SCENE FROM AN UNPUBLISHED PLAY. DICK, solus with a Newspaper.-Smoking Pitcher on the Table. No murders and no robberies,-speeches-speeches, Column on column one eternal speech; Now I had rather read your pirate-stories, Of men minced up and shovelled overboard, Your slitting throats, and knocking out of brains, And such well-spiced misdoings [Enter Tom.] Save you, Tom, How goes your nothingship,-and gentle Julia, TOм. Her good old grandam's dead- Why then the devil May sharpen up his claws to deal with her; She was a potent vixen in her day. TOм. Be pleased to tread less rudely on the ashes To speak unfitly of the fairest thing That stepped on Eden's roses. Why should man Scoff at the creatures he was made to love? It is as if the iron-fibred oak Should tear the clasping tendrils. DICK. Save your nonsense To feed your starving poetry withal; I hate to see resuscitated thoughts Come sneaking back to life in ladies' albums. Pray talk to me as if I were a man,— Look,-do I wear a petticoat or breeches? Have I long locks? Is this a woman's foot? Is aught of silver in these brazen tones? Fill up your glass,-here's to thy sanity. Toм. O beast! you drink as if you were a Titan, Just hot from Etna. What would Julia say, If she could dream of such abominations! DICK. Would she might taste this punch! I much opine She'd soon forswear her ghostly milk and water. O thou art good! 't would vivify a statue, Could statue but its marble lips unclose: I would I were upon an ocean of theeA bowl my boat-a ladle for mine oar: Green islands in the ever-blooming south Should scatter flowers upon thee-and the fires That roll and flash in earth's unfathomed bosom, Should keep thee steaming hot. That's poetry. Toм. Insensate wretch; can nothing stir thy soul, But tempests brewed from earthly elements? No light break through thy darkness, save a gleam, The offspring of corruption? Is there nought DICK. He's talking big,—I'll wake the imp within him. I cannot blame thee-nay, I pity thee For such unseemly license of thy tongue; Touched in the brain,--I feared it might be so; [Aside.] To play so false a game. Who would have thought it,— TOм. Oh devil! what! speak, let me hear it all— DICK. Who has spoke of Julia? Are there no women in the world but Julia? I was but thinking of an ancient spinster, That ran away from Time to play with Cupid. TOм. Lend me your kerchief-I am much exhausted: DICK. There 'd have been Another tombstone, and a lie upon it. I would have dressed you an obituary, That should be really decent, and have written With mine own hands a fancy epitaph. TOм. Come, you are caustic,-but you know my nature. A token of her beauty and her love; Look at that auburn ringlet, boy, and think TOM. A something like to filaments of flame, And yet they are not cobwebs in their texture, Ha! what is 't you say? your rhetoric. [Striking Dick.] DICK. Infant! I will not beat thee. Here's a chair, And here's a neckcloth--yes, and here's a towel, [Tying him to the chair.] So, thou art fixed, thou paralytic tiger- TOм. Were every muscle beaten to a pulp, And my bones powdered, I would call it auburn. DICK. There's tragedy! It shall be auburn, then. Hark, there's a step with something leaden in it, As one that is not full of merriment, I'll fling my cloak upon you-there, keep still. Toм. I'm ddly battered, an' it please the Tutor. [Enter Tutor.] TUTOR. Men ye are troublous,-there has been a noise, If ye must talk of controverted things, [Exit.] NOTES AND NOTICES. No. III. "WELL, brothers, what think you of the third Number?" This query we put to our editorial coadjutors, as we threw ourselves back in our chair at the close of the business of our last meeting. We were inwardly exulting, and our tone expressed it, at the conclusion of the month's labors, and at their anticipated success. But SHERRY and LA-TOUCHE had already entered heart and soul into a typographical disputation, and of course turned a deaf ear to our inquiry. LOCKFAST had coiled himself down into the corner of his géos, disposed his limbs transversely on the table, fixed his worn gray eye on the decaying embers of the fireplace, and relapsed into a profound meditation. Our first answer proceeded from a distant and darkened corner of the room, where FRANK AIRY was stretched upon a sick-bed. There he had lain for several days, and throughout the evening, his thoughts mostly abstracted from everything around him. Whenever any one moved from between the mantel-piece and his corner, so that the light fell in that direction, you might behold his limbs and pillows scattered about the bed "in most admired disorder," and his "poet's eye, from heaven to earth in a fine frenzy rolling." Indeed a sick poet is a most unique and delectable sight! Close beside the head of AIRY's couch, stood his open secretary; on it were pen, ink, and paper, together with a mug of molasses and water, the only drink he was allowed, which GEOFFREY, who delights in all odd or antiquated phrases, insists on denominating switchell. From this, "the vessel of his peace," the poor fellow would often during his sleepless nights drink in comfort and inspiration, and then, seizing his pen, make an almost convulsive effort to arrest and commit to paper the thoughts which were whirling through his brain with treble their usual rapidity, waywardness, and extravagance. We have since got a glance at the sheet. It is nearly illegible, and wholly unintelligible. Portions of it may, however, make their appearance in some future number, as specimens of very sublimated nonsense. At the moment when we put our triumphant interrogatory, the invalid's mind happened to be vacant, and his ears consequently open. "Think of it?" he exclaimed, "why I think it 66 altogether too tame, prosaic, and business-like. What with your Etching and Sketching, your Diaries, your Strollings, and your Didactics, the Number will be far fitter for a route-guide, the model of a common-place book, or the assistant of a jobbing newspaper essayist, than to recline, for the diversion of cultivated minds and ethereal fancies, on the polished centre-table, or the cushioned toilet. Why, sir, there is nothing rich or imposing in your pages,-no tale of ancient romance-no delicious fiction or dream-not a spice of the lofty metaphysics of the day" (he admires the Germans) to season your whole lump." The manner of the delivery of this speech, and some rather indistinct accents into which it sunk at the conclusion, showed that MR. AIRY attributed the defect he reprehended, wholly to the circumstance that himself had been prevented by his situation from redeeming the Number with more of his own effusions. His final murmurs had hardly died away, when, from a low seat near the foot of the bed, arose the gentle, yet earnest tones of TEMPLETON, and stole upon our ears. He is FRANK's very particular friend, and during his whole illness has nursed him with the assiduity and tenderness of a younger brother. "I cannot help thinking, sir, the regrets of our dear AIRY perfectly well grounded. I join in them heartily, though reluctantly. Besides, sir, the Number will be found, I am afraid, as deficient in delicacy and propriety of sentiment, as in what my friend calls the rich and imposing. Your poetry--what is most of it, but a string of flippant or burlesque conceits, an outrage upon all feeling and enthusiasm? And, alas, we shall not offend more the sensibilities of our fair readers, than the most cherished opinions of the learned and venerable who may do us the honor of a perusal. For who but the very scum of the earth, Cannibals, Pirates, and Actors, appear to be the subjects of our thoughts and our admiration? Ah! LUKE, it is for want of some of your orthodox paragraphs to sanctify its pages, that the third Number has degenerated into this pitiable plight." ARTHUR had now waxed so eloquent as to arrest the attention of the two disputants, who were now discussing with great unction the comparative merits of bourgeois, brevier, &c. They are both of them connoisseurs in all the mysteries and minute elegancies of typography, and will start as many pros and cons on every line in a title-page, as you ever heard propounded at the Athenæum, concerning one of Fisher's or Allston's chef-d'œuvres. They are frequently at swords' points now-a-days, on account of certain passages which have occurred between them in their published works: and their acrimony was now venting itself with uncommon ardor upon a subject which each piques himself on his knowledge of. Their dialogue had become one continued antithesis; assertion was followed by point-blank denial; and every negative, indeed, was completely positive,-as why should it not be, since neither of them knows a straw's worth of mathematics? Their discussion was, however, as we have already stated, broken off, and their attention won, by the pathetic eloquence of TEMPLETON; and the whole Club now commenced a lively at tack on the delinquent Luke. Animated invective, stinging innuendo, and grave remonstrance were showered for some time on his devoted head, ere he began to show signs of returning consciousness. At last, after a spasmodic movement of the head, and half a dozen winks of the eye, he straightened his back, repossessed himself of his legs, bringing with them to the floor about half the miscellaneous load of the table, and went through all the fantastic demonstrations which usually indicate the translation of his thoughts from abstracts to the less genial element of concretes. He was at length in a condition to feel the full force of the battery which played on him from all quarters; a consciousness, too, of ill desert came over him; and he turned his patriarchal head from one to another of his numerous assailants, with a meek and almost supplicatory air. Silence was accordingly made; and LUKE, after taking a little time to collect himself, commenced, in tones which faltered beneath the smitings of conscience, and the unanimous assault of his friends, but still were not wholly bereft of their wonted authoritative equanimity. The amount of his excuse was, that the addition made to the College Library by the late importation of old works, had been so tempting to him as to have absorbed for the last month, all the time he could spare from prescribed studies. This was declared on all hands an insufficient apology. An ominous and thoughtful silence ensued. At length LATOUCHE, his face lighting up with a sardonic grin, rendered unusually sinister by partial suppression, proposed that Mr. LockFAST be required, as a punishment of his delinquency, to write an impromptu epigram! SHERRY mischievously suggested "Calvinistic Preaching" (it being the most unepigrammatic matter he could think of), as a proper subject for the sage's labors. It was accordingly voted by acclamation, that Mr. LOCKFAST be required to produce, within fifteen minutes, an original epigram on “Calvinistic Preaching." Withdrawn to a corner of the room, and toiling in a mental sweat and agony, is the venerable LUKE. During his laborious exile, a little agreeable miscellaneous chat rises, in which SHERRY displays to great advantage his fine taste, his slight but delicate vein of wit, and the countless, nicely-finished miniatures of men and things, which he has impressed on "the tablet of his memory." GEOFFREY too figures, and forms a fine counterpart to CHARLES. He was made for a thinker, but he has never disciplined himself. Humor and sentiment are the only growths of his mind which he has cultiuated. He of course finds the latter more awkward and difficult to express than the former, and less uniformly appreciated when expressed. So that humor, tempered generally with satire to improve its edge, greatly predominates in his conversation. In his room, a solitary lair, he broods for hours over throngs of grotesque images-of which he disburdens himself in the editorial circle, with a most ludicrous and often astounding copiousness. Indeed this unfailing stream of humor seems sometimes to have overflowed all the other stamina of his mind; but one is surprised to see his sentiment and feeling start forth, when occasion calls, |