been a skrimmage; what have they done to your poor breast, that used to hold my image?" "Oh, Patty Head! oh, Patty Head! you've come to my last kissing, before I'm set in the gazette as wounded, dead, and missing. This very night a merry dance in Brussels was to be; instead of opening a ball, a ball has opened me. Its billet every bullet has, and well it does fulfil it; I wish mine hadn't come so straight, but been a crooked billet. And then there came a cuirassier, and cut me on the chest: he had no pity in his heart for he had steeled his breast. Next thing, a lancer with a lance began to thrust away; I call'd for quarter—but alas! it was not quarter-day: he ran his spear right through my arm, just here above the joint; O Patty dear, it was no joke, although it had a point. With loss of blood I fainted off, as dead as women do; but soon by charging over me, the Cold-stream brought me too. With kicks, and cuts, and balls, and blows, I throb and ache all over; I'm quite convinced the field of Mars is not a field of clover. O, why did I a soldier turn for paltry gain and pelf! I might have been a butcher in business for myself. O why did I the bounty take!" (and here he gasped for breath) "my shilling's worth of list is nailed upon the door of death. Without a coffin I shall lie, and sleep my sleep eternal; not even a shell,-my only chance of being made a kernal. Oh, Patty dear, our wedding bells shall never ring at Chester; here must I lie in honour's bed, that is not worth a tester. Farewell my regimental mates, with whom I used to dress; my corps is changed, and I am now in quite another mess. Farewell, my Patty dear; I have no dying consolation, except when I am dead, you'll go and see the illumination. But Peter didn't die just then; fate was like him a jester: his Patty's head he changed to Stone, and he lived-to die at Chester.

(202.) THE ART OF PUFFING.

[Mr. Puff, is a man who has tried his hand at everything to get a living, and at last resorts to dramatic criticism. Mr. Sneer and Mr. Dangle have been invited to a rehearsal of Mr. Puff's tragedy of "The Spanish Armada.”

Three speakers: DANGLE, PUFF, and SNEER.

Dan. Mr. Sneer, give me leave to introduce Mr. Puff to you. Puff. Mr. Sneer is this? (Crosses to centre.) Sir, he is a gentleman whom I have long panted for the honour of knowing—a gentleman whose critical talents and trandscendent judgment-

Sneer. Dear sir

Dan. Nay, don't be modest, Sneer, my friend Puff only talks to you in the style of his profession.

Sneer. His profession!

Puff. Yes, sir; I make no secret of the trade I follow. I am, sir, a practitioner in panegyric, or to speak more plainly-a professor of the art of puffing, at your service-or anybody else's. I dare say now you conceive half the very civil paragraphs and advertisements you see, to be written by the parties concerned, or their friends?— no such thing; nine out of ten manufactured by me.

Sneer. Indeed! But pray, Mr. Puff, what first put you on exercising your talents in this way?

Puff. Egad, sir, sheer necessity-the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention: you must know, Mr. Sneer, that from the first time I tried my hand at an advertisement my success was such that for some time after I led a most extraordinary life indeed! Sneer. How, pray?

Puff. Sir, I supported myself two years entirely by my misfortunes. Sneer. By your misfortunes!

Puff. Yes, sir, assisted by long sickness and other occasional disorders; and a very comfortable living I had of it.

Sneer. From sickness and misfortunes!-you practised as a doctor and attorney at once?

Puff. No, egad; both maladies and miseries were my own.
Sneer. Hey! what the plague!

Dan. 'Tis true, i'faith.

Puff. Harkee! by advertisements-"To the charitable and humane!" and "To those whom Providence hath blessed with affluence!"

Sneer. Oh! I understand you.

Puff. And, in truth, I deserved what I got; for I suppose never man went through such a series of calamities in the same space of time. Sir, I was five times made a bankrupt, and reduced from a state of affluence by a train of unavoidable misfortunes!-then, sir, though a very industrious tradesman, I was twice burned out, and lost my little all both times. I lived upon those fires a month. I soon after was confined by a most excruciating disorder, and lost the use of my limbs!—that told very well, for I had the case strongly attested, and went about to collect the subscriptions myself.

Dan. Egad, I believe that was when you first called on me. Puff. In November last? Oh, no! I was at that time a close prisoner for a debt benevolently contracted to serve a friend. I was afterwards twice tapped for a dropsy, which declined into a very

profitable consumption-I was then reduced-Oh, no!-Then I became a widow with six helpless children, after having had eleven husbands who had deserted me and left without money to get me into a hospital.

Sneer. And you bore all with patience, no doubt!

Puff. Why, yes; though I made some attempts at felo-de-se, but as I did not find these rash actions answer I soon left off killing myself. Well, sir, at last, what with bankruptcies, fires, gouts, dropsies, imprisonments, and other valuable calamities, having got together a pretty handsome sum, I determined to quit a business which had always gone rather against my conscience, and in a more liberal way still to indulge my talents for fiction and embellishment, thro' my favourite channels of diurnal communication,—and so, sir, you have my history.

Sneer. But surely, Mr. Puff, there is no great mystery in your present profession?

Puff. Mystery! sir, I will take upon me to say the matter was never scientifically treated nor reduced to rule before.

Sneer. Reduced to rule?

Puff. O lud, sir! you are very ignorant, I am afraid. Yes, sir; puffing is of various sorts-the principal are: the puff direct—the puff preliminary-the puff collateral-the puff collusive-and the puff oblique, or puff by implication. These all assume, as circumstances require, the various forms of "letter to the editor," "occasional anecdote," "impartial critique," "observation from a correspondent," or advertisement from the party."

66

Sneer. The puff direct I can conceive

Puff. Oh, yes, that's simple enough. For instance, a new comedy or farce is to be produced at one of the theatres (though, by the by, they don't bring out half what they ought to do). The author, suppose Mr. Smatter or Mr. Dapper, or any particular friend of mine— very well; the day before it is to be performed I write an account of the manner in which it was received. I have the plot from the author, and only add: characters strongly drawn-highly coloured -hand of a master-fund of genuine humour-mine of invention— neat dialogue-attic salt! Then for the performance: Mr. Dodd was astonishingly great in the character of Sir Harry!--that universal and judicious actor, Mr. Palmer, perhaps never appeared to more advantage than in the Colonel; but it is not in the power of language to do justice to Mr. King; indeed he more than merited those repeated bursts of applause which he drew from a most brilliant and udicious audience!-R. B. Sheridan.

(203.) THE GENIUS OF BURNS.

Professor John Wilson, Scotch poet and essayist, b. at Paisley 1785, d. 1854. Received his education at Oxford; a strong Conservative as to politics, whose writings are best known under his nom de plume of Christopher North.

Burns is by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the bosom of the people, and lived and died in an humble condition. He was born a poet, if ever man was, and to his native genius alone is owing the perpetuity of his fame. For he manifestly never studied poetry as an art, nor reasoned much about its principles, nor looked abroad with the wide ken of intellect for objects and subjects on which to pour out his inspiration. The condition of the peasantry of Scotlandthe happiest, perhaps, that Providence ever allowed to the children of labour-was not surveyed and speculated on by him as the field of poetry, but as the field of his own existence; and he chronicled the events that passed there, not merely as food for his imagination as a poet, but as food for his heart as a man. Hence, when inspired to compose poetry, poetry came gushing up from the well of his human affections, and he had nothing more to do than to pour it, like streams irrigating a meadow, in many a cheerful tide over the drooping flowers and fading verdure of life. Imbued with vivid perceptions, warm feelings, and strong passions, he sent his own existence into that of all things, animate and inanimate, around him: and not an occurrence in hamlet, village, or town, affecting in any way the happiness of the human heart, but roused as keen an interest in the soul of Burns, and as genial a sympathy, as if it had immediately concerned himself and his own individual welfare. Most other poets of rural life have looked on it through the aërial veil of imagination —often beautified, no doubt, by such partial concealment, and beaming with a misty softness more delicate than the truth. But Burns would not thus indulge his fancy, where he had felt-felt so poignantly-all the agonies and all the transports of life. He looked around him, and when he saw the smoke of the cottage rising up quietly and unbroken to heaven, he knew, for he had seen and blessed it, the quiet joy and unbroken contentment that slept below; and when he saw it driven and dispersed by the winds he knew also but too well, for too sorely had he felt them, those agitations and disturbances which had shook him till he wept on his chaff bed. In reading his poetry, therefore, we know what unsubstantial dreams are all those of the golden age. But bliss beams upon us with a more subduing brightness through the dim melancholy that shrouds lowly life; and when the peasant Burns rises up in his might as

(181)

M

Burns the poet, and is seen to derive all that might from the life which at this hour the peasantry of Scotland are leading, our hearts leap within us, because that such is our country, and such the nobility of her children. There is no dilusion, no affectation, no exaggeration, no falsehood in the spirit of Burns's poetry. He rejoices like an untamed enthusiast, and he weeps like a prostrate penitent. In joy and in grief the whole man appears: some of his finest effusions were poured out before he left the fields of his childhood, and when he scarcely hoped for other auditors than his own heart, and the simple dwellers of the hamlet. He wrote not to please or surprise others—we speak of those first effusions-but in his own creative delight; and even after he had discovered his power to kindle the sparks of nature wherever they slumbered, the effect to be produced seldom seems to have been considered by him, assured that his poetry could not fail to produce the same passion in the hearts of other men from which it boiled over in his own.

(204.) TRIAL FROM PICKWICK. (ABRIDGED.)

[Mrs. Bardell, formerly Mr. Pickwick's landlady, had so persuaded herself that Mr. Pickwick would make a good second husband, that when Mr. Pickwick asked her consent to take into his service a young man, Mr. Samuel Weller, her fancy misconstrued his ambiguous proposition into one of marriage. She faints away and is seen in Mr. Pickwick's arms by his three friends. Finally, by the advice of two pettifogging lawyers, Messrs. Dodson & Fogg, she vamps up a case for breach of promise. Mr. Pickwick refusing to pay damages is imprisoned in the Fleet, but subsequently the lawyers arrest their own client for their costs. She is released from prison by Mr. Pickwick's magnanimously paying the debt.]

Enter Mr. JUSTICE STARELEIGH attended by CRIER, and takes his seat on the Bench.

Crier. Silence! Silence! Silence in the court. Bardell and Pickwick. Buzfuz. I am for the plaintiff, my Lord.

Snubbin. I appear for the defendant, my Lord.

Judge. Go on.

Crier. Silence! silence! silence!

Buzfuz. My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury,-Never, in the whole course of my professional experience-never, from the very first moment of my applying myself to the study and practice of the law-have I approached a case with feelings of such deep emotion, or with such a heavy sense of the responsibility imposed upon me;—a responsibility, I will say, which I could never have supported, were I not buoyed up and sustained by a conviction so strong, that it amounts to positive certainty, that the cause of truth and justice, or,