted with a vengeance! Ecce signum,—

Threads sensitive, which form a thrilling warp

From distaff physiologic finely twined, &c.

(7.) We beg the ingenious author will send them to the Gentleman's Diary; they very happily combine matter now spread over two distinct departments of that publication,the poetical rebuses and the prose mathematical demonstrations. Thus by P. P.'s device will hard-headed students be enticed into the primrose path of poesy, and spinsters, who used to puzzle themselves to no purpose, will now unwittingly become dexterous geo

metresses.

(8.) We shall bring them out, if Mrs F. has but moderate patience. Indeed we have had our eye on Mrs Field ever since her first journey, when her cloak was twisted betwixt nave and spoke,"-being much struck with her sensibility, evinced by her grief at the loss of the old one and joy at the new, which, we are glad to assure our readers, "the Host" (we forget of which house in Durham) was honest enough to buy," of duffil grey, and as warm a cloak as man could sell." She paid no "Shilling Fare" there, so the history of that journey does not come within her present work.

(9.) We could be well content to lay aside our gravity, and see Mr V. D. B. slip off

Omicron.-Fervid sublimity, and a dithyrambic abandonment to the impetus of his genius, characterize this aspirant to your patronage. A great evil has, however, already resulted from your procrastination. Had the poem had an early insertion, the revival, or rather re-modelling of the English hexameter, would have been assigned to him, rather than to the Laureate or the author of the Hymn. But Omicron's case is too like that of Coleridge, whose Cristabel came out fifteen years too late for his reputation, since

the bays of ballad-romance had then taken root at Sir Walter Scott's door, and would not budge an inch in favour of him, who avers that he first introduced them to the soil. Omicron's poem, we fear, can no longer expect the factitious support of being a novelty in an original style; but to prove to you that the invention was anticipated by him, allow us to quote the opening; for in a case of this kind, every added day renders it more difficult to do him justice.

"Ready am I to ascend hence the loftiest heaven of invention:
Ready, aye ready; but what are the means I employ to arrive there?
For my shoe-scraper I use the notable Teneriffe Pico;-

Clouds are steps which I mount to get up to the door I am seeking,
And the blue firmament's breadth is this very door to be entered. (10.)
First, though I rap to give notice, a thunderbolt being my knocker,
Lest on Apollo I pop, undressed in his slippers and night-gown ;—
Double's the rap which results from the discipline brisk of my fingers,
Which you, and others who grovel, imagine the rattling of thunder," &c.

"Letters between Herbert Ludlow and Camilla Conway," by Laura. -The simple dictates of unsophisticated sentiment. (11.)

"Impenetrability; or the Effects of Misapprehended Reciprocity;" signed Crux. Not entirely new in its leading plan; for, as "The Pleasures of Hope" sprang from "The Pleasures of Memory;" so was the hint for this subtly didactic poem given by one styled Individuality, or the Causes of Re

66

ciprocal Misapprehension, by Martha Ann Sellon." Nevertheless we think it would fall in with the taste of your more studious poetico-metaphysical readers.

These pieces are what we somewhat confidently submit to your better judg ment, not mentioning such as we have suppressed, and seldom having noticed more than a single one of our respective productions, now awaiting your fiat to be printed. (12.)

his stool; and if some part (not his heud) came with a very smart impact against the ground, it would be a due recompence for making us read such wooden, brainless stuff. (10.) Omicron beats M. Garnerin, who entrusted himself to a parachute, which swung him backwards and forwards till his brains were addled, and then banged him against the stones, to see what sort of osteology he was possessed of. We received the hymn a week, two days, and some hours before little o's six-footed lines crept in. We must be just. (11.) We hasten to persuade Mr H. L. with all the earnestness for his good which we can show, to apply instanter for the situation advertised last week of Junior Usher to the lowest form at Mr M.'s academy, Leith; apprehending from the old motto "docendo disco," that it comes within the scope of the possibles, that he may, by teaching scholars not yet imbued with any great quantity of erudition, (being mostly quinquennarians, or at most sexennarians,) himself learn to spell; and as to Miss Camilla, she talks of cookery being a vulgar science,-she hallucinates, the wisest course she can pursue is to put herself for a month or two under the flowery-fisted dominion of the house-keeper of her friend Mrs Thirdcourse, in the capacity of kitchen-maid, (if indeed so much capacity be hers;) but, N. B. she must, meanwhile, be called Molly, Betty, Sally, or the like, as a nom-de-guerre or rather de-cuisine, for Camilla at the frying-pan, or working away with the flour-dredger, hath some incongruity to the ear. Should she listen to this advice, she will return to a sounder way of judging on the subject. Shall Mrs Rundel have written in vain ? Smoke-jacks and cradle spits, forbid !

(12.) In fine, we give no encouragement to our Contributors to question our tact and judgment. Write away merry men all; but Fame hath deputed us sole umpire,-indisputable, and till now undisputed.

C. N.

The Finish.

We hope our friends in Cockaigne will not fancy by this that we have any intention to meddle with the COAL-HOLE, or their FINISH. All we mean, is simply to say, that we have concluded one volume, and finished the first number of another. Having commenced our labours in April, we have often regretted that it was not in our power to begin a new volume with a new year. To rectify our calendar in this respect, we have resolved to give only five numbers in our ninth and tenth volumes, and by publishing this extra number, we shall be able to commence our eleventh volume, at the regular period in January.

C. N.

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