While thus she lull'd her babe : "How cruel Small is thine ear, wee babe, for hearing, V. The Rogueries of Tom Moore. (Fraser's Magazine, August, 1834.) [In several respects this paper must be regarded as the most remarkable of all the Reliques. For one thing, it gave to the world towards its conclusion the most delicious copy of verses ever penned by Mahony-his exquisite poem of "The Bells of Shandon.' It illustrated, besides, in a more marvellous way than ever, his capacity, whenever he so pleased, to deal with his scholarship as freely as a juggler does with the golden balls and daggers which he sets at any moment, ad libitum, in bewildering gyration. The "Melody to the Beautiful Milkmaid" thus reappeared Latinized in his magic as "Lesbia Semper hinc et inde," "The Shamrock in its Gallic reflection, and Wreathe the Bowl” in Greek anacreontics as Στεψωμεν ουν κυπελλον. The Literary Portrait contained in the number of Regina to which these and other similar Rogueries were contributed was that of Thomas Hill, who-though, judging from his likeness, he certainly looked not in the least like it--was author of the "Mirror of Fashion." Two of Maclise's happiest embellishments adorned this paper in the original edition of 1836, one of them revealing Moore in the sanctum at Watergrasshill listening, chin on fist, to Father Prout carolling one of his Rogueries; while the other delineates, starkly under its winding-sheet, the dead body of Henry O'Brien, author of "The Round Towers of Ireland," a patriotic archæologist, but very recently deceased before the first publication of this paper in the magazine. Yet another of Croquis' sketches associated with this instalment of the Reliques prettily portrayed L. E. L.-otherwise Letitia Elizabeth Landon-in the then fashionable attire of a cottage bonnet and preposterous gigot sleeves, standing in front of a trellised bower, like the lady who sat in Thackeray's canebottomed chair," with a smile on her face and a rose in her hair!"] "Grata carpendo thyma per laborem Carmina fingo." QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS. By taking time, and some advice from Prout, THOMAS L. MOORE. WHEN the star of Father Prout (a genuine son of the accomplished Stella, and in himself the most eccentric luminary that has of late adorned our planetary system) first rose in the firmament of literature, it deservedly attracted the gaze of the learned, and riveted the eye of the sage. We know not what may have been the sensation its appearance created in foreign countries,-at the Observatoire Royal of Paris, in the Val d'Arno, or at Fesolé, where, in Milton's *i.e., Blarneum nemus. time, the sons of Galileo plied the untiring telescope to descry new heavenly phenomena, "rivers or mountains in the shadowy moon"-but we can vouch for the impression made on the London University; for all Stinkomalee hath been perplexed at the apparition. The learned Chaldeans of Gower Street opine that it forbodes nothing good to the cause of useful knowledge," and they watch the "transit" of Prout, devoutly wishing for his "exit." With throbbing anxiety, night after night has Dr. Lardner gazed on the sinister planet, seeking, with the aid of Dr. Babbage's calculating machine, to ascertain the probable period of its final eclipse, and often muttering its name, "to tell how he hates its beams." He has seen it last April shining conspicuously in the constellation of Pisces, when he duly conned over the " Apology for Lent," and the Doctor has reported to the University Board, that, "advancing with retrograde movement in the zodiac," this disastrous orb was last perceived in the milky way, entering the sign of "Amphora," or "the churn." But what do the public care, while the general eye is delighted by its irradiance, that a few owls and dunces are scared by its effulgency? The Georgium Sidus, the Astrium Julium, the Soleil d'Austerlitz, the Star at Vauxhall, the Nose of Lord Chancellor Vaux,* and the grand Roman Girandola shot off from the mole of Adrian, to the annual delight of modern "Quirites," are all fine things and rubicund in their generation; but nothing to the star of Watergrasshill. Nor is astronomical science or pyrotechnics the only department of philosophy that has been influenced by this extraordinary meteor-the kindred study of GASTRONOMY has derived the hint of a new combination from its inspiring ray; and, after a rapid perusal of 'Prout's Apology for Fish," the celebrated Monsieur Ude, whom Croquis has so exquisitely delineated in the gallery of REGINA, has invented on the spot an original sauce, a novel obsonium, more especially adapted to cod and turbot, to which he has given the reverend father's name; so that Sir William Curtis will be found eating his "turbot à la Prout as constantly as his "cotelette à la Maintenon." The fascinating Miss Landon has had her fair name affixed to a frozen lake in the map of Captain Ross's discoveries; and if Prout be not equally fortunate in winning terraqueous renown with his pen ("Nititur pennâ vitreo daturus nomina ponto "), he will at least figure on the carte at Verey's, opposite our neighbour. " Who can tell what posthumous destinies await the late incumbent of Watergrasshill? In truth, his celebrity (to use an expression of Edmund Burke) is as yet but a 'speck in the horizon-a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body;" and when, in the disemboguing of the chest, in the evolving of his MSS., he shall be unfolded to the view in all his dimensions, developing his proportions in a gorgeous shape of matchless originality and grandeur, then will be the hour for the admirers of the beautiful and the votaries of the sublime to hail him with becoming veneration, and welcome him with the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music. (Dan. viii. 15.) "Then shall the reign of mind commence on earth, And, starting fresh, as from a second birth, The following song was a favourite with the celebrated Chancellor d'Aguesseau. It is occasionally sung, in our own times, by a modern performer on the woolsack, in the intervals of business: Man, in the sunshine of the world's new spring, The title of this second paper taken from the Prout Collection is enough to indicate that we are only firing off the small arms-the pop-guns of this stupendous arsenal, and that we reserve the heavy metal for a grander occasion, when the Whig ministry and the dog-days shall be over, and a merry autumn and a Wellington administration shall mellow our October cups. To talk of Tom Moore is but small talk-"in tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria; " for Prout's great art is to magnify what is little, and to fling a dash of the sublime into a twopenny-post communication. To use Tommy's own phraseology, Prout could, with great ease and comfort to himself, "Teach an old cow pater-noster, But we have another reason for selecting this Essay on Moore" from the papers of the deceased divine. We have seen with regret an effort made to crush and annihilate the young author of a book on the "Round Towers of Ireland," with whom we are not personally acquainted, but whose production gave earnest of an ardent mind bent on abstruse and recondite studies; and who, leaving the frivolous boudoir and the drawing-room coterie to lisp their ballads and retail their Epicurean gossip unmolested, trod alone the craggy steeps of venturous discovery in the regions of Oriental learning; whence, returning to the isle of the west, the "IRan of the fire-worshipper," he trimmed his lamp, well fed with the fragrant oil of these sunny lands, and penned a work which will one day rank among the most extraordinary of modern times. The Edinburgh Review attempted, long ago, to stifle the unfledged muse of Byron; these truculent northerns would gladly have bruised in the very shell the young eagle that afterwards tore with his lordly talons both Jeffery and his colleague Moore (of the leadless pistol), who were glad to wax subservient slaves, after being impotent bullies. The same review undertook to cry down Wordsworth and Coleridge; they shouted their vulgar "crucifigatur" against Robert Southey; and seemed to have adopted the motto of the French club of witlings, "Nul n'aura de l'esprit que nous et nos amis." But in the present case they will find themselves equally impotent for evil : O'Brien may defy them. He may defy his own alma mater, the silent and unproductive Trin. Coll. Dub.; he may defy the Royal Irish Academy, a learned assembly, which, alas! has neither a body to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned; and may rest secure of the applause which sterling merit challenges from every freeborn inhabitant of these islands,— "Save where, from yonder ivy-mantled tower, Moore (we beg his pardon)—the reviewer, asserts that O'Brien is a plagiary, and pilferred his discovery from "Nimrod.' Now we venture to offer a copy of the commentaries of Cornelius a Lapide (which we find in Prout's chest) to Tom, if he will show us a single passage in "Nimrod" (which we are confident he never read) warranting his assertion. But, apropos of plagiarisms; let us hear the prophet of Watergrasshill, who enters largely on the subject. OLIVER YORKE. Regent Street, 1st August, 1834. Watergrasshill, Feb. 1834 THAT notorious tinker, William Woods, who, as I have recorded among the papers in my coffer somewhere, to spite my illustrious father, kidnapped me in my childhood, little dreamt that the infant Prout would one day emerge from the Royal Cork Foundling Hospital as safe and unscathed as the children from Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, to hold up his villany to the execration of man kind: "Non sine Dîs animosus infans!" Among the Romans, whoever stole a child was liable by law to get a sound flogging; and as plaga in Latin means a stripe or lash, kidnappers in Cicero's time were called plagiarii, or cat-o'-nine-tail-villains. I approve highly of this law of the twelve tables; but perhaps my judgment is biassed, and I should be an unfair juror to give a verdict in a case which comes home to my own feelings so poignantly. The term plagiary has since been applied metaphorically to literary shop-lifters and book-robbers, who stuff their pages with other men's goods, and thrive on indiscriminate pillage. This is justly considered a high misdemeanour in the republic of letters, and the lash of criticism is unsparingly dealt on pickpockets of this description. Among the Latins, Martial is the only classic author by whom the term plagiarius is used in the metaphorical sense, as applied to literature; but surely it was not because the practice only began in his time that the word had not been used even in the Augustan age of kome. Be that as it may, we first find the term in Martial's Epigrams (lib. i. epigr. 53): talking of his verses, he says, "Dicas esse meos, manuque missos: Cicero himself was accused by the Greeks of pilfering whole passages, for his philosophical works, from the scrolls of Athens, and cooking up the fragments and broken meat of Greek orations to feed the hungry barbarians of the Roman forum. My authority is that excellent critic St. Jerome, who, in the "Proemium in qu. Heb. lib. Genesis," distinctly says, "Cicero repetundarum accusatur à Græcis," &c., &c.; and in the same passage he adds, that Virgil being accused of taking whole similes from Homer, gloried in the theft, exclaiming, Think ye it nothing to wrest his club from Hercules?" (it. ibidem.) Vide Scti Hieronymi Opera, tom. iv. fol. 90. But what shall we say when we find Jerome accusing another holy father of plagiarism? Verily the temptation must have been very great to have shaken the probity of St. Ambrose, when he pillaged his learned brother in the faith, Origen of Alexandria, by wholesale. Nuper Sanctus Ambrosius Hexacmeron illius compilavit" (Seti Hieronymi Opera, tom. iii. fol. 87, in epistola, ad Pammach). It is well known that Menander and Aristophanes were mercilessly pillaged by Terence and Plautus; and the Latin freebooters thought nothing of stopping the Thespian waggon on the highways of Parnassus. The French dramatists are similarly waylaid by our scouts from the green-room,-and the plunder is awful! What is Talleyrand about, that he cannot protect the property of the French? Perhaps he is better employed? I am an old man, and have read a great deal in my time-being of a quiet disposition, and having always had a taste for books, which I consider a great blessing; but latterly I find that I may dispense with further perusal of printed volumes, as, unfortunately, memory serves me but too well; and all I read now strikes me as but a new version of what I had read somewhere before. Plagiarism is so barefaced and so universal, that I can stand it no longer: I have shut up shop, and will be taken in no more. Quære peregrinum? clamo. I'm sick of hashed-up works, and loathe the baked meats of antiquity served in a fricassee. Give me a solid joint, in which no knife has been ever fleshed, |