THE LION'S HEAD. Some of our Correspondents having expressed a wish to put their heads in the Lion's Mouth this month, he hath courteously consented, and promises not to wag his Tail," till they have done. ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.-A Correspondent, who writes himself Peter Ball, or Bell,-for his hand-writing is as ragged as his manners-admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had need have good memories. In my "Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in question, (see P. S. to my "Chapter on Ears,") I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his folly-that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his delusions; or, leading him from error still to contradictory error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and give him line till he suspend himself. No understanding reader could be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me for an alien, or believe me other than English.-To a second Correspondent, who signs himself "a Wiltshire man," and claims me for a countryman upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in my "Christ's Hospital," a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over the Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to strike upon. Referring to the passage (in page 484 of our second volume), I must confess, that the term "native town," applied to Calne, primâ facie seems to bear out the construction which my friendly Correspondent is willing to put upon it. The context too, I am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of an author, taken literally, compared with some other passage in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly intended. So by the word "native," I may be supposed to mean a town where I might have been born; or where it might be desirable that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon a dry chalky soil, in which I delight; or a town, with the inhabitants of which I passed some weeks, a summer or two ago, so agreeably, that they and it became in a manner native to me. Without some such latitude of interpretation in the present case, I see not how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics, as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two places, from which all modern and ancient testimony is alike abhorrent, Bacchus cometh the nearest to it, whom I re member Ovid to have honoured with the epithet "Twice born." But not to mention that he is so called (we conceive) in reference to the places whence rather than the places where he was delivered,-for by either birth he may probably be challenged for a Theban-in a strict way of speaking, he was a filius femoris by no means in the same sense as he had been before a filius alvi, for that latter was but a secondary and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by way of explanation was thought due to the courteous "Wiltshire man."To "Indagator," "Investigator," "Incertus," and the rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth-as if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his parish-to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever period, shall seem good unto him. Modò me Thebis-modò Athenis. To the Editor of the London Magazine. ELIA. In the amusing article on Epitaphs, No.XXI, the writer seems palpably to fabour under a mistake when he talks of "the erection of Sterne's grave-stone being left to mechanics and strangers."-Now, the first paragraph of the inscription runs thus: "This monumental stone was erected to the memory of the deceased by two brother Masons." (The mechanics!)--The epitaph proceeds, "although he did not live to be a member of their Society, yet all his incomparable performances evidently prove him to have acted by rule and square." The odd notion of the contingent probability of Sterne using a hod and trowel, and the allegorically technical language at the end, leave no room for doubt that these "mechanics" were FREE Masons. Now, if the writer has ever read on a winter's evening, the "History of the Secret Tribunal," I have put him in a terrible fright. JACHIN. As Old Mortality is still on this side of the grave, a copy of the above note was sent to him, in the churchyard of He returned the following answer. To the Editor. Sir, I am a plain man, unacquainted with the art of obtaining a singular meaning from a perverse inscription: I call a spade, a spade, nor hide that useful implement under the dark cloak of allegory. In this, Jachin of the pillar has the advantage of me, and reminds me of the northern poet who sung of the first transgression, and the last too, I hope, of Eve ; And a fig-leaf apron she put on To show her masonrie. Now the epitaph on Sterne is one of those dubious compositions which are liable to various interpretations, according to the literal or figurative spirit of the reader; but the professional slang with which it abounds makes • Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi. Metamorph. lib. 3. it seem rather the work of a mason than a free-máson. A chipper and hewer of stone is always called a mason; while, for the sake of distinction, a freemason is called a free-mason, all the world over: the latter is one of a fraternity called a lodge, the former belongs to a society, which nurses him in sickness, and buries him when he dies. Now, what says Sterne's inscription? "This stone is erected by two brother masons, who regret he lived not to become a member of their society, because, it is evident, his admirable works were executed by rule and square" A very natural and very humane wish. The princes and proud ones-the free-masons of the earth, stood aloof, and saw Sterne, whose wit had so often awakened their pleasant drowsy-heads, borne to thegraye by strangers: so up came those two humane and humble masons to do honour, in their own kind-hearted, but uncouth, way, to one whose works they admired; and they wished him to have belonged to their society, to secure him a decent funeral, and poured their affections over his grave in the simple language of their trade, which Jachin calls allegorical. Yet, even allowing those respectable men to have been free-masons, does that say they were not "hewers of the dusty palace stone?" The heroes of the rule and square, the hammer and chisel, and trowel, and plummet, are almost, without exception, all free-masons: but Jachin-Oh! shame on thy ignorance, thou brother of Boaz-has no idea of uniting the real builders of the palace with those allegorical cutters of stone called free-masons. Yours, in good faith, OLD MORTALITY. The appeal of the writer of "One brief remembrance of the youthful Bard" was heard.—Judgment affirmed. J. says, we must return his paper if we refuse it,-at the same time declaring, that "he can send it to another work."-We will thank him to remember this power when he writes again. We have received too many Verses on the subject of the kind Incognita's Sonnet to be able to make use of any, without an apparent partiality, which it is our study to avoid. The Advice to H. D. was given in seriousness. Lion's Head is incapable of laughing. J. G. G. whose Poem was too short for the Bookseller, to whom he offered it for publication, and who fears it will be too long for the LONDON MAGAZINE, is unfortunately in the right. "Song on Sleep,"-" Song of Death," "The Judgment Day,"-The Craniologist," &c.-written in one hand by four different correspondents :"Lines written, Oct. 26, 1820, by John Allen Walker, on observing a single leaf adhering to the vertical extremity of a tall elm near Chelsea,' (what a subject!) "Lines supposed to be written by Petrarch (impossible!) on beholding Laura walking," the author of which begs we will "not crucify him on the critic's wheel:' Sonnet by G. V. D. whose "Intentions are estimated in their true sense:"-and "Stanzas addressed to Miss LB-," which we wish we could insert, in return for Eliza's beautiful prose compliment to the Lion's whiskers :are, some of them, almost too good to be rejected. We have to thank an unknown Correspondent for the following. ODE TO DR. KITCHENER. Ye Muses nine inspire And stir up my poetic fire; Of Dr. Kitchener I fain would sing, Till pots, and pans, and mighty kettles ring. O culinary Sage! (I do not mean the herb in use, Till midnight, when I went to bed, And clapp'd my tewah-diddle * on my head. Who is there cannot tell, Thou lead'st a life of living well? "What baron, or squire, or knight of the shire To treat thy subjects and thyself at once. His brains like thee, But few there be Could live so long on their receipts. What living soul or sinner Would slight thy invitation to a dinner, Ought with the Danaïdes to dwell, Draw gravy in a cullender, and hear The pleasant tinkling of thy dinner bell. Immortal Kitchener! thy fame Shall keep itself when Time makes game Thy name shall perish never, But be magnified for ever— -By all whose eyes are bigger than their belly! Yea, till the world is done -To a turn-and Time puts out the sun, But, as for thy more fleshy frame, Ah! Death's carnivorous teeth will tittle Thee out of breath, and eat it for cold victual Ah me, my soul is touch'd with sorrow Have other fish to fry. * The doctor's composition for a nightcap. Jou Good THE Custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was something more than a common blessing; when a belly-full was a windfall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs, with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of food-the act of eating-should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence. I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts a grace before Milton-a grace before Shakspeare-a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen ?-but, the received ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so called; commending my new scheme VOL. IV. for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelæsian Christians, no matter where assembled. The form then of the benediction before eating has its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unprovocative repasts of children. It is here that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of ever wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The proper end of foodthe animal sustenance-is barely contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are perennial. Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating, when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus hospes) at rich men's tables, with the savoury soup 2 M |