Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 427, May, 1851. Various
tells you of his starving wife,
His children to be fed,
Poor little lovely innocents.
All clamorous for bread;
And so you kindly help to put
A bachelor to bed.
You're sitting on your window-seat,
Beneath a cloudless moon;
You hear a sound that seems to wear
The semblance of a tune,
As if a broken fife should strive
To drown a cracked basoon.
And nearer, nearer still, the tide
Of music seems to come,
There's something like a human voice
And something like a drum;
You sit in speechless agony
Until your ear is numb.
Poor 'home, sweet home,' should seem to be
A very dismal place,
Your 'auld acquaintance,' all at once
Is altered in the face —
But hark! the air again is still,
The music all is ground;
It cannot be – it is – it is —
A hat is going round!
No! Pay the dentist when he leaves
A fracture in your jaw;
And pay the owner of the bear,
That stunned you with his paw;
And buy the lobster that has had
Your knuckles in his claw;
But if you are a portly man,
Put on your fiercest frown,
And talk about a constable
To turn them out of town;
Then close your sentence with an oath,
And shut the window down!
And if you are a slender man,
Not big enough for that,
Or, if you cannot make a speech,
Because you are a flat,
Go very quietly and drop
A button in the hat!"
Excellent advice! How many hats there are – and not of music-grinders only – in which we should be delighted to see the button dropped! The next in order is very good, and equally intelligible on this side of the Atlantic. We give the greater part of it: —
THE TREADMILL SONG
"They've built us up a noble wall,
To keep the vulgar out;
We've nothing in the world to do,
But just to walk about;
So faster now, you middle men,
And try to beat the ends,
Its pleasant work to ramble round
Among one's honest friends.
Here, tread upon the long man's toes,
He shan't be lazy here —
And punch the little fellow's ribs,
And tweak that lubber's ear,
He's lost them both – don't pull his hair,
Because he wears a scratch,
But poke him in the further eye,
That isn't in the patch.
Hark! fellows, there's the supper-bell,
And so our work is done;
It's pretty sport – suppose we take
A round or two for fun!
If ever they should turn me out,
When I have better grown,
Now hang me, but I mean to have
A treadmill of my own!"
"The September Gale," "The Ballad of an Oysterman," "My Aunt," all solicit admission, but we have no space. A few of the verses "On the Portrait of 'A Gentleman,' in the Athenæum Gallery," we will insert. Perhaps we may see the companion picture to it on the walls of our own Exhibition at Trafalgar Square: —
"It may be so, perhaps thou hast
A warm and loving heart;
I will not blame thee for thy face,
Poor devil as thou art.
That thing thou fondly deem'st a nose,
Unsightly though it be,
In spite of all the cold world's scorn,
It may be much to thee.
Those eyes, among thine elder friends,
Perhaps they pass for blue;
No matter – if a man can see,
What more have eyes to do?
Thy mouth – that fissure in thy face,
By something like a chin —
May be a very useful place
To put thy victual in."
Not, it seems, a thing to paint for public inspection. Apropos of the pictorial art, we cannot dismiss Mr Holmes' book without noticing the two or three tasteful vignettes or medallions, or by whatever name the small engravings are to be called, which are scattered through its pages. We wish there were more of them, and that such a style of illustration, or rather of decoration, (for they have little to do with the subject of the text,) were more general. Here are two little children sitting on the ground, one is reading, the other listening – a mere outline, and the whole could be covered by a crown-piece. A simple medallion, such as we have described, gives an exquisite and perpetual pleasure; the blurred and blotched engraving, where much is attempted and nothing completed, is a mere disfigurement to a book. The volume before us, we ought perhaps to add, comes from the press of Messrs Ticknor and Co., Boston.
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE
BOOK V. – INITIAL CHAPTER
"I hope, Pisistratus," said my father, "that you do not intend to be dull!"
"Heaven forbid, sir! what could make you ask such a question? Intend. No! if I am dull it is from innocence."
"A very long Discourse upon Knowledge!" said my father; "very long. I should cut it out!"
I looked upon my father as a Byzantian sage might have looked on a Vandal. "Cut it out!" —
"Stops the action, sir!" said my father, dogmatically.
"Action! But a novel is not a drama."
"No, it is a great deal longer – twenty times as long, I dare say," replied Mr Caxton with a sigh.
"Well, sir – well! I think my Discourse upon Knowledge has much to do with the subject – is vitally essential to the subject; does not stop the action – only explains and elucidates the action. And I am astonished, sir, that you, a scholar, and a cultivator of knowledge" —
"There – there!" cried my father, deprecatingly. "I yield – I yield. What better could I expect when I set up for a critic! What author ever lived that did not fly into a passion – even with his own father, if his father presumed to say – 'Cut out!' Pacem imploro" —
Mrs Caxton. – "My dear Austin, I am sure Pisistratus did not mean to offend you, and I have